Little bytl, little mallet, hammer
steadying to bear down quick
upon the nail, the polished wood along
the length of the barre hardly belies
the place where, surely, your flat edge
bucked the rivet’s tail against the shaft.
And the dancers, you can almost see them
lay their palms for ballast as they hoist
their grand battements into the air, then
hold them there. And their arms, like brachia
of suspended trees, bend to ease sleek heads
toward the hardwood floor. What do you imagine
the afterlife to be? A brace will bind a sail
to make it taut against the wind. Outside,
the tarp of leaves disguises as its shadow;
a bird rigid in the cold clear air skims
between the currents, its sooty wings
outspread as if in annunciation.
—Luisa A. Igloria
03 02 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 __
- Postcard
- Wake
- Despedida de Soltera
- Filament
- “Paired or unpaired, all in the world…”
- Vertices
- Graupel
- Auguries
- Closer
- Menage
- Instructions
- Consonance
- Rosary
- Forager
- Photogram
- [poem temporarily hidden by author]
- Landscape, With Darkness and Hare
- Ghazal of the Dark Water
- Landscape, with Cardinal and Earring
- Intention
- Meditation on a Seam
- One Day, That Room
- Landscape, with Small Flakes and Far-off Bandoneón
- Sentence
- Spun
- Intercession
- Recurrence
- Landscape, with an End and a Beginning
- Waking
- Thaw
- Spell
- Dim Sun, Dim Sum
- Vanishing Point
- 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
- Letter to Affliction
- Letter to Levity
- Thaw
- Letter to Rubbermaid and Tupperware
- Letter to Spam
- Ellipsis
- Nave
- Little Waking Song
- Imminence
- Letter to Water
- Letter to Green
- No Two
- Ghazal of Burgeoning Things
- Deseo
- Petition for Something Other than White
- Letter to the Hungry Ghosts
- Impression, with Rain and Buds