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

Niños Inocentes

“By by, lully, lullay…” ~ Coventry Carol

“someone if asked would find nothing remarkable in today’s date…” ~ Dennis O’Driscoll

It’s evening, and raining. The parents have gone inside, the grandparents, the aunts and uncles, the cousins visiting from out of town who remind us not to believe everything that other people say, nor lend out any amount of money on this feast day. We get to work, setting aside torn wrappers, ribbons, boxes for delayed trash pickup Saturday or for recycling next Tuesday. Someone says, as dishes are rinsed and put away, Can you imagine returning gifts you bought for Christmas for your little one who will never walk through the door again? The last thing we ate was a square of yellow cheese, a piece of plain bologna. Nobody touched the carrot cake. Blobs of holly, dark red clusters droop over the neighbor’s fence. Some shingles on the roof will need replacing. The gutter may need to be cleaned. And water runs continuously in the tank of the downstairs toilet. I used to have a number I could call; no matter, tomorrow will serve just as well. My friend on a cruise down the banks of the Rhine emailed to marvel at the Christmas markets and bazaars in town after little town, the wooden toys, the cookies flecked with pepper and warm spice. My son came to me in a dream last night, she wrote; in the dream, he was very young, he was laughing and running down the main street of our home town. I gave chase, caught up with him. I woke breathless, as if it were true and he hasn’t been gone now for 9 long years. When I woke, the light was pale yellow through the window. Dear G, here, where I am, it is long past evening; but even in the dark, there is something musk-tender; a little sad, solemnly sweet.

 

In response to Via Negativa: The slaughter of the innocents.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Dear Life,

This entry is part 3 of 29 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Winter 2012-13

what is wonder but knowledge of that
which we could not ever anticipate?

Light slants toward the west—
its passing brilliance sears
the eyes and leaves us often

breathless— as if for the first time,
every time. And do we know more now
than we did yesterday, or less?

The birds come back to search
for seed cached in the wintry soil:
under the eaves, in groves

of roughened trees— They’ve never
learned; or they are wiser, trusting
they will find their portion.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Hungry

Appetite, oh appetite we’ve fed, you’re hungry all over again—
Baked bread torn into chunks, dipped in a wide-mouthed bowl
coated with olive oil and sweet balsamic vinegar, its name
derived from fragrant plants with gummy oleoresins—
Eggplants roasted till their shiny purple skins
furrow into soft creases and their limp bodies
go into a mix of chopped tomatoes, onions, and cilantro.
How to manage the midnight cravings when there is nothing
in the cupboard except stale crackers and dubious green
jelly, nothing but the crumbs in an old pack of cookies?
Kippers, a hard-boiled egg, thin wheels of red onion.
Latkes with applesauce or sour cream, lox on bagels.
Meatloaf with a side of mashed potatoes. But
nothing quite satisfies the hunger for origins
otherwise known as the hunger for home, than
plates composed again from memory— At Christmas,
queso de bola and plump round fruit on the table,
ruddy with hopes for luck and wealth. Rich
stews flavored with olives, bell peppers, and laurel leaf;
tongue rendered tender in a mushroom sauce. The soul
understands what we hanker for: not just the outward
veneer of all these tastes and textures, but
what they signify: hands that diced and chopped,
extracted trellises of bone from milkfish and carefully
yoked shred skins back to their substance. Feed me, though
zen might be a state of bliss without the hunger pangs.

 

In response to small stone (184).

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Déjà vu

This entry is part 2 of 29 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Winter 2012-13

It was winter then as it is now,
when ghosts emerge with the quick dark.

I wanted to swallow the stars,
dark-pointed and smelling of anise.

I wanted to put away for good those old
angers I thought I’d dispatched.

They flickered, elusive as ever
—though not as powerful.

When next I looked, only small
brown birds picking through gravel.

I’d seen that dirty mirror before, rubbed
its edges with the corner of a sleeve.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

After Apocalypse

This entry is part 1 of 29 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Winter 2012-13

The woodpecker’s red head still shines, and wind or rain or snow will fill the hollows in the coming days. When houses sway on their haunches, the toe and finger joints will creak at first light. In the cold, the muscles along one side of the neck have stiffened. You can turn your head, but with some difficulty. Pain is how you know the world has not in fact ended. The hours lengthen gradually as the earth tilts forward. Day after day you are learning how to trim the wick. The flame of desire is no longer a conflagration, out of control in the woods. Now it burns steady, a little pilot light.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Uncomplicated

Two I called mother— one of them birthed me, two of them raised me. When I look around today, I realize it’s not as uncommon as I once thought.

But: two pairs of arms, two sets of fingers, two hearts, two histories, two lullabies, two tongues— how could it not be complicated?

One threw whole sticks of butter into the pots and mixing bowls: cake, spaghetti sauce, it didn’t matter.

One carefully quartered pieces of chicken, stripped tendon to bone, counting out meals and measuring cups of grain in advance.

One whipped egg whites to perfect foam, picked fish of guts and littered bone.

How many loves, how many heartbreaks, how many triumphs and regrets?

And is it any wonder that today, I prefer savory over sweet, unruliness of bramble, tumble and surprise of wild flowers?

No need to pass the salt and pepper for they have taught me the language of laurel, eucalyptus, ginger, star anise.

And I did not know then but now I do— Because this road is long, they’ve stamped their tinctures of herb and camphor on all the stations of my body; and their fragrant signatures on my brow and on my hands.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Mom at 36.

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Thin fog, as in the corners of a tintype—

This entry is part 40 of 41 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Autumn 2012

where a woman in a long skirt and a thin gauze panuelo poses against a plaster column

where two sisters gracefully incline their heads in opposite directions though the white soldier has his arms around their waists

where a narrow outrigger floats down a river not yet choked with plastic bottles and filth

where groups of women walk down a mountain trail balancing baskets of produce on their dark heads

where the mountains circle their strong dark arms with ink and scars

where these arms that pound the grain could also lift the sky

where a man is holding a scrap of paper he has picked up from a table, and try as I might,
I cannot decipher the message that might have been written there

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Fire-stealer

This entry is part 54 of 54 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Spring 2012

“‘Heaven’—is what I cannot reach!” ~ Emily Dickinson

How can we be happy again, someone asked; how can we ever feel safe. The girl with the striped headband said, We can. I want to hug all those children who survived and tell them, I just know everything will be all right. Some of the people in the group stood under the far end of the dripping awning to smoke. It kept raining and stopping, raining and stopping, so there was nothing to do but go into the mall to watch a movie. When we came out, night had fallen. We crossed the grassy triangle and let ourselves through the kitchen door. We made dinner: garlicky chicken and rice in broth, a four day old loaf of bread split down the middle, buttered, quickly revived under the grill. Enough for everyone to share. Who was Tantalus? I heard someone ask in the course of conversation. There was ambrosia involved. Stolen nectar from the gods, which in my childhood was the name of a sweet rolled up in colored cellophane for the holidays, dense with citrus and dates and nuts. Punishment, always punishment— for giving in to desire and snatching what the body said it wanted, needed, wanted. The mouth being only the first passage. What the branches bore, gold and sweet and heavy— What the water offered to quench the hot little fire in the gut— The question is always: Does anything ever completely satisfy? Run for it, I want to say. Yes, run with that broken-off branch and the purloined sweetmeat, run even now and celebrate the brightest flame you can find to share with others huddled in the dark.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.