I come from a country where you can look
at the sky and know what kinds of fish
you'll find in the market
I come from a country where one
blind man can lead another
down the sidewalk, both
of their canes tapping
I come from a country where old
newspapers can be exchanged
for compost, which helps the farmers
grow their beans and cabbages
I come from a country where hands
are useful: they plant the rice,
they harvest rice, they pick up steamed
mouthfuls though other hands fight
over land and air and water
I come from a country where
the words save and salvage
can mean abduct and murder,
and assassinations take
the place of drive-by shootings
I come from a country where
the light of fireflies along
the length of an underground river
is brighter than stars, but it is
the same country of long lines,
long waits, long marches that
historically end with death
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.