LUISA A. IGLORIA
Originally from Baguio, Luisa A. Igloria is now with the faculty of the English Department and the Institute for the Study of Minority Issues at the Old Dominion University in Norfolk Virginia. She has published five books under the pseudonym Maria Luisa A. Carino, and received eleven Palanca Awards since 1984, including its prestigious Hall of Fame distinction. She has been a recipient of numerous grants and honors, among others the 1998 George Kent Prize for Poetry (donated by the poet Gwendolyn Brooks) and the 1998 Illinois Arts Council Award.


DANCING THE GRANDFATHER POEM

The body I carry 

onstage is a poem
 
 

A poem stepping carefully

through fallen shells

shot glass and

sniper fire
 
 

The body I carry

dances its rhythms
 
 

The break of my knee

the line of my arm

the enjambment

of shoulder

and throat—
 
 

The body guards its secrets

like a poem
 
 

The body teaches the wisdom

of restraint
 
 

When no one is looking

it can fling its arms open

or hug itself, rocking
 
 

What it means is joy

or pain, passages lost

to words and finally

unutterable
 
 

A panel of cloth

surrounds the body
 
 

Skin is seamless

and can sing
 
 

When I press my toes

to the ground, vines

clamber to safety

over distant ravines
 
 

I touch 

the places of my birth

I touch knowledge of danger

and death, blood and milk

flowering down summer’s

open breasts
 
 

The body I carry

is vessel and poem
 
 

In the beginning

my hands scatter grain

and gather fruit
 
 

In the end I walk

along the water’s edge,

following you
 
 

Following

the trail of ashes

home

 
for Carlos Angeles and Tessa A. Nebrida
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