Dusky aroma of roast, smoky warmth
like tobacco; dented pot percolating
on the stove, or compact machine
hissing softly on the counter.
I used to drink four to five cups
every day, the last one near midnight,
poring over student work and grading.
But lately, I’ve tried to cut back
on my consumption— none on my way
out to work, mornings darker now
every day as the year approaches
winter. Perhaps one cup at noon,
to break the rhythm of thought
and writing, writing and thinking
and reading; sometimes with the radio on,
so then there’s news of what latest calamity
worse than weather is fallen on our heads,
wrought by the terrible agencies at work
in the world. Sometimes the phone rings,
abrupt interruption: demanding I listen
to any number of things I couldn’t have
anticipated. These by themselves are enough
to trigger palpitations, the jittery hand
dropping pens and keys for the umpteenth
time, spilling water on the table.
On weekends I nurse the one mug poured
at breakfast throughout the day, taking it
with me as I clean and put furniture
in order, setting it down as I take
clothes out of the dryer; or by the sink
as I mince garlic and chop onions. It’ll have
gone cold by then— But I drink as if measuring
time with each small bitter mouthful: reminder
of the unutterable that shadows each act
we think is the moment’s most urgent occupation;
of the solitude which the tongue understands,
marked by its flavor most deeply, above all others.
Poet Luisa A. Igloria (website) is the 2023 Immigrant Writing Series prize winner for Caulbearer: Poems (due out from Black Lawrence Press in 2024), and Co-Winner of the 2019 Crab Orchard Open Competition in Poetry for Maps for Migrants and Ghosts (Southern Illinois University Press, September 2020). She was appointed Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia for 2020-22, and in 2021 received 1 of 23 Poet Laureate Fellowships from the Academy of American Poets and the Mellon Foundation. 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.