They fed me
soups with sediment of bile,
chopped entrails of animals
who bleated under the guava trees
before the torch singed hide
and the glistening knife slit
the pulsing throat.
At night they cradled
me in salt netting The webs
still wet from all the thread
we gathered and wove from our eyes
They did not have to say
watch and learn I smelled
the lessons of their bodies
Soap and water
in their hair Calluses on each finger
Oiled and bent over the stove
they did not fear blood or dirt
Crying out from behind closed
bedroom doors
How could they still be sweetest
in sorrow Shielding the lamp
wick that fluttered in the depths
Whatever happens they said
Burn Don't let it go out
Poet Luisa A. Igloria (Poetry Foundation web page, author webpage ) is Co-Winner of the 2019 Crab Orchard Open Competition in Poetry for her manuscript Maps for Migrants and Ghosts, forthcoming from Southern Illinois University Press in fall 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. 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.