at the way the blue chameleon-
woman changes form: one moment
a foreign general at a diplomatic
summit, and then the midget evil
scientist who wants to cleanse the world
of all mutations. Each time she changes,
the camera catches a new corona of colors
framing the irises of her eyes— copper
and metallic grey, hummingbird green,
swift kick of the foot to catch the enemy
in the groin or jaw. He marvels too
at the talons unsheathed from between
the knuckles of the wolf-faced man:
how he winces each time the body’s flesh
is pierced, is bullet-shattered; then heals.
Who is this boy who tried to but could not
save his mother, and so grew up magnetized
by his own story of guilt and loss? Fate
might as well be a train, and our desire
the wish to bend the tracks away from their
set course. And oh, the lonely crippled one
whose gift or curse is to know the pain
and suffering of all— how the myriad sounds
they make are one voice, including his: wanting
to be understood, taken in for what they are.
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.
sitting in his wheelchair, there to fill a quota, with a body broken, crumpled, compact small
as if each bone was denied an extension and each muscle fibre withered away. I hurriedly
found the change in my pocket, delighted at the sound it made hitting the tin bottom. His voice jumping out of his mouth premature gurgled sAnque……he said, as I walked away.
Luisa, HA HA HA! Love this love this love this