*soul, vital energy, spirit (Ilocano)
To write on water, meaning
to understand a thing given form
as easily vanishes with the foam.
For instance, along the coast,
first they flay fish bodies then
string them with straw to hang
in the trees or spread on rooftops.
How is it such care is given
to preservation, meaning to deposit
thinned slivers in a jar of rice
and salt in order to ferment?
In catechism class years ago,
they taught about transubstantiation:
how a body distills from one material
state to another; how after form
is taken away, an essence remains.
How after the skins and pulp of fruit
are boiled, tears crystallize around
the vessel's rim and another body
thick as scent lingers in the room.
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.