Sorrow, thick as a tongue
in my mouth tonight, crackling
rind soaked in salt and vinegar;
heavy as a shawl wound tight
around my bodice, pressing
the light of the moon
from my eyes— Why do you
take me to bed with you,
sorrow, yet keep me
from sleep? Why do you
surreptitiously stick me
in the ribs to make me remember
where I’ve hidden away my last
small store of heirlooms,
and force me to give them up
to you? I have forfeited all
the best days of my youth,
all the profit from the work
of my hands. And yet you want
even the network of tiny
flowering veins in the center
of my palm, the leftover futures
that now no gypsy will want
to read. I go on my knees,
weep wounding, invisible
tears— I have no more gifts
but this cloud of rain, blue-
green as vines in my hair.
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.