Zozobra
And living through violent disorientation
Zozobra: Inquietud, aflicción y congoja del ánimo, que no deja sosegar, o por el riesgo que amenaza, o por el mal que ya se padece.
*Anxiety, distress, and anguish of the mind, which prevents one from finding peace, either because of the threat of impending danger or because of the suffering already being experienced.
Dr. Carlos Alberto writes, “To be an undocumented immigrant in the US is thus to embody zozobra: there is an indeterminacy and uncertainty in being a human being itself.”
Zozobra is a type of violent disorientation. It is in the body.
I watched a video of an ICE agent shoot a woman in the face today. On the news they say that this was inevitable. That it was bound to happen. I am confused by this, hasn’t it been happening? Haven’t we lost children, brown men and women in ICE detention camps? Has this not been the ninth ICE shooting since September? Did they mean a white person would be murdered? Did they mean a U.S. citizen? What do you mean they have been waiting on the death of another person?
Renee Good was murdered by ICE on Wednesday morning. I watched her murder while I was sitting at school pick-up. I was scrolling through instagram when I saw the video and quickly turned my phone off and put it down. I was going to wait, to come back to it. To be able to fully process what I just witnessed. Grief is such a strange thing, the way it begins to fill the limbs until it spreads itself neatly over the body. I watched in the afternoon and cried and cried in the evening. They killed someone before our eyes and are denying it. I wonder too what they must be doing to the brown men, women and children in detention camps where we cannot see them.
I struggle with feeling human. Not because I am numb to the violence against our bodies but because as an immigrant I think more about my body and the way it takes up space in my neighborhood than being a person. I think often about how every move I make feels calculated, surveilled, dangerous. I am disoriented and uncertain all of the time.
… indeterminacy and uncertainty in being a human being itself.
I grieve this over and over again.
Renee Nicole Good was a, “Poet and writer and wife and mom and shitty guitar strummer from Colorado; experiencing Minneapolis, MN.”
Read her award winning poem: “On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs.”
thank you for your words.