Author: Luisa A. Igloria

Poet Luisa A. Igloria (website) is the 2023 Immigrant Writing Series prize winner for Caulbearer: Poems (Black Lawrence Press, 2024), and Co-Winner of the 2019 Crab Orchard Open Competition in Poetry for Maps for Migrants and Ghosts (Southern Illinois University Press, September 2020). She was appointed Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia for 2020-22, and in 2021 received 1 of 23 Poet Laureate Fellowships from the Academy of American Poets and the Mellon Foundation. 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.
Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Atang*

This entry is part 20 of 27 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Autumn 2014

Here is a fingernail slice of bread, a curl
of butter that none of our lips will touch—

a shot glass of soup, hot spoonful of meat,
and one clementine still glowing in its

bright orange skin. Here on one plate
we arrange morse code of small offerings,

make space in our hearts for an envelope
of silence. This is what we try to send

at the same time each year from this
house where we live on the forest floor,

today carpeted with what leaves have shed—
And every now and then, flashes of light

sear through the canopy, bright distractions
from tracking thread through the labyrinth.

*Atang

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

A Carol

How we pined for colder
months that meant relief
at last from summer’s scorching;
and for mornings when we could wake
to the small marvel of seeing
our breath rendered like script,
visible, exhaled into the frosty air
out on the porch— And how we rejoiced
at never-to-be-repeated pleasures,
like having collected the right
number of bottle caps to flatten
on the gravel driveway with a hammer, punch
holes in their hearts with a pick then string them
with a bracelet of wire to make a sound akin
to tambourines— And they were just
the right thing for those dark evenings
before Christmas, our scraggly, snot-nosed band
going from house to house in the neighborhood,
quavering faulty carols learned
from the radio, waiting for the doors
to open and the gifts of coins or sweets,
or better yet to be invited in.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Practice

This entry is part 18 of 27 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Autumn 2014

The first warm day since autumn’s onset—
and sounds of soccer practice drift
across the street: the coach’s whistle,

his animated urging, the familiar
thunk of contact as the ball sails
toward its intended target

to a chorus of cheers. Behind glass
in the building next door, a line of girls,
their supple limbs a sheathed uniform

making a pale pink movement like a wave.
A woman waiting on the bench turns to ask,
And how is your daughter? In this as in all

things, the metronome ticks audibly:
measure against measure, unfaltering,
timed against the pulse that set it there.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

On the interpretation of dreams

No one puts store in dreams now
the way our elders used to do—

Teeth falling out of a mouth
like dice out of a cup: your life

is in gravest danger. Wings of a moth
or a butterfly grazing your cheek: the dead

have remembered something they need to say.
Flying over a sleeping town and touching

the bell-pull in the tower: soon it will
be morning; soon, the night is going.

 

In response to Via Negativa: November dusk.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

To wish

Once I saw a wishbone
that someone had taken
out of the body of a bird—

She rubbed it clean,
stripped it of any
reminder of flesh,

dipped its ends in gold.
Only the hinge that flew
like an arrow in two

directions remained
unvarnished, lacking
in luster— I loved

that part immediately:
I lavished on it my most
extravagant hopes.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Personals

This entry is part 15 of 27 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Autumn 2014

“That’s me in the picture. I’m the diversity.” ~ Morgan Parker

Everyone just loves
those beaches of white
sand, your skin the color

of ripe mangos flecked with
the sun’s old gold— And
everyone says Your people

have such admirable industry!
I’m always amazed at how much
you can do with so little!

By the way there are a few
misplaced commas in your
essay. Did you actually

write it all yourself?
Someday you must explain
to me how a writer from

your country can have
not one or two but four
national awards

to his name. Are you
all right, my co-workers ask
the day after Typhoon Haiyan,

lowered voices tiptoeing
around my cubicle. How are
your family? It must break

your heart. It does, it always
does, though I may not be
personally implicated.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Diminish

This entry is part 14 of 27 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Autumn 2014

So much that’s hidden away
in every room: drawers full,

boxes crammed, each years’
store of all the things

at which the heart at one time
pointed, saying Please,

I need, I want—
And I want to lighten

what weights the skiff,
what slows the quaver in

the sparrow’s song, hurling
itself above the corded wave.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.