Lindsay Tigue | Campaign Strategy | Glass: A Journal of Poetry

Lindsay Tigue is the author of System of Ghosts, winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize. Her work appears in POETRY, Prairie Schooner, Indiana Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, and other journals. She holds an MFA from Iowa State University and a PhD from the University of Georgia. She lives in Ferndale, Michigan.

Lindsay Tigue's Website

Also by Lindsay Tigue: System of Ghosts Code Histories

January 28, 2026

Lindsay Tigue

Campaign Strategy

I think I’ve become wordless, or unable to read. I leave the refrigerator box in the kitchen for months. I mean this isn’t thriving. I have dreams we’re all en route to pharmacies. It’s just another Tuesday. I’ve forgotten how to write, too. I scoop the cat food from the floor with my hand. I think a lot about New Year’s 2009. The bartender who took my picture, the photo I have of a noise- maker, flip phone, champagne flutes on the bar. I keep thinking one day you’ll call me and describe the contents of your room, It will be quiet as if you’ve lost your voice. My bookmark is the folded up operating instructions for a pulse oximeter. 1. Operation of the product is simple and convenient. 5. Finger and body should not tremble during measuring. For the sake of after, I send and receive texts from strangers. Can we count on you. Reply — Will you help us. Vote. 4. The device has no alarms. 3. Place clamp over finger. One day, I’ll be in strange, unfamiliar rooms, examining the spines of cookbooks. I imagine — out of frame — a bed full of coats. At night I feel for my dog’s ribs. 2 a.m., 3 a.m. For months, I wash my hands until they bleed.

I wrote this poem in early fall during the run up to the 2020 election. During this pre-vaccine pandemic time, I was phonebanking for Democratic candidates, teaching online, and living alone with my pets in a fairly remote area. I didn't write much then, but this poem captures a kind of grief and aloneness I felt — feelings that seemed both resigned and frantic at the same time.