Not from the throat, said Lorca; but a current passing as if from the earth, through the soles of the feet. Sometimes, even the very young are seized by it when they open their mouths to sing; then the voice deepens and colors alongside of trembling guitars. Waterfalls pour unstoppable from dark clefts of rock. Or is it the sound of a heart being rolled up a hill then hurtling down on the other side? I wonder if Sisyphus cried out or sang under his breath as he pushed eternity up to its pinnacle, only for the boulder to drop without pity back to its sandy beginnings— Down in the marketplaces of everyday life, the roosters crow and fish thrash in their baskets. Oxen pull the plow through the earth, which closes its seams almost as soon as they're opened.
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.