In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Poet Luisa A. Igloria (Poetry Foundation web page, author webpage ) was recently appointed Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia (2020-2022). She is Co-Winner of the 2019 Crab Orchard Open Competition in Poetry for Maps for Migrants and Ghosts (Southern Illinois University Press, September 2020). She is the winner of the 2015 Resurgence Prize (UK), the world’s first major award for ecopoetry, selected by former UK poet laureate Sir Andrew Motion, Alice Oswald, and Jo Shapcott. She is the author of What is Left of Wings, I Ask (2018 Center for the Book Arts Letterpress Chapbook Prize, selected by former US Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey); Bright as Mirrors Left in the Grass (Kudzu House Press eChapbook selection for Spring 2015), Ode to the Heart Smaller than a Pencil Eraser (Utah State University Press, 2014 May Swenson Prize), Night Willow (Phoenicia Publishing, 2014), The Saints of Streets (University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2013), Juan Luna’s Revolver (2009 Ernest Sandeen Prize, University of Notre Dame Press), and nine other books. She is a member of the core faculty of the MFA Creative Writing Program at Old Dominion University which she directed from 2009-2015; she also teaches classes at The Muse Writers’ Center in Norfolk. In 2018, she was the inaugural Glasgow Distinguished Writer in Residence at Washington and Lee University. When she isn’t writing, reading, or teaching, she cooks with her family, knits, hand-binds books, and listens to tango music.
Oh, that’s beautiful.
…often there is no word/ for such intermissions./ …A homing— the way you cup/ the back of my head in your hand…
INTERMISSION
There is no word for such intermissions.
A rendezvous at some theatre wing,
a random counting of all the lost days
when you travelled to parts unknown,
a quick embrace, prolonged gazes heavy
with unspoken desire. O, I know this
was a homing—the way you cupped
the back of my head in your hand—
you are back, but you have not returned,
so, love, while the curtains are down
tilt my face toward the crack of light,
find my hungry mouth, fill my empty
arms before the final act opens, or even
before they send in an old, tired clown.
—Albert B. Casuga
04-28-11