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

Etymology::

to take heart, invigorate, freshen, turn (a sail) by means of a brace:: to make stronger, reinforce, fasten tightly, bind against the wind; to fathom— against the nervous trees and their supply of questions— the lifting fog, the grace of a few thistles by the road. What is the length of a day? Two arms can measure only so much. But obey:: lift your head against the haze of cool blue clouds. Here’s the scope of what might be achieved:: perhaps not so much to bend ends back to their beginnings, as to stroke repeatedly until the needle points back to steady.

 

In response to Morning Porch and small stone (134).

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

The Trials

May all beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering.
~ from The Four Immeasurables

 

And in that tale, like bits of broken teeth,
like gems or brittle tears, a thousand grains

are spilled upon dark ground. Because the soul
looked full upon love’s face, it now must count

and gather, harvest shredded wool among the bramble,
stitch its craft of mortal longings to the impossible.

The stars, as always, withhold commentary.
Only the blossoms along the fence offer

sweet worth, stubborn hope; the thorns,
their pointed epistle: I wound to heal.

 

In response to thus: Night prayer.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Remnant heat in flickering pools

below the horizon— Driving back
once more in the haze of evening,

it seems so simple— The engine
of intention presses forward
into the dark, the road unfurls

like breath. A line of white
reflects the right-hand border.
Steady at the wheel, all curves

taken in increments. At higher
speeds, the windshield stipples
with dusty ochre and green.

 

In response to small stone (132).

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

A hawk circles over the ridge

This entry is part 31 of 47 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Summer 2012

 

higher and higher, until the line it draws
is thinner, fainter— Plumed, taloned, sprung,
targeting; on the way to becoming gone, out
of sight, and finally out of feeling’s range.

Something of that wild heartbeat once burned
its bronze tattoo from the inside of my chest.
See the gouge-marks on leathered flesh?
Evidence it wasn’t all fetters and stays.

But oh that velvet hood is soft and hides so well
the liquid glint in the corner of each eye.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

The hummingbird isn’t the only bird

This entry is part 30 of 47 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Summer 2012

 

with jewel colors. And the dead
cherry still plays host to insect life.
The sign that points the wrong way
isn’t necessarily wrong. You know
what it’s like to pick at the same scab:
play the music in the same way. Don’t get
ahead of yourself— for a change,
let the day worry about its outcomes.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Despite

“… who needs a needle
to thread the seamless labyrinth
of the rose?” ~ D. Bonta

Because they bent
too far across the walk

and scratched your cheek
or arms whenever you passed,

I tied the roses back
with twine; and yet

their flushed and creamy
scent is warmer still,

more than the radial glow
of motion sensor lights.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Thorn.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Tokens

This entry is part 29 of 47 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Summer 2012

 

Scree of some wild creature overhead, wing like a stroke of graphite that flickers just out of sight. On the way back, we drive through soybean fields yellowing from the heat; and whole stands of trees bent like saplings from the last passing storm. A sky the color of beaten copper. Everywhere, some reminder of the fragile. But also what persists; surprises. For miles and miles, not a house or rest stop. And then— Where did those droves of tiny moths come from, riding tiny bits of prayer flags into the wind? Bodies of soft brown. Velvet fuzz of cattails and rushes. Perhaps, this time, the boatman will let us through. We cross the Chowan River just as crickets drill tin can holes into the evening.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Sieves

The hinge between them is slight: a moderate pull with the wrists,
and the chopsticks come apart. Pale, unlacquered: permeable.

She is lonely in that house: cabinets stuffed with old lace and chiffon,
flagstones of cracked shale. Eyelets, keyholes: equally permeable.

Mornings, I’d wake there to things that to me resembled light: clinked spoons,
smell of browned onions in the pan; bread rolls dipped in coffee, permeable.

I remember the sound of her old Singer sewing machine, the cushion,
the orange chalk, the pins. The needle makes surfaces more permeable.

Some things grow even more tenuous with time. The tin roof, never patched,
now leaks rain water into plastic pails. How does one seal what’s permeable?

How to fulfill duty in the midst of difficulty? In the end it seems I always
fall short; regretful I’ve failed, my best intentions pockmarked, permeable.

 

In response to small stone (129).

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Slough

Froth like salt encrusting the edges of the claw-footed bathtub, tendrils of hair on the margins of the beige tile floor— Remember, years ago in that first apartment, coming back from a trip to find a section of pipe sticking out of the wall? The neighbors said they heard the water rushing, saw the tell-tale gush spilling out the crack beneath the front door. Thank goodness there was no carpet— only stains on the wood down the length of the hallway floor. That winter, the child made repeated trips to the third floor balcony, trying to understand Galileo’s experiment with falling bodies. Feather and stone, feather and stone. Then a little swirl of turquoise trapped inside a glass marble, accelerating through the frosty air alongside the neon-yellow tennis ball. The hand-held timer clicked as they hit the ground. When I enter a room I can usually tell who has been there before: unwashed cups in the sink, damp towels on the hook; fingernail clippings more slender than grains of rice, scattered around the trash basket. The musty smell of bodies that might have lain too long in the dark.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Toenail paring.