Lucia Galloway is author of a book, Venus and Other Losses, and a chapbook collection of poems, Playing Outside. Her poems are also published or forthcoming in such venues as Columbia Poetry Review, Cumberland Poetry Review, Flyway, Gertrude, Her Mark 2007 and 2009, The Lyric, The MacGuffin, Poetry Midwest, Poemeleon, Prism Review, Spillway, and Thema, among others. Awards include the Robert Haiduke Prize from Bread Loaf School of English; first- and second-place prizes in the Dancing Poetry Contest, Artists Embassy International; Honorable Mention in the MacGuffin National Poet Hunt. In 2006 her work was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. A resident of Claremont, California, Lucia co-curates the Friends of the Claremont Library Poetry Readings. She holds the MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University, Los Angeles. She teaches writing to young people for Johns Hopkins CTYOnline.
To quote from her website: “Lucia writes about relationships, history, landscape and art. Her stated goal is to enter into the conversation, ongoing and inevitable, between ourselves and our multiple environments. One poet’s take on what it means to be human in these places, these times is what she offers.”
For
a Woman Washing Vases
Having early found inside her chest an empty place,
She knows to fill with zest each empty space.
As a kid, she wanted to be pushed “higher, higher!”
In the arc of the backyard swing, she’d test the empty space.
While camping in the desert, she lets her dormant muscles
Warm with the rising sun. Stretching is best in empty space.
An isolated butte, outcrop of rock above the level plain
Lures her upward to its crest—an empty space.
Even the streets of her home city offer grist.
The pigeon builds her nest in an empty space.
Vines cling to walls, weeds shoot through cracks,
The vagrant man finds rest in an empty space.
At home she gently washes vases stained by decaying stems
As if to cherish wholeness, not molest the empty space.
This writer, whose name means light, invokes the source
Of radiance, that words may fleetingly invest an empty space.
Having early found inside her chest an empty place,
She knows to fill with zest each empty space.
As a kid, she wanted to be pushed “higher, higher!”
In the arc of the backyard swing, she’d test the empty space.
While camping in the desert, she lets her dormant muscles
Warm with the rising sun. Stretching is best in empty space.
An isolated butte, outcrop of rock above the level plain
Lures her upward to its crest—an empty space.
Even the streets of her home city offer grist.
The pigeon builds her nest in an empty space.
Vines cling to walls, weeds shoot through cracks,
The vagrant man finds rest in an empty space.
At home she gently washes vases stained by decaying stems
As if to cherish wholeness, not molest the empty space.
This writer, whose name means light, invokes the source
Of radiance, that words may fleetingly invest an empty space.
© 2011
Lucia Galloway
Lucia Galloway was a Featured Poet who read her poetry at the May 2011 Second Sunday Poetry Series
Lucia Galloway was a Featured Poet who read her poetry at the May 2011 Second Sunday Poetry Series