Author: Luisa A. Igloria

Poet Luisa A. Igloria (website) is the 2023 Immigrant Writing Series prize winner for Caulbearer: Poems (due out from Black Lawrence Press in 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

Brood

 

“I have lived on the lip of insanity, wanting to know reasons, knocking on a door. It opens. I’ve been knocking from the inside!” ~ Rumi (trans. Coleman Barks)

 

Didn’t I feel like this at least a few other times before,
didn’t I roam the streets crazed with grief and worry

when you disappeared, taking your off-the-shoulder tops
and halter dresses, your makeup bag, your winter coat,

your paperbacks, leaving only a note taped to the door? Didn’t I
drive looking for any trace of you, whip around at every wisp

of hair disappearing around the corner at the mall? And you,
and you, didn’t my heart lurch through the clattering elevator

of my throat, and plummet down again into my gut with every
phone call that came or didn’t come in the dead of winter,

in the middle of the night, with sobbing at the other end?
Didn’t I press my face against the white sheets newly

laundered, smelling of newborn skin; and scour the tubs
with chlorine bleach, all the while making fevered

supplication to a litany of gods? Yesterday I trimmed back
the roses, watered the mint, poked at the gravelly soil

with the tip of a garden spade and my inadequate knowledge
for growing things. On faith, I try to take what the Sufi poet

says: don’t think the garden loses its ecstasy in winter. It’s quiet,
but the roots are down there riotous. Yes, yes, I see how they

come back, even thrive, though they might nest now in some other
form. But tell me what happens, after the snake has made its way

up the trunk of the dead elm into a den of flickers, emerging later
with a new bulge sleek in its black belly— Except for the wind,

and cries of birds that haven’t learned anything but account
for duty, nothing troubles the branches of the lilac trees.

 

 

In response to Black Snake Moan.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Another Letter to Persephone

Growing up, I did not know the mythical
pomegranate, its leathery hull hiding
sacs of ruby-colored beads— the ones
you slid under your hungry tongue

to suck, forgetting your captor’s warning.
I did not know the stains that reddened
fingers shucking them in the bowl, how
each, merely the size of a broken-off

tooth, gravely bore a full raft
of consequences, unreeling through
the seasons— I did not know that smell
from the underworld of festering

desire, dank and sour-sweet like a dog’s
wet fur or an old wool robe, and how
it could follow you aboveground. Girl
that I was too, what did I know?

Between my teeth I cracked salted
watermelon seeds and blistered
the papery shells of passion fruit,
desperate to quit the ennui

of my listless existence, eager
to dive into the fire of real life,
whatever that might be. Lickety
split, here I am: shored up past

the middle course, the frost
beginning to thicken the hair-roots
at my temples. I have daughters too,
for whom I’ve paid ransoms now

beyond calculating. Does the story
ever finish? or does it merely go on—
summer a flash, then that consuming,
unmapped winter? The eldest daughter

consoles me through a window crackling
to life, holding a dumpling that she
has made, up to the screen: almost close
enough to touch and taste. Another says

she wants to return to a simpler place,
a country where there’s only one example
of everything. A third dreams of birds
in trees and the music she wants to make

from the wood in her arms. And this
morning, my husband, making scrambled eggs
in the kitchen, rushed upstairs bowl in hand,
to show our youngest girl the amazement

of a double yolk. And I, I look on, still
fumbling with charts and keys: daughter-
mother, mother-daughter, swallowing mouthful
after mouthful of glittering seeds.

 

In response to small stone (93).

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Arbor

This entry is part 51 of 55 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Spring 2012

 

You never know what kind of light will do that to you—
break your heart, seize you with inexplicable longing:

you walk into the empty kitchen where all the dishes lie, stacked
on the drain board, dry; where one chipped cup spells longing.

The light is newly rinsed, newly risen, or just fading, but
it doesn’t matter: every hour hides a secret longing.

The colors of fruit are warm and full of life: citrus yellow, apple
green, cherry red. The blue-veined bowl opens its mouth in longing.

Who was it that was supposed to come today? No shadow crossed the walk,
or rang the bell; no face peered in the window to meet you and your longing.

You sit writing lists, checking papers, figuring costs—
By the door, lavender in a pot sends up tiny spears of longing.

At night when everyone has gone into their rooms, the ceilings
hush, the shutters turn, as though against a long-held longing.

What’s on the other side of so much longing? Surely the bird
that lined the nest has found some arbor devoid of longing.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Please

This entry is part 50 of 55 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Spring 2012

 

Do you believe in ghosts?
Before the rain, I snipped the heads
of brittle roses off their stalks,
then dug a hole in the earth for a handful
of herbs. A white moth clung to a trellis
and trembled the grid of wires. When the rain
began to fall in earnest, the wraiths of all
my loves and unresolved afflictions pursued me
indoors, then lay down with me upon the pillows.
They fingered my wrists and called me Darling,
Sweetheart. They told me of green ribbons
of snakes that flattened their ribcages to sail
through endless miles beneath the canopy.
They said, The body is a rivet. I stroked
their napes and whispered into their
orphaned ears, praying they would be kind.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Here I am, small as ever:

smaller than the smallest

blade of emerald or deep pine

or thinnest fringe of blue-

grey foliage edging the park—

A planet climbs the skies

to intercept the larger arc

of sun as though a hand pulled

back the string and tensed the bow:

so small though visible to the naked

eye, its progress through the ether.

And when it’s passed, at head

and nock of the arrow my small

heart trembles still: which is

kindness, which suffering?

The hand that tries to learn

is gesturing still: how all

things, restless, scintillate

—as in a dream.

 

In response to small stones NYC (101) (102).

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Tall Ships

This entry is part 47 of 55 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Spring 2012

 

They come over the water into the harbor
as crowds jostle for a view from the ferry,
tall ships from across the world— enactment
of some yearly ritual of crossing that dates

back to a world when kings and statesmen of new
empires leaned over tentative maps unscrolled on
library tables. Their pale, excited fingers traced
the zig-zag journey across months, across a chain

of inked islands to some vaster expanse where the sun
might, conceivably, never have to set— And their
sailors: how different might they have been, really,
from these young men in optic white from Brazil,

Colombia, Ecuador, standing at close attention at the foot
of each gangplank as tourists nervously find their way
up or down, one foothold at a time? Those conquests
might now go under the name of history: the ones

that launched Magallanes’ ships toward some idea
of the spice islands, so that today, every grocery
store in the northern hemisphere has whole shelves
listing with fenugreek, coriander, and anise,

and salts in shades that range from white to pink
and grey— the ones that gave the archipelago
of my dreams and birth, the name of a Spanish king.
Sailors climb the masts and fly the festive

banners and the crests signifying their own
native origins. And after all, this is still
about territory: the way each boat’s carefully
berthed, the way we move from one to another

as though to test or bring tribute, knowing
the waters that slap against each hull can be more
jealously coveted— for oil, for nutrient life,
for passage to safeguard into that uncertain future.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Flickers

This entry is part 46 of 55 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Spring 2012

 

The 280 pound sophomore says, during a pause in the workshop, I go to school, I go to my part time job, I sleep. Sometimes I play games on my computer. Then I do it all over again.

All morning in the Triangle, the workers are setting up tarp, small platforms, brochure holders. Tall ships will ride into the harbor tomorrow, white sails unfurled.

Out of the blue, the landlady writes to ask what the backyard looks like now that the cypress trees have been cut down.

I snap a photo and hours later, notice that moss has grown between the bricks on the walk. There is no error here.

In a book I come across the words romantic dogs, penned in the margins. The handwriting is unfamiliar.

Dust filters down in the late afternoon sunlight. The blinds need cleaning.

I cannot remember how many funeral parlors there were between the City Hall and the church.

A stand of pampas grass gave me my first paper cut. Green against gravel. And then the surprising streak of blood.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Accomplishment

“The path is not the work. I hope your tracks have grown over; I hope birds ate the crumbs; I hope you will toss it all and not look back….” ~ Annie Dillard

So much work: sribbling and starting over, and scribbling again. Scrubbing and wiping, cleaning, scraping. The moon rises above the tree line. At dawn it disappears, coin plinked back into its porcelain bank. What will it all weigh, at the end of this life? I have a friend who has signed up her daughter for classes since she was three: ballet, tap,
jazz, piano, flute, violin, guitar. Another is fluent in five languages, and is hard at work learning a sixth. What can I be proud of today? I scramble two eggs before 8 am, and through the kitchen windows hear the scree of a bird. Before noon, I read the word “frisson” in a poem and am slightly, inexplicably cheered. Do you hear the train whistle, the neighbors slamming car doors in their driveways? There’s a bill for three years’ worth of water that came through the pipes. I daub scent on my wrists and inhale a border of verbena, flowering in the sun. Before bed, I will hold the detachable chrome rainfall showerhead in my hand and wash my hair in the tub, admire the wealth of each clear droplet swirling away in the drain.

 

In response to Complaint and small stone (98) (99) (100).