Always a story
beneath the cold and quiet—
Always a nest being refurbished
under the springhouse eaves—
Always the smell of mud at the edges,
the window finally come unstuck—
Always a gnarl in the fabric
where the fibers knotted—
Always a smooth new trail
tracked around the village of scars
—Luisa A. Igloria
03 20 2011
In response to today’s Morning Porch entry.
Can’t I change my mind, can’t I raise
my eyebrow, can’t I wriggle out of this
one by being charming or cute or contrite?
But really, can’t you change the way you’ve
apparently mapped the rest of the script, all
cuts and white-outs, implacable as a sky
hung like canvas backdrop (so fake, so
obviously without verisimilitude, don’t
you know)? Can’t I go on vacation, can’t I
stay for as long as I want, can’t I sleep in
then decide I’m no longer returning
to you? Can’t I say fuck to structure
and schedules and pearls, can’t I fill
my pockets with stones? Can’t I tell you
it’s you, can’t I take you with me? Can’t I
choose this over that and not burn
for the blame? Can’t I husband and wed
and verb but only belong to myself?
—Luisa A. Igloria
03 22 2011
In response to today’s Morning Porch entry.
She rinses her face and smooths her hair. The street
comes to life, the smells of morning from the coffee bar.
Grab your ankles, press your forehead to your knees.
I used to be able to slide a raised leg along the barre.
Sometimes I’m seized with a longing for what I don’t know.
They indulge me when I sit in the dark at the local bar.
Just when she thought she’d cleared the tests, they called
her back. Don’t you know they’re always raising the bar?
His voice on the phone, now husky with age— how long
since he whispered in my ear in a college bar?
Thirteen cattail heads in the shallows, like swizzle sticks;
water clear as vodka— You’d think this was a poetry bar.
A couple wanders in; a blinged-out dude in cowboy boots. The street
philosopher, red-lipsticked waitress. All this in one night, in a bar.
The days are getting longer. Soon we can sit on the deck, drinks
in hand, watching the sun torch sheets of water beyond the sandbar.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Dear silence, the deeper I fall into your
soundproofed well, the clearer I hear
these arias: beyond the window, a rapid
scrabbling of claws on bark; indoors,
a waterfall miming a moving drape.
The clicking of the laundry cycle, tinkle of
a brass bell in the shade of the dogwood tree.
Has the reaper come, has the harvest
started? Whether or not I am ready, the grain
explodes from its golden husk. And still I crave
the warmth more than the amber in the cup;
and still I am in love with the zest of oranges,
that opening of light crosshatched with blue above.
I’ve kept fingernails, eyelashes, hair; dried stumps
that fell shortly after birth from my daughters’ navels:
the smallest things that tether us tightly to this world.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
From a nest on the mountain, from the skirt
of the nearest pond— something has flown away
in another time. Currents spill their salt
and the earth changes garments. And yes
it is a different season, but somehow the same.
What returns arrows silently through the trees.
Fear does the same things over. And love?
The heart resolves to face, or not to face.
The head says keep, the heart says bend.
What can we do but begin.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
How solemn the breastplates of soot
on the sides of old buildings.
How hard the rind; how the mouth
whittles away to get to its sweet.
How like a rumpled quilt, these overcast skies
above clumps of streaked magnolias.
How the train moves forward on the track,
how its whistle departs in the other direction.
How blind to the rain, these small
prisms of light that fracture at our feet.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
The tree is intricate, a lattice
with many moving parts: sparrows,
robins, a blackbird’s creak.
The ox in the sky pulls the plow.
The archer strings his one good
arrow across the bow. The dipper’s
hinged against the lip of the grassy well.
And I have only my hungry heart, my
wobbly heart: I cart it everywhere I go.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Dear alley bent like an L, shaped like an old
god’s crooked elbow, decorated with clotheslines
heavy with wash— Nearly thirty, I skidded down
your last few meters in reverse, learning to drive
a stick shift and nearly knocking over the island
of trash bins swarming with tribes of blue-black
flies. The neighbors came to their front steps
to heckle and hoot, disturbing the chickens
kept in rusted cages in each yard: the way
they carried on with cackling, you’d think
there was an egg thief in the trees. Almost
a lifetime since I’ve left, but still I see the vivid
verdigris of rusted roofs, the graveled lane
where children sat in empty lading boxes,
then tilted themselves into the wind—
And so have I. Years later, I startle
from sleep or wakeful dream, thinking
the dwarf yellow sun brings artifacts
from that other time: a map, directions
written in code by unfaithful gods.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Whistle of wingbeats skimming the trees,
long skein of road on which we travel—
I don’t want to ask anymore about time
or provisions. I don’t want to think
about the end. The light is milky
as tempera, tentative as flight.
The hydrangea bush we thought
was dead has come back, pushing new
buds of green. At night, the garden
pillows unsaid words and dreams.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Never made new, only
made over— And so at the end
of the tale, the seeker finds
himself in the basement, in the vault
of an ice fort, somewhere in a remote
valley— In the stillness of a room,
a fire burns: old furniture, parts
of other buildings. Dust motes
make hundreds of shadows but only one
vibrates to the sound of his waking
heart. When he finds his voice, the eaves
drop their long-chiseled burdens. The world
is etched with a flurry of wings, the call
of crows; moaning, laughing, weeping.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
