Georgina Marie Guardado

Polarity

It's not that I have a problem 
with criticism 
but when the poet 
who only wrote about figs and fountains 
told me I needed to remove myself 
from the content of my poetry
I thought of the perfect response 
a day later

The page is a mirror and I need to see myself
to know the kind of damage that was done over time
to turn it into a canvas that repaints 
itself into a new kind of daylight

The problem is not that I place myself on a pedestal
or that I care whether or not you’re vaccinated
but when I open social media to 
find someone else’s depression 
to get away from my own
I see that two more have died from COVID in my small town

The lovely residents of this lakeside town 
are the first to lay claim to their rights
to say, they were going to die anyway.

Where is their mirror?
Maybe they need a poem.

I think of my grandmother 
who one moment in her vanishing mind 
thought she was a 20-year-old dancer again
attempting to gallop down the convalescent halls 
with her male nursing assistant. 
The next minute, she is taking her last shallow breath 
alone
not knowing she is a victim of a pandemic
that no one was allowed to hold her hand
that her fiancé was raging outside the nursing home
blaming me for the doors being locked.

Yes, she would have died anyway
but who is to say it was her time.

Georgina Marie Guardado is the Poet Laureate of Lake County, CA for 2020-2024, the first Mexican-American and youngest to serve in this role for the county. She is a Poets Laureate Fellow with the Academy of American Poets, the Literary and Poetry Out Loud Coordinator for the Lake County Arts Council, and Poet in Residence for The Bloom. She has received support from the Mendocino Coast and Napa Valley Writers’ Conferences, and the Community of Writers Poetry Workshop. Her work has appeared in The Bloom, Noyo Review, Poets.org, and Humble Pie Magazine, and is forthcoming in Gulf Coast Journal and Colossus: Freedom.