Through the years I’ve received
those white envelopes of disappointment
in the mail: not our girl, not quite
enough, not this time, we wish you luck
in placing elsewhere. And among the audience,
smug in the front row, the ones who’ve come
convinced there’s nothing that could impress.
They leave before evening’s end. They don’t
talk to you, they don’t on principle buy
that kind of book. Cats perched high
on windowsills lick their paws, also
oblivious to it all; or slink around
the alley with other cats. Fruit falls
to the sidewalk from the market bag
of the woman hurrying home before dark.
One or a few of the pears will later bear
a bruise. It’s likely those are the ones
they’ll wash and eat first. They’ll save
the clear-skinned beauties for last, just
for the way they look so perfect in a bowl.
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.
Wishing a black swan to fly high with your “clear-skinned beauties,” Luisa.
Thanks Marly. With black wings stretched as wide as they will go.