The angel seated beside the potted jasmine
must have known when they wheeled in
the hospital bed; and the polished wood floor
gleamed like a sheet of water. We are told
the grass surrounding the house had grown tall
and thick, green buffer against the sharp
noises of the street. In one of the bookshelves,
an atlas, a map of the world: every turned
page calling to the soul to bend in, closer.
Soon, a continent assembles into its individual
countries. Islands bob like hearts in the distant
blue, trusting the water. Now the throat
can swallow without straining, the eye blink
fully open in the sun. Here her body lay
in the middle of the room, home port and first
destination; released, now finding her way.
~ in memoriam, Aurora Villaseñor Igloria
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.