Thank you you’re welcome I know what to do. One pail of bath water to see me through, one ganta of rice. Who made up that saying about beggars and how they have no business or choice? But you come to me wanting to know if I know where to get you the part that your vehicle needs, if I’d know where to get someone who’ll come clean your house wash your clothes eat your table scraps say please excuse me so sorry no problem at all and won’t murder you in your sleep. Yes my people have industry, my people have thrift. They’ve saved every caption, every lie, every fib. You hold forth at table with your bible or ledger, a scale in one hand, your dick in the other, correcting my grammar and adding up sums. How do I measure, sir? How do I do? Oh the knowledges I have mastered because of you.
Poet Luisa A. Igloria (Poetry Foundation web page, author webpage ) 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 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. 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.