~ erasure poem based on The First Voyage Round the World;
Antonio Pigafetta, 1874
4.
on the
day of the Eleven Thousand Virgins we found
the peaceful sea surrounded by
mountains covered with snow
within the Bay
where in the night we had a great storm
went further on and found a bay
Amongst
us we thought we saw two ships under
all sail, with ensigns spread Afterwards
inside this strait we found two mouths
one of the two
whom we had taken died
the captain-general sent the ship named Victory
the people
were to place an ensign on the summit
with a letter inside a pot
: and he caused a cross to be set upon a small island
in it we found
a good port good waters, wood all of cedar, fish
there is not in the world a more beautiful country
when we wounded this people
immediately afterwards they died
women cried out and tore their hair
for the love of those we had killed
These people
adore nothing, and
go naked
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.