The Gift
My daughter, away for the first time at college, phoned as she walked in sub-freezing weather
to her Sociology class to say her nose was running and that she’d stayed up most of the night
reading Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin and Michel Foucault, their analyses of power
and its consolidation, institutionalization and reification across structures stretching back in time—so what happened
to the gift we were all given, which in pre-colonial societies meant the gift of labor (here are your hands, here
the soil of your ancestors), the gift of grain from the fields and animals from the hunt shared in crazy
ritual potlatches which anthropologists describe as week-long, sometimes month-long parties, veritable One Love
Festivals, Woodstocks where food and drink passed from hand to hand in coconut shell dippers or banana fronds with
music and soulful drumming and more than enough take-out, yes sir, take-home doggie bags for all, from the senior
head honcho and eldest elder statesman to the toothless matriarch to the youngest child who can’t even say the words for
much less chew on the idea of beef jerky. And I found myself thinking of the day’s news again, reports of yet another suicide
bomber blowing up not only his and other soldiers’ guts but also mothers and babies in the produce market, thinking in general
of innocence transfigured, the apple fallen a long, long way from the tree and us picking our way through thickets overgrown
with the debris of language and loss, shorn of everything, sometimes of even our best intentions, as we follow or refuse to follow in its
bloody wake… Bodies of saffron-clad monks float face-down in the water, still signifying peace; poets slip valentines rather than
bullets into the stream of daily life.What should we do with this gift?We will pay attention to ungovernable details, to hidden messages
in every surface. We will mourn the last Pyrenean ibex which died last month in Ordesa when a tree fell on it. We will guard subversive
hope as if it were the last living Lady Slipper Orchid in the world.We will not laugh at those who cannot tell the sound of schwa from
shwe.
----Luisa Igloria
* From the chapbook, Power Crazy Senior General Than Shwe: "On January 22, 2008, in the country of Myanmar, a man named Saw Wai was jailed for writing a poem." The above is Luisa Igloria's response. For more information and the full online chapbook, Power Crazy Senior General Than Shwe, see http://anti-poetry.com/chapbook1/
Note: Saw Wai was eventually sentenced to two years imprisonment for his "crime."
Artist's Note: I am tremendously grateful for Luisa Igloria's collaboration and work.
to her Sociology class to say her nose was running and that she’d stayed up most of the night
reading Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin and Michel Foucault, their analyses of power
and its consolidation, institutionalization and reification across structures stretching back in time—so what happened
to the gift we were all given, which in pre-colonial societies meant the gift of labor (here are your hands, here
the soil of your ancestors), the gift of grain from the fields and animals from the hunt shared in crazy
ritual potlatches which anthropologists describe as week-long, sometimes month-long parties, veritable One Love
Festivals, Woodstocks where food and drink passed from hand to hand in coconut shell dippers or banana fronds with
music and soulful drumming and more than enough take-out, yes sir, take-home doggie bags for all, from the senior
head honcho and eldest elder statesman to the toothless matriarch to the youngest child who can’t even say the words for
much less chew on the idea of beef jerky. And I found myself thinking of the day’s news again, reports of yet another suicide
bomber blowing up not only his and other soldiers’ guts but also mothers and babies in the produce market, thinking in general
of innocence transfigured, the apple fallen a long, long way from the tree and us picking our way through thickets overgrown
with the debris of language and loss, shorn of everything, sometimes of even our best intentions, as we follow or refuse to follow in its
bloody wake… Bodies of saffron-clad monks float face-down in the water, still signifying peace; poets slip valentines rather than
bullets into the stream of daily life.What should we do with this gift?We will pay attention to ungovernable details, to hidden messages
in every surface. We will mourn the last Pyrenean ibex which died last month in Ordesa when a tree fell on it. We will guard subversive
hope as if it were the last living Lady Slipper Orchid in the world.We will not laugh at those who cannot tell the sound of schwa from
shwe.
----Luisa Igloria
* From the chapbook, Power Crazy Senior General Than Shwe: "On January 22, 2008, in the country of Myanmar, a man named Saw Wai was jailed for writing a poem." The above is Luisa Igloria's response. For more information and the full online chapbook, Power Crazy Senior General Than Shwe, see http://anti-poetry.com/chapbook1/
Note: Saw Wai was eventually sentenced to two years imprisonment for his "crime."
Artist's Note: I am tremendously grateful for Luisa Igloria's collaboration and work.
