Let Us Anticipate by Eileen R. Tabios

What is an oligarch without ostentation? For many Russian elites, the answer is apparently “nothing.” The sanctions threaten oligarchs with a kind of annihilation, similar to the phenomenon that sociologists describe as “social death.” That is why Russian elites were so quick to gather up their expensive toys as soon as sanctions were announced, and why several have taken the extraordinary step of publicly begging Putin for a quick end to the war.

—from “The Russian Elite Can’t Stand the Sanctions” by Brooke Harrington, The Atlantic, March 5, 2002
 
the impending crisis
for mistresses in London
 
as marble townhomes
become confiscated
 
as credit card limits
eliminate infinity
 
No more shopping
in Hashtag Milano
 
No more partying
in Hashtag SaintTropez
 
No more diamonds
in Hashtag Antwerp
 
“The need to see and be seen 
is a fundamental driver 
 
of human affairs. Oligarchs need 
not just to be but be seen
 
as filthy rich, a need that rises
with economic wealth.” Yachts 
 
to luxury purses to soccer
franchises seen through social 
 
media now help investigators
freeze assets for sanctions
 
Let us not forget—let us
anticipate!—bringing forth
 
those violins smaller
than raised thumbs
 
with their music rousing
the surgically plastered
 
to take off red-heeled shoes
and aim at ducking oligarchs
_______________________
Note: References to hashtagged references and the designated quote are from “The Russian Elite Can’t Stand the Sanctions” by Brooke Harrington, The Atlantic, March 5, 2002

Eileen R. Tabios has released over 60 collections of poetry, fiction, essays, and experimental biographies from publishers in ten countries and cyberspace. Her award-winning body of work includes invention of the hay(na)ku poetic form as well as a first poetry book, Beyond Life Sentences (1998), which received the Philippines’ National Book Award. Publications include the long-form novel DoveLion: A Fairy Tale for Our Times.

Guest editor Denise Low, MFA & Ph.D., was Kansas Poet Laureate 2007-09. She won the Red Mountain Press Editor’s Award for Shadow Light. Other books are Wing (Red Mountain), Casino Bestiary (Spartan), and The Turtle’s Beating Heart: One Family’s Story of Lenape Survival (U. of Nebraska Press), a Hefner Heitz Award finalist. At Haskell Indian Nations University she founded the creative writing program. She is a contributing editor to Essay Daily’s Midwessay project. She lives in California’s Sonoma County on Tsuno Mountain, homeland of Pomo people. www.deniselow.net