Author: Luisa A. Igloria

The last color I remember my father wearing
was yellow. He stood in the doorway the night
before he died, though we did not know it yet
at the time. He wore a terry-cloth bathrobe
wrapped around his frame, hiding how much
weight he’d lost the year before. Things seem 
momentous after they have occurred, rarely before.
Before is mostly anticipation. Sometimes, loss
feels like a long-running rehearsal. No one 
can quite get it right. It was a week we could not
have prepared for: the earth heaved from within
to make streetlights whip over sidewalks, 
silverware fly out of drawers. We gathered
in the empty lot with the neighbors, bracing 
for bricks to fly off chimneys, windows to crack
like sheets of brittle sugar. If I am still writing
about this, it must mean I am still calling on
his ghost. The last thing he ate was a plate 
of scrambled eggs. When we took him
to the hospital, the traffic lights kept
changing to yellow—the color of caution,
the color of waiting between stop and go.
I think about him at the store, my hands
hovering over bouquets with sunflowers.
I think about him when there is news 
of earthquakes somewhere in the world.
I can't separate these disasters from 
the wound I carry, like a lick of late 
sun trapped between glass.

Did I read it somewhere, or did someone tell me
the smell of rosemary is the smell of funerals? That
isn't the reason I asked our handyman to pull up
the dry stand of rosemary in front of the house. 
It had become choked with other growth,
impossible to separate— a pine sapling, coiled 
strands of ivy, plants he referred to as "volunteers."
No one put them deliberately into the soil— 
they arrived by way of seeds tucked in the feathers
of crows, in the breath of wind,  the paws of nocturnal 
animals. Their roots, tangled together underground.
In the same way, we arrived with one or two pieces 
of luggage and now, decades later, have no more
space to stash another pot, another armchair. In less 
than an hour, the flower bed was clear. The clean, 
austere smell of rosemary lingered on our hands 
and wrists— not exactly a memory, not exactly sorrow 
or even regret. Just the reminder that any emptiness, 
according to a law of physics, is momentary, 
  
 

~ after "Pag-ahon" by Elmer Borlongan, 2011

Don’t look for a simple treatise on triumph, here.
These figures pull the weight they’ve been given—
see how it sits, not flimsy like an outrigger,
but weighted as a bulwark is weighted.

Nothing is soft underfoot. Water,
the color and texture of beaten metal.
Overhead, the sky is enigmatic: amalgam
pressing down on each flank of the horizon.

The energy on one side is repeated on the other.
Right and left are two halves of a similar purpose.
If there were noise, one of them makes it
by roaring into the wind. Their bodies, burnished

from years of striving. Years of work make
the task almost possible. Everyone else bends
forward, trying to keep the star in the center
of their bellies from falling into the sea.

*Pag-ahon (pag-Á-hon), Tagalog or Filipino for
rising/the act of rising; recovery, overcoming

My daughter asks if I ever read 
mystery or crime novels when I was younger.

I used to like this literary mystery series 
in which the main character 

is a literature professor in a little college town.
She becomes a de facto consultant for the local 

investigations unit after she helps them solve a case,
reading random fragments as part of a plot

that only begins to make sense 
when seemingly inconsequential details 

begin to take the form of intention. Close
reading, my own college professor called it. 

Meaning that takes shape behind the scenes, more 
quietly than the shock of a body found by a hedge

in the quad, face mangled beyond recognition.. 
Everything connects to some kind of story, 

though understanding takes time. Clues reside 
in throwaway comments, a letter misplaced, 

weird forms of construction that make characters 
sound other than themselves. Everyday conflicts 

leave careless traces. Warnings go unheeded.
Stories of grief date back, just as in the myths 

of old, to ancient grudges. When did you last 
see the missing woman, the murderer? Perhaps 

hiding in plain sight. Perhaps filling a hot bath
with bath salts or adding suspicious meats to a stew.

hides a stone, and every stone
                          hides a weight of unfinished 
sweetness. Does the sky tire 

of being endless, of holding court 
                          in a kingdom of what can't
ever be touched? Storms gather

what seems a century's worth 
                         of water, a deluge poured  
over the ribs of the earth.

Your heart is small as a pebble,
                          the sound of its drum 
drowned out inside a tin pail 

swinging from the shoulders 
                          of a bean curd vendor 
walking the streets at first light.  

~ after "Sky Into Stone," Katrina Bello (2025)

~ after Katrina Bello


First country, last sea— How light 
knits a borderless shawl to throw 

on the backs of hills, across sheaths 
of grain, across cities recovering from

fire or flood or some recent disaster. We too 
are sown and re-sown in the world, as seeds 

pushing through soil,  as water traveling through 
veins, unfazed by mineral shadows. At daybreak, 

fishermen shake scales of silver from their nets. 
At dusk, furtive light burnishes the soles of their feet.  

I want to believe we are cupped like this—held 
like warm knobs of bread cradled in brown paper

and borne through the still sleeping streets, held 
like a quiet clapper inside the cast iron mouth 

of a great bell. What fell out of the skies, 
and from such a great distance? When islands 

quake and leaves shrivel, it is from the hands 
of the Mother. Peel the dry papyrus husk 

of a garlic clove, salt a plate of java plums. Sit 
at the edge of the harbor watching ships

haul their mixed inventory of treasure and waste. 
In time, we will die where we are. First sea, last country. 







  

~ after “It is Rumored: Bloody Point,” Jessica Damen


There is more water now, not less,
from climate change and subsidence.

Ghost-glints on the surface, bright
as bayonets on the ends of muskets.

The past may be rumor,
though much of it is true.

The past roils with the tides, crashing
on rocks at the point of Kent island.

Saltgrass and seagrass still line
the estuaries where ships passed,

bearing their cargo of bodies. Glimpsed through
paper the color of tea, bodies chained

in pairs tumble backward into the depths.
Their bones land on liquid beds, notes

of a dirge that lingers. History is a haunting that winds
through fret-boards of coral and crab pots.

You have to press it onto a scroll and hold it up
to the light, to see what soaks through;

how the colors of blood mute with salt
into indigo and siena but never fade.

~ Lu-pa-ÍN; land, lands (Tagalog/Filipino);
after Katrina Bello

Mud and mangroves, canvases of green.

Paths of dust kicked up by the feet of running 
children. O lumbering water buffalo in the field, 

steered by egrets' white flags. Under the sun, we

all yield to the present. What is it to survive
one season, when the next is uncertain? 

On the city's margins, what we reclaimed 

from the sea eats away at the edges. 
Storms churn their sickles, bent on conquest. 

We gather wet earth to shape into forms.

This is how we are told islands are born. This
is how our bodies learned their color, having been

made porous by the memory of what returns.

~ after “Leaping Into Eel’s Death Colors,” Jessica Damen


From the underworld of dreams and origins,

it cleaves the darkness with its amber breath,
scattering roots, ground beetles, sand, silt.

It only needs an opening. A fissure in the earth,

a wound, a well choked with the residue
of time. We say depth, but we can hardly imagine

the measure of what can’t be fathomed.

Scientists call soil layers horizons—topsoil,
subsoil, and between these, clay, metal, rock.

The sun, rising and setting in caverns.

Whoever drinks the water in these pools,
talks to the dead and the drowned.

The eel hoists its silver spine and gleaming

banners up, and you know you’ll run to meet it
where the currents of life and death dissolve

the salt of all our longings, and the self

can no longer tell green from grave or garden,
and whether it is ending or just beginning.