Author: Luisa A. Igloria

~ after “Target,” Paula Rego (1995)

There are many like her where I’m from
—thighs solid as trees, calves thick
and ruddy from walking the hills, hitching

a child on one hip while carrying a market
basket or stirring a vegetable stew. She
knows 25 varieties of rice, how recently

coffee beans were roasted by the slight sheen
of oil they leave on her palms. Don’t under-
estimate her or her means: whereas she can take

your measure because she dropped every spare coin
at the end of the day into an empty sardine can.
Who but her could dream of a place of pride

among iridescent scales and slick orbits of fish
guts in the wet market? Or an empire of cloth, rows
of stiff triangles awaiting inspection? Quill, snake

bone, or silver: only these can do or undo her hair.
On each ear, hoops of gold chime their ancient worth.
What she sleeps next to is always of her choosing.

Hand that closed around a broom or the handle
of a blade, the same hand that hummed a cradle.
She loves her favorite dress, scrolled in silver

and blue on white brocade. You may help but
only with the buttons down the back. Now no one
undresses her but her; or looks unless permitted.

~ after Paula Rego, “Dog Woman” (pastel on canvas, 1994)

“… In these pictures every woman’s a dog woman, not downtrodden, but powerful. To be bestial is good. It’s physical. Eating, snarling, all activities to do with sensation are positive. To picture a woman as a dog is utterly believable.” ~ Paula Rego

Where the bull came
inside the girl, where the tree

swallowed her trembling
whole— the earth was merely

a cavity, three letters away
from captivity. Did no one

really hear the cries she made?
But so much is myth or

shorthand for trickery. Catch
a ferry ride, bring

a shiny coin and your knuckle
rings. The boatman smells danger

in your haunches. In the “Asian squat,”
easy holding: poised to spring.

One head of the dog snarling, one baying.
One digging up bones sharp as teeth.

in that house the honey-colored pinewood staircase
with beautiful balusters led up to an unfinished

attic remember bringing a tray of strong sugared
coffee the carpenters working overtime to seal off

the eaves before a storm and they yelled don’t step
on anything but the beams you too late trying to balance

the tray surprise one foot going through a square panel
not meant to bear any weight one little gash on your thigh

after all these years you’re still re-drawing the cloudy
maps that formed across the ceiling you also remember

afternoons learning to separate yolks from whites failing
at beating until no longer runny until at last an orange

chiffon cake baked in a pyrex pot with a spout on its lip
not a cake dish but something to make chowder in maybe

or chicken stew except it was the only thing you owned
that could go into the high heat of the oven everything

you learned you learned from mostly improvising but then
money ran out and the stairs led to empty space yellow

light filtered through dust motes one summer a nest distinct
sounds of the just fledged and how they brought to mind

the word springing did you know in church architecture
it means the point where an arch leaves the pillar or wall

Cold slice of moon silvering the church
steeple and late sunflowers: of course

it’s me, of course I’m all here— don’t
you see how what I am is made of these

remembered fragments? Rusted dowel from
a fence, chipped tile from the house

we sold to the Iranian merchant with a limp.
His youngest son Shaheen sometimes looked

over the living room window into my parents’
yard, where roosters drummed their black

and orange wings against the cages when
they crowed. Wound through with heady scent

from ginger flowers, the shadow vines left
on the wall as grey trompe-l’œil, long

after the plants were cut down: faint screen
no wind could ever ruffle or disarrange. These

things move into the viewfinder: not the crowded
jeepney stops nor the palimpsest of shop signs

and billboards; not the gas station wreathed
in diesel fumes on the other side of the street.

High and low, you look for the thing
you kept that might serve as heirloom

to hand down in a future that isn’t only
coming, but well on its way— You didn’t mean

to hide it so cleverly that now it doesn’t seem
to want to be found. It isn’t much, but the words

I bequeath magnify the nature of the gift—
somewhere among the drawers and felt-lined boxes,

a hope someone will remember how they looked
for the beautiful that could be loved in you.

Remember how in the story, the angel says
Do not be afraid; and how quickly

everything changes for her after that? One moment,
the ordinary world of streets, shops, kitchens,

accounts that always need tending; and the next,
that thick white silence full of portent. Snow

falling, erasing every boundary; the child in her
arms still so young, heavy with sleep and milk.

Beginning every line with the pronoun I at once privileges the subject, and renders it suspect.

The boy so taken with his own beauty leans too far into its string of fatal echoes— I, I, I, I, I. Paper whites on the table, reeking with rot and fragrance.

This is why, for a long time, only the use of third person objective is recommended in formal research and writing.

On the other hand, there is no one here I can speak of with more uncertainty than myself.

It takes years before I learn to properly hold a conversation, including on the telephone; before I don’t cringe and sob under the heated net thrown by a camera’s flash cube.

Fear of photographic permanence is equated in some indigenous cultures with fear of the soul’s capture.

In the afternoons, nuns patrol the classroom, beating time with rulers as we practice handwriting loops— right, upright, left. I like this time, though— the silence of focused observation, intermittent flicker from fluorescent lights; the script of rain sliding down windows.

Who is following behind me on the road as I walk home? I don’t mind my damp hems and collar, wet fingers clutching the umbrella: its handle a vertical stroke ending in a rounded curve. The shortest distance: one that rapidly collapses two points.

I look into the hallway mirror at the reflection I already know will have no extraordinary response, apart from being there.

Such a wealth of hard, glittery stars—
the night so cold and full. Wild horses run
across the sand; in the town, tended gardens
sleep, and the bread maker and his wife under
blankets that must smell like salt and milk.
Fishermen dream of blue scales and bankers
of leathered notes. Only the wind parts
the hair of trees, slipping through oar locks,
cracks in the floor and ceiling. I lie awake
with questions only my ghosts could answer.
Once, I paused at a threshold, before I opened
the green garden gate. Once, I was perfectly
balanced between coming and going. Warm
breeze and honey-colored light. I couldn’t see
yet that dark-suited figure at the end of the road,
patiently waiting; cradling a bouquet in his arms.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Nomad.

Who hasn’t felt regret’s thin blade or its accusatory messages, coming through the streets past sundown like an overworked mail carrier? It’s the season of giving and sending greeting cards and assorted packages— At the post office, lines are long but the workers must ask the HAZMAT question each time, or risk being suspended: Is there anything inside your package that is liquid, fragile, perishable, and potentially hazardous, such as lithium batteries or perfume? What I want to send halfway around the world, I pack in large Balikbayan boxes, paid for by volume and not by weight. Still, there is a limit on what each can contain: how many tins of ham, bags of candy, bars of soap, cans of coffee, tubes of toothpaste, pairs of shoes and boots and bags of cosmetics can fit into one? Years ago, back when I still lived there and we received parcels from overseas, we’d gather around as someone slit open the taped flaps. An aunt now dead had sent black patent Mary Janes and a walking doll for me. Father got neckties and boxes of Whitman’s samplers; mother, sets of bedsheets, a small flask of Chanel No. 5, dollar store pantyhose, and Hills Bros. coffee. Someone asked, is that what America smells like? I was frightened by that doll’s russet hair, silicone skin, jointed limbs. Those glass marble eyes fringed with fake lashes that opened and shut when you tilted its head all the way back.

One last trail of thin
dry stars from the Japanese
maple by the front steps.

Threaded through, fastened together:
with a needle, a safety pin, stitches
that fused the dried and severed knots
once tethering me to each child
that emerged, solid and distinct,
already resisting. Even then,
the lessons of unmooring— I sank
into an exhausted sleep, thighs slick
and unwashed, not knowing whose
hands whisked them away to be cleaned
and weighed, dropped into a labeled
bassinet. Now they are grown or mostly
grown, their mouths saying no or yes
or later, help me, I want, I don’t
know what to do. Out in the yard
raking, I’ve often paused to consider
the endlessness of labor, how there
is always more before the residues
have been used up or gathered. How my
hands can never be enough to contain
what won’t let itself be contained;
and friends say let it be, let it
just compost back into the soil.