Tell a story, says the writer giving
a lecture, about the first time you think
you might be falling in love. Remember
the smallest details: the waft of tobacco
from the neighbor's porch where he sits
and reads all afternoon through evening,
hidden behind a waterfall of pothos
spilling from a hanging pot. Ceylon
creeper, silver vine, also called
devil's ivy because it is almost
impossible to kill and it stays green
even when kept in the dark. Remember
this and the rusted green of the garden
gate, the way your hand hesitated
before you rang the doorbell, waiting
to see if the boy that walked you home
would do something: push a strand
of hair away from your cheek, move
closer to brush his lips against it...
But nothing will happen here because you
already know this is a town where
everything gets broadcast to the four
winds before it has even happened,
a town where behind every window drape
there is at least one pair of eyes
surveilling the immediate landscape.
Perhaps it is the way imminent action
gets suspended; perhaps it is because all
stories of beginning are full of awkward
silences and hesitation. More than the color
of his eyes or hair or the texture of his
smile, you'll recall more clearly the dark
red spears of bandera española by the gate,
its flowers thrust open in fulfillment.
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.