Author: Luisa A. Igloria

(La Union, Philippines)


The city of my father's birth
bears the name of the King of Castile 
and Galicia— canonized 419 years after 
his death. I couldn't find any reports 
on miracles he may have performed. But
Ferdinand drove out the Moors and 
expanded these kingdoms for the Church, 
which makes it sound like that kind 
of good work is enough to get you 
sainthood. My father is not a Spaniard, 
and never was nor wanted to become  
a priest. His mother liked to boast 
that she was some part (not pure) 
European— mestiza, india mixed 
with the colonizer's blood. I wonder 
what happened to the house where he 
grew up, windows overlooking streets 
lined with aratiles trees— in summer, 
filled with cotton candy berries, festival 
berries; doves purpling in their shade. 
San Fernando lies in a gold and crystal
casket, in the Cathedral of Seville— 
dry, leathered, but his body 
incorrupt (another test one must pass 
for sainthood). In the northern coastal
town where my father was born, surfers 
and artists who say they're tired 
of big city life have set up 
cafes and studios. Rather than pure 
blood or pedigree, perhaps some 
of them are even there to seek out 
the native in their roots.  

                        No stone
is safe from our probing, no seabed
spared from the sweep 
                      for copper, 
cobalt, nickel, zinc. History abounds 
with pictures of extraction— 
                             Open pits 
tunnelling into the earth, 
ferrous-tinted water  
                     coursing through 
the gorge. Layers of salt crust, lithium 
brine conveyed to evaporation  
                              flats— 
Lithos, the Greek word for stone.
It's light and soft— so soft 
                              that it 
can be cut with a kitchen knife and 
so low in density that it floats 
                                 on water.
It lights up the temples of this world 
and has the power to change 
                            the brain.
Around Hieronymus Bosch's famous
painting, gold-scrolled 
                        letters read:
Master, cut the stone out, fast. Ward off
madness with a scalpel, an amulet, 
                                   a flower bud.
                    

"We look at the world once, in childhood.
The rest is memory."
                      ~ Louise Glück


It's true, everything was undiluted,
intense; often, sudden as a stroke  

left by a blade of grass as you passed, 
but which you were only conscious of 

as a bloom of dried blood inside 
your palm after you arrived 

at the house. Now you really want 
to know what happened that night— 

You were not yet three; all you have 
are fragments: the scumbled memories 

of others. Imagine plates on the table, 
from which your parents have eaten; 

and another for a guest who comes 
each Friday to visit your mother. 

But on this night, this friend has poured 
rat poison into her coffee. Did she wait 

until someone left the room before 
pushing her lips over the edge of this 

well and drink, to the dregs? Every 
aspect of the world comes with a haunting. 

In that interlude between spring and summer, 
for instance— when you walk up the steps, 

a drift of faint fragrance descends 
from trees not even in flower. 

         A tinge     A minim        Something of the smallest

size         In such 

                      increments          the sense 

         of doubt doesn't feel      so overwhelming 

But also can't 
                be completely overruled

         If some days      I can hardly complete 

a thought                      perhaps it's because I can't

bear                   to arrive     at its irrefutable 
conclusion      

            Imagine if you could rewind     outcome

     back to before process         
               
                                     Cajole

a fish 

       
       back into water
                           A bird

                                      into the air

That which constantly recedes into
its background, because by nature it isn't
considered remarkable to observation.

That which is familiar, and thus
might still step lightly outside 
narrowing circles of thought.

Here is a cup and here 
is a saucer, one of a few 
from a set no longer complete. 

You trace the faded garland of ochre
around their rims— pattern that used
to be ubiquitous in many cupboards.

The starting point of every day
is often the everyday: towel on
the bar, ashes on the grate.

The beginnings of phenomenology:
what is the first thing you see
when you open your eyes? 

And yet, I confess I love the rung 
on the ladder that Aristotle calls
the vegetative soul— look at

the simple wonderments of 
proliferation: dirt under your finger-
nails, yeast on a sponge of bread.

A sprig I pluck from a bush 
and set in a jar of water builds a root 
network finer than hair. How does it know?

After the noodle-like camera snakes in, 
          you see that bit of flesh hanging 
like a little grape or teardrop in the back 

          of the throat. Above the smooth
pink walls of this cavern, twin doors leading
          to the ears; and below, the well of

the esophagus. Here, it's positively  
          tropical: an orchid's open mouth. 
But think of the moment after Tereus has had
  
          his way with the girl, and torn out
her tongue. A nightingale and a swallow fly away
         over the roof. Do they wish they were

cormorants standing on the rocks, wings spread out
         to dry? Bright sapphire, inside their bills.

"Rafter of Satin and Roof of Stone-"
                     Emily Dickinson



the days, falling upon each other.

Weighted yet weightless.

You dream of a stage on fire, explosions
just outside the range of vision;
birthday candles that keep re-lighting. 

The future should be on everyone's lips.

Imagine its voice speaking 
from under the bridge, through 
the arms of trees, from milk
cartons tossed into the trash.

If someone keeps stopping
to ask for applause, there will always
be less time for actual speaking.

How fast can you sign a thing
back into actual being?

By actual I mean not mirage.

I mean spring coming back
with more than just softness.

I mean every thing starved 
or thrown overboard or left 
for dead getting up.

Even limping is better 
than complete stupefaction.

At that time I am more
than willing to put my hands 
together, and clap. 

"...to transcribe is just that— to bring a message 
across a threshold" ~ Mary Capello




And in this way, everything is a note—
            fan-shaped siftings of sunlight 

                       in the corner where a woman is talking
       with someone, headphones cancelling out

            the noise in the rest of the room as she
herself takes notes— 

                       The shirtless man jogging in the direction 
       of the bridge, insistent message of heat
 
             traveling from brow to nape to somewhere 
along the middle
               
                       crease of the spine's crumpled envelope—
And isn't language indebted in this way  

       to both the image and to thought? When the leaf 
              in the window bay emerged

                       as one of many along the stalks 
       transferred from some hothouse into a heavy urn, 

did it just then start to stipple its undersides in yellow,
              each dot circled as if in red pencil, or

       wasn't it always quietly transcribing in the dark? 
              Signals proliferate the way a lighthouse blinks, 

its one eye furious in a storm, the way
                        one cry, one blast, gives birth to whole

galaxies— Miles and centuries from the instant,
       are we not among the things still rocking in its wake—
          

"I will surely bless you, and I will surely 
multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven, 
and as the sand that is on the seashore."
                                - Genesis 22: 17



My mother whispered story after story into my ear
at bedtime. In each of them, a king on a sick bed,
in a stupor. The quest to find a cure or break
a spell.

Except for a few images of my childhood home yellowing
in a box, I have nothing left. Either fire ate them,
or water swallowed them whole. 

The pictures persist, though. Cunning shapes 
crocheted into curtains— hearts and deer, lovers
touching hands; flowers massed on the mantel. 

Burned as if with solar flames through a stencil, 
heat magnified to render a wound on wood, cork,
or leather. 

In one tale, the task is to gather: a thousand pearls
from the forest floor, grains flung from a sack. 
A sieve to cup the water as it did when whole.

In another, entire kingdoms need to be roused 
from sleep— the last one to taste honey on her lips
is the one you must kiss.
 
I know that time exists by the radiance it extracts
as it spools: days into each other, days into months,
months into years like brambles. 

And its speed is relative— relative to distance,
to the way you inhabit a moment or want to flee
in search of a new hiding place; or finally,
to the knowledge there is nothing to do but
hold still. 
 

How much can it hold                    in   This body

To be free of blemish                  free of stutter


and limp   Blaze fire                 forged by the god

of cunning                             of craftsmanship


If only there was       a way to seal the perforated 

A bolus to slip under      skin   A tincture bathing


the heart and its retinue           worn down organs  

Unclasped over decades        Asterisms    Necklaces