“Now if it be true that the living come from the dead,
then our souls must exist in the other world, for if not,
how could they have been born again?”
—Socrates
Here’s sunrise, a stain on the western ridge:
errant strip of color someone has stirred,
some buried memory. In the distance,
a long whistle means a train is gliding
into the station, its zipper pulling away—
tracks from trees, trees from the oily
hemline of hills. Late stars flicker, pin
lights in a dim shop window. Just hours
ago, I wandered the aisles of an all-night
drugstore: in the toy section, old-fashioned
mason jars underneath whose lids thin wires
were bent and rigged to painted tin
butterflies. Pressed, the raised button
on the cover triggered convulsions along the line.
Sound of crinkled foil, sound of wings against
mesh screens. Even the soul could not live
in this simulacrum of air. All night I saw
blue and yellow outlines scissor through
the curtains. All night I tended the jangly pulse
at the base of my sleeping daughter’s throat.
—Luisa A. Igloria
02 15 2011
In response to today’s Morning Porch entry.
OTHER POSTS IN THE SERIES
- Stay
- “Findings”: the missing Morning Porch poems
- Two more Morning Porch poems from Luisa Igloria and a comment on free culture
- What Leaf
- With winter’s gift of unimpeded sight,
- Aubade, with Feathers
- Scherenschnitte
- Solstice
- Heart and Shadow
- “The sudden spasm of wings”
- “Before sight, sound—“
- Four Morning Porch poems
- “Up and down the street, the neighbors…”
- Memento Mori
- “The streets are lined with garbage bins…”
- “Soon the old year must join…”
- Speaking of __
- “For the sun’s approximate blaze…”
- Postcard
- Wake
- Despedida de Soltera
- Filament
- “Paired or unpaired, all in the world…”
- Vertices
- Private: Quicksilver
- Graupel
- Auguries
- Closer
- Menage
- Private: Preludium
- Instructions
- Consonance
- Rosary
- Forager
- Photogram
- [poem temporarily hidden by author]
- Landscape, With Darkness and Hare
- Landscape, with Fake Butterflies and Sick Child
- Ghazal of the Dark Water
- Landscape, with Cardinal and Earring
- Intention
- One Day, That Room
- Landscape, with Small Flakes and Far-off Bandoneón
- Sentence
- Spun
- Intercession
- Recurrence
- Private: Matins
- Landscape, with an End and a Beginning
- Waking
- Thaw
- Spell
- Dim Sun, Dim Sum
- Vanishing Point
- Ghazal of the Open Water
- Monday Landscape, with Clocks Borrowed from Dali
- “Last night’s wet snow…”
- Ephemera
- Landscape, with Water Fountain, Small Clouds and Endless Lyric
- What She Wants
- Landscape, with Mockingbird and Ripe Figs
- Letter to Arrythmia
- Love Poem with Skull and Candy Valentines
- Private: To Flower
- Letter to Affliction
- Letter to Levity
- Thaw
- Private: Little Girding Song
- Letter to Rubbermaid and Tupperware
- Letter to Spam
- Ellipsis
- Nave
- Little Waking Song
- Imminence
- Private: Ghazal of Wild Things
Possibly my favorite so far….fantastic.
Thanks Hannah — you’re the tough act to follow :) Dave just told me you’ve been writing a poem five days every week for the last three years!?! Wow!
This is such a fine poem….to be able to capture it so well is a gift, indeed.
Thanks, Dave and Luisa.
These get better and better. I keep wanting to read them in the pages of a book. |Any chance?
I don’t know, but in the meantime, you could check out some of Luisa’s already published books. I have the two most recent, Trill & Mordent and Juan Luna’s Revolver — both are excellent.
Joe, I’m looking to see if some of these poems composed on TMP can come together with others that I’ve written; and I think I have enough for a book ms. but need to structure and thin and order… I’m hopeful!
Nice catch! And that zipper for the train…really nice the way the length and pulling away works, plus the more old-fashioned kind with metal teeth is conjured, tracklike. Clever.
Thanks Marly! And have you seen those butterfly-in-jar simulacra on the shelves in Walgreens? Saw them while waiting for my daughter’s asthma meds the other night.