Who’ll remember to speak of history
as the woman running away in the night
with only an umbrella and a child
wrapped around her neck under a rain-
coat? And who writes of the way
every window in the avenue closed
like an eye covered with a bandage,
or how whole herds of water buffalo
offered the music of their ribs
to the drought? There are women who,
long into their dotage, cannot bear
to hear certain songs played on the radio
because they’re brought back to the night
bombs started falling and every tip
nicked with moonlight in the garden
looked like bayonets adorned
with the limbs of children. Neighbors tell
of the man who jumped out of bed and through
the window and the next day soldiers
were wearing his clothes. The barbers
shut their doors and turned off the red
and blue swirling lights, hiding their good
blades. Fishermen gathered up their nets
and hid them under the rocks.
Grandmothers choked down tiny
gold earrings. So many stories
lined with fire and drowning at sea.
In every field, find the glint
and jagged teeth of broken zippers:
some of them still open, despite
the blood and rust of years.
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.