Author: Luisa A. Igloria

Spring is a profusion of white—

flowers of winter solitude, 
thawing on the branch. 

How do I know it's safe to bring 
my loneliness out into the green
air? The stone angel 

by the church door lifts 
a fluted clamshell in his hands.

Water has pooled there, overnight.

Here you are, cast 
once again in the role
of the afflicted— in some

stories, you spin
something coarse into gold.
In others, you count 

the uncountable— a driveway
pooling with gravel, a tray
of mixed seed to separate

by color and size. Mostly 
you have no quarrel with  
the material— grain and rock 

are quiet and uncomplaining.
You think you learn something
— how nothing's truly 

without end, how the impossible
is maybe the poorer cousin
of the infinite, which

being what it is, 
can never be exhausted 
in the first place.

You start and stop and start again, not knowing
where to begin. You try to think of it in terms 
of a conversation, but even then someone 

has to hand over a thread and wait for the signal 
to begin. You try to think of it as a game—
start and stop and start again, not knowing

where to go, afraid meander will turn to blunder.
And you want conversation that means something, 
not conversation with a general "someone"

who could be anyone and not the one you want
to talk to. You stir the substance of memory:  
start and stop and start again, not knowing

what you'll turn up, where it will lead— 
you know it goes deep, down to the water table. 
That's where you seek the roots of conversation.

When you stand at the lip of the well and call,
only your voice bounces back and echoes. Do it again,
start and stop and start again, not knowing but knowing:
in conversation you'd talk with someone besides yourself. 
  

The man who helped prune the branches
of the fig mounded its lopped-off limbs 
next to the recycling bin. That was two 
weeks ago. But now on the tree, the ends 
are putting forth little flames of green, 
signals of a new season of growing. 
No matter and in spite of what we do, 
despite what happens, the hidden mechanism 
of spring reasserts itself— Imagine if night
never turned into day; if the parent outlived
the child, if the sea swallowed then spat
itself out at the very place it began. 
It's said snakes don't feel pain 
when they molt. But sometimes, old injuries, 
infections, or even weather can prevent 
shedding. Over time, stuck in its own skin, 
it might wither away from blindness and 
malnutrition. In solitude, I crave
sweet occupations that can be enjoyed
with others. When I am with others, 
sometimes my spirit turns restless,  
desiring only the intimacy of silence,
the absence of expectation. Perhaps that's
kind of what people mean when they say I 
don't know what to do with myself. 
Either way, we're full of questions. Night 
after night, the skies fill with a language
we are still trying to understand.  

Mother Superior is out again, 
I joke when my greys start to show: 
band barely an eighth of an inch, 
edge of a wimple framing forehead 
and temples. Why don't you just 
let it go, my daughters ask, instead 
of buying box dye— Platinum's trendy 
these days. The average human has 
over a hundred thousand hairs 
or hair follicles, and about five 
million over the entire body. 
I think of long-ago afternoons 
when my mother lay on the couch, 
pushed tweezers into my hands 
and asked me to pluck her strays 
while she drowsed. She'd pay me 
five centavos for every short, 
wiry one, which I lay on upholstery 
fabric like tally marks. She'd part 
my hair in the middle and clip it back 
on each side before I left for school; 
and stroked my head as she read me 
to sleep— I'd stretch like a cat. 
Even the very hairs on your head 
are numbered, says a bible verse. But 
they can also grow back, until the day 
they might begin to thin, or stop al-
together at an indefinite point in time.

Horizon line, vanishing point, convergence—
concepts first learned in perspective drawing 
from Mr. Caja, my first art teacher. I think

he was a clerk in some office during the day.
But on weekends the Belgian nuns and priests
who ran the elementary school on the hill

let him have two drafty rooms above the space 
where children took piano lessons, sometimes
getting their pancake fingers rapped 

with a pencil. Grey-haired and unassuming in his 
plain jacket and dusty slacks, yet he came to life
in that makeshift studio where on rough planks

he set out wooden cylinders, blocks, smooth
round or oval shapes. How does one learn 
to move more surely inside the outline, 

discern the source of light so shadow can be 
filled in properly? Easy to feel confused as lines
and details begin to crowd on paper, lean crooked

or badly measured. I want to figure out 
the world in small spaces, because the too-
real world is swollen if not with elegy, then 

with the detritus of memory. Constant cries, 
demanding love or time or sacrifice. And why 
is it these seem infinitely interchangeable?

But I don't pity the worm whose sights turn outward 
from the soil of its burrowing; nor envy the bird and its 
aerial view. Both think their distance from the horizon

is a kind of destiny or curse until one tries to snatch 
up the other, and the other tunnels deeper into the loam;
and all of us return to the mere but exquisite present.      

Once, buying a pair of kitten-
heeled pumps as a gift for my mother 
(she'd walked past the store window 
more than once to admire them), my
father tucked a peso bill into each 
toe box. Though I didn't quite 
understand how this rendered the gift, 
even if gift, more than just a thing-
transaction, I knew he believed in 
the power of symbols—how they 
scatter potency through life in the guise 
of ordinary things, then transform 
into meaning. Each new year's eve,
he'd wear the same yellow silk
shirt with orange dots, circles
being the sign for wealth and luck.
Every surface could be an augur,
a token of the future, a foreboding:
warts on a finger, the shell 
discarded by a cicada like a coat; 
fish scales refracting light 
like a prism or a disco ball. 

 

  

Parents sometimes say things like I hope
you follow in my footsteps. Or at least, 
my parents did. In my case, the hope was 
law school, because my father was a lawyer 
most of his life; then in the last twelve 
or fifteen, a judge in the local circuit 
court. I was in high school when he started, 
and had learned to type. He was, however, 
no good at it; but didn't think he should
ask any of the law clerks or secretaries 
to type up his statements of decision. And so 
at the end of the day on Fridays, he'd lug home 
one of the office machines, a heavy Remington 
Standard with a gunmetal frame and green keys, 
and ask for my help. I loved the language of 
the law— formal, latinate, nuanced— though I 
didn't always understand everything such words 
could mean: prima facie, incumbent; appellate, 
plea, substantial evidence. We sat at the table
after dinner, my fingers ready to go while he
chewed on the end of a pencil as he reviewed
scribbles on a legal pad. Interviewers often
ask me how it happened that my daughters 
became writers too; and how or if I'd pushed 
them (that always gives me pause). How much
of our propensities— that bright quickening 
to language, those qualities of dark brooding— 
are passed down somehow in the blood? How much 
is nurtured, willed, imposed; and how much accident, 
a hand held out as if to say stop, that's not  
what I intended? And it's true, we look to language
to help us regulate, to keep monarchs from corrupting
their powers, to give expression to both the seething 
and the profound intimacies in our days. Not yet
a perfect arbitration by any means, but I think
there was a time when we said things like justice
and rights and recourse to the law for remedy or
relief, and it felt like we knew what these meant. 
 

If you’ve frequented those cafes where lately the cappuccinos
are topped by swirls resembling dragons from fantasy novels,
you might have heard it said that Godzilla lives in the center
of the earth. And if you happened to order a Reuben sandwich
with a side of pickle, you might have been told that certain
brands of sour chili pickle get their distinct flavor from salt
harvested from those places Godzilla’s feet have touched.
I used to think this was just the kind of story that’s spit
out of gumball machines with no real gumballs— just hollow
rubber spheres that hide little strips of paper on which some
poor soul chained to a basement wall in what used to be a fortune
cookie company is still writing fortunes (or are they cries for help?)
that are not fortunes, but banal sayings like “Life is what you make it”
or “A good heart is the center of the family—” which by the way
is also hogwash, since we all know that mitochondria are
the engines of the cell. but never has any science existed
that could predict whether you’d wind up in a dysfunctional
family or in one that wore identical smiles and color
coordinated clothing for special photo shoots each new
season of the year. But recently I put a gumball into my mouth
and bit down on a claw of bristly dark green jade. It tasted
simultaneously of roasted coconuts and the sea. 

actively proactive for the self

bootstraps are for tying

call a spade a spade, won't you?

don't pay full price but

eat all you can 

first one to finish

gets the girl and a pre-nup

happy is an old-fashioned state of mind

i don't know that there's anything to be

justly miserable about 

keep your own people in check but

love me those noodles and coconut juice

my mama's apple pie and sugar donuts

nobody's business but my business

o say can you see how beaten and

purple the skies at night how un- 

quietly the colors protest but i

rob you blind and still you love me

suspension states are indefinite 

taxes and other lucrative sources of wealth

u better believe the hype or else

vainglorious (alleged) victors?

we don't see ourselves as

xenophobic

you are xenophobic we aim to be

zillionaires