how he was born,
little runtlet, in a large
family. They didn't think
of contraception at that time.
The more hands,
the better for the harvest.
Except he went to school
and kept going.
His sisters doted on him.
He learned one, two, seven,
maybe sixteen languages.
He knew how to flex
the point of a foil and just
lightly graze a shoulder
or the edge of the gorget.
We read about his exploits,
how he medicined the blindness
out of his mother's eyes,
how he wrote letters that made
priests and governors tremble.
We read about his travels,
his lovers, how they all had
the same heart-shaped face,
the same dark curls. Everything
we learned about novels, we
may have first learned from him:
how every town has a philosopher,
a drunk, a woman crazed
with love for her sons;
a snake in a holy tunic,
a cynic ready to burn down
a country that has no love
for his kind. A boatman
taking a secret away
that isn't ready for its time.
Poet Luisa A. Igloria (Poetry Foundation web page, author webpage ) was recently appointed Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia (2020-2022). She is Co-Winner of the 2019 Crab Orchard Open Competition in Poetry for Maps for Migrants and Ghosts (Southern Illinois University Press, September 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; she also teaches classes at The Muse Writers’ Center in Norfolk. 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.