Author: Luisa A. Igloria

2.

And the future? I want to name
          the trees lining every road
that looks like return. My lists
          thicken with scent, grow
opaque as honey. Tip over the jar
          just to observe how a drop
magnetizes toward a surface. Or
          your tongue.  


  
 

1. 

In the crook of an alley
          we listened to music
through long sessions of rain
          and spooned canned sardines
into the parched lobbies of our mouths.
          The past: a mausoleum
layered like an onion; in the center,
          the tomb of all unmet 
relations. When the moon shone,
          my skin tingled in precise
places as though cupped by heated glass;
          by the round vowels of your messages.

- 1882; after Odilon Redon

Lord, I am an animal among other
animals—We hunt and have 
been hunted. We move at dusk 
among the wreckage of towns,
traversing the slashed throats
of rivers. Every vine 
that swooned over a fence
has burned to smoke or ash.
All the prophets have given
notice. Each morning 
the sky hauls the body 
of the sun out of hiding. 
It rises above the trees,
a severed head put through
its paces. Lord, I can't see
through the clouds forming
an army of funnels. Every road
leads away and nothing returns.
Not even my one good eye
can find that exit sign, neon
glowing around a border of bone.
  

In René Magritte's "The Lovers," a man
      wearing a slightly disheveled suit 
and tie and a woman in a rust-colored dress
      kiss each other through a full  
veil of natural linen or cotton, which many
      clothing ads might describe as breathable—
meaning, woven from fibers which allow
      air to circulate freely, so as to make
feverish climates, say, in the tropics 
      or in summer, more bearable. What 
the lovers wear is far more stylish 
      than those N95 masks now in short 
supply since the first COVID-19 outbreak 
      in Wuhan. As of today there are 
89,198 cases worldwide and still spreading. 
      A Tik Tok video showing people doing the
#footshake instead of hugging or shaking
      hands is popular again. The French
government has urged its citizens to stop
      giving each other la bise, those airy
little poufs of kisses— one, two, on each
      cheek; three, if you're Swiss. But
I've seen no statement on actual French
      kisses, the kind Magritte's lovers
are exchanging. You can feel their ardor
      especially since the wall on one side
has turned the shade of doom; and the other,
      the old-blood color of unhappy endings. 
    

Not only do trees talk 
to each other, we learn; 
they also touch. When they're 
in such proximity, it's sometimes 
possible the bark on the surface 
of their limbs gradually abrades 
so as they grow, their branches, 
trunks, or roots graft to one 
another. The new configurations 
can look a bit grotesque—like twins  
in a carnival, conjoined at the hip 
or belly or nape. Most commonly, 
they're called Marriage Trees 
or Husband and Wife Trees: cedar 
and linden, blackthorn and pine, 
one branch twined around the other 
as if to form possessive half-
embrace. Psychologists say
it's human nature to look
for what's familiar, to place
your trust in someone whose face
seems to resemble your own. 
After more than two decades, 
I wonder if my eyebrows 
have grown fuller rather than
thinner, if they make a dark
double arch that meets 
in the center of my brow, 
like in Frida Kahlo's self-
portraits. I wonder if 
the mole that's always lived
below the corner of my left 
eye has migrated to yours,
or if the width of each
cheek is even as the paper
shape a child cuts out 
with scissors, after first
folding it in half. 

 
 
   


  

We stay up to watch until the end
    of the Oscars because we want 
       Parasite to win. It does, not once 
    but four times! And this triumph
for an Asian film, an Asian director, gives
    me so much pleasure I want to make
       a bowl of ram-don the same as the lady
of the house eats all by herself
    though she told the housekeeper
       it was for her son. It's in that scene
    just before everything turns 
on the blade of a knife
       and the hinge of a sliding door
           leading from the secret hideaway
       in the basement. Her daughter smells
    the sizzled beef and thickened sauce
poured over the noodles, and she comes
    downstairs. She calls the mother 
       selfish for eating it all by herself, 
not even asking anyone 
    in the household (though she means
       herself) if they want some. 
    And that right there is what it is:
there is only so much anyone can take—
    the poor in their flooded hovels, 
       the closeted, compartmentalized:
    everyone playing costly charades 
just so a few can swim in a marbled
    bath streaked with white like a piece
        of wagyu steak. The rest of us
    will write letters in the dark,  
happy to eat from tins of dog 
    food if that means our survival.
        I saw a documentary of an artist
    who boiled and drained ramen noodles
then knitted each strand carefully,
    day after day, in a museum. She  
        wanted to slow down time, raise 
    something cheap and ordinary
almost to the level of high art.

    

They've found a new moon 
     the size of a car, which
for the last three years
     has been orbiting the Earth.
It could be a piece of our
     moon, shorn off by some kind
of impact; more likely, it's
     an asteroid randomly traveling
through space, that got
     ensnared by Earth's gravity
and in that moment became
     a moon. What does it mean 
anyway, to be in relation
     to another? A mother gives
birth to her young then licks
     the vernix off them. She may
eat the afterbirth as well,
     if that means protecting them
from predators drawn by the smell
     of blood. Did this newly
discovered satellite winding  
     disheveled loops that look 
like yarn choose to attach itself
     within our orbit, the way 
we speak today of chosen 
     rather than birth family? 
Sometimes it feels like we are all
     just bodies drifting in space,
the rise and fall of our breath 
     silent as the words we 
long so much to say but can't
     for fear the damages we've
inflicted on each other have made
     a ruin of the universe. 
How will this new moon stay
     on this wobbly track, how 
long before it slides off course,
     blinking in faint goodbye?


 

here you are, showing us
the shape of a horizon 
which gathers all 
the lands on this earth 
under clouds of locust wing,
and all the waters under 
a spreading mantle of illness.
And dear Future, if a butterfly 
coughs in China, from how far away 
would we hear its cellophane death 
rattle? Once I had a dream 
in which all of us lay down 
side by side on a long avenue 
that stretched from the cliffs 
through the towns and on 
to the sea. If we threw 
our last coins into a fountain, 
would we lose sight of
the terrible estates you've 
conjured out of thin air 
just for us? 

all the stolen words
 like unborn water, all
  the softening fruit 
   that make the branches 
    bend despite themselves.

despite the fences 
 and the ropes, all
  the light that can't
   be kept from finding
    places where hinges

join, where weave
 and weft intersect:
  tiny holes like those
   a needle would make,
    stitching one

panel to another. 
 tightest when 
  nearly invisible: 
   asterisked rows of 
    even perforations.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Gestation.

I, too, want my next poem to be happy;
to use a word like uncanny, but only to mean
mysterious and not unsettling. To make
water or mist or fog not have to stand
for anything except themselves: no 
longer for a sorrow that doesn't lift,
a longing that's never filled.
A shoot I couldn't identify sprang up
beside the flowering citrus in its pot;
its white buds were just about 
to open. Even the leaves exuded 
some trace of their delicate perfume.
I pulled out the intruder and its thin
roots were folded around a little dark
thing like a bead or a chicken heart.
Why did I still feel defeated,
lowering it into the trash?