When I was young, I wore a mask
of acne scars on my face. I carried
a Russian novel under my arm—
Chekhov or Dostoyevsky in English
translation— in order not to have
to make conversation or hold hands.
Before that, answering the phone
could put me in a panic. I don’t know
what it was— genes, hormones, a more
than average predisposition to solitude.
Not that I didn’t crave the golden
ease that others wore like a cape
floating serenely behind them.
Why not go over and join them at
the lunch table? But my tongue
was tied to the roof of my mouth,
and there were no earring-holes yet
on my puffy earlobes. It wouldn’t be
until many years later that I’d learn
to wear jeans, say things like crap or
bullshit, enjoy banter and red lipstick,
come out from under the fog of sadness
that hung over me like the dark
velvet drape around an old-time
photographer’s shoulders, looking
through the lens to focus his subject.
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.