On a low dusty shelf is a trio
of Matryoshka dolls bought
from a sidewalk vendor in Leningrad,
a stone's throw from the Winter Palace
where a small crowd had gathered around
a young bear in chains: fur matted,
eyes glazed over, likely from some
sedative. Crossing a bridge guarded by four
stone lions, I entered a small bookstore
where I found a copy of The Great Gatsby
in Cyrillic and a blank journal
with a picture on its cover of the Church
of the Savior on Spilled Blood—
its jewel-encrusted onion domes built
after Alexander II was assassinated in 1881,
when a bomb was tossed into his carriage.
In the country where I was born, there are
many sites that pay similar homage
to the memory of some hero or martyr
whose blood trickled onto the street,
whose head landed on a pillow
of cobblestones, whose legs were torn
from their torsos when grenades exploded
during a rally or political debate.
A souvenir is what you take with you
after you've entered a space you might not
have been able to penetrate, had it not been
for the way foreign invasions opened up
faraway countries to the commerce
of the world. A monument is what marks
the scene where bodies falling
swung the pendulum of history,
or made a thousand compass needles
tremble violently awake.
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.