Author: Luisa A. Igloria

Mount Vesuvius eruption: Extreme heat 
"turned man's brain to glass" - BBC News 

Before the blanket and surge,
             before the seared 
arms of trees. We would have been 
             face-down in bed, lying 
along the sandbar, wondering 
             at the rattle in the throat
of the sky and the sudden
             radiance, distilling all
we ever knew or remembered.
             Uncovered from sand—obsidian 
sliver, spherulites, feldspar.
      
      
  

of the bees from hives
collapsing from within;
of the mouse-sized dunmarts
and cockatoos, the wallabies
and koalas that firefighters
worked feverishly to save; 
of the towns that woke
as the mouth of a crater
spewed pent-up heat
and ash; of the blood or
of the bowels and their
discharge from the body: 
of the organs made empty 
or void; of the place 
or position one used to hold 
but is now forced to abandon
or give out; of withdrawal
from a place in some
orderly fashion, 
for safety or in
surrender.    

There's an experiment I read about
where they laid a sheet of Plexiglas 

like a bridge between two raised,
solid surfaces, and coaxed babies

to crawl across to the other side. 
Some of them trustingly made

their way; a few were hesitant, 
because they were confused
 
about the drop they perceived 
though their hands told them 

there should be nothing to doubt.
What is space anyway but a checker-

board of moments that light 
can melt or fracture? A staircase

swings around to the other side
of the hall and back down to its

starting point. A hand is a hand
but a pair can turn into wings.
  
  

I saw 
a photograph 
of animals praising 
the rain that finally 
fell on their nearly 
scorched backs— they 
raised up themselves 
on their hind legs 
& their fore-
legs made a kind 
of tent above 
their heads &
no one saw
where they went
afterwards but   
after the fire they
left hoof prints 
in the clay
 

(with a line from Louise Erdrich)



                     All the fables I recall end 
with an illustrated moral: not so much truth, not  
                     beauty nor patience, but more an
idea of choice. For instance, the youngest daughter 
                     could choose to defy the father 
who wants to give her to some beast of a man who has him
                     disturbingly in his thrall, and over
half the village as well. Or she could choose to  
                     end the narrative early, refuse
the role of sacrifice. But the way these stories go, 
                     fairest equals having the least 
freedom to assert a difference in worldview.    
                     Given three gates and the knowledge
that behind one lurks a lion waiting to tear you 
                     heart from limb, and behind the second 
a flaming sword: only one leads to the mythical
                     island where all that the heroine
has lost shall be restored. We should all be so lucky:
                     jinn in a hip pocket, an app
to scan terrain ahead in real time. After weeks of fire,
                     kangaroos praise the rain 
that finally pours from the heavens. Elsewhere: pooled
                     lava gushes from the earth; sulfur
and ashes spew out of a volcano in a crater lake, one of 
                     many in the ring of fire. Who'd
willingly choose disaster, stay behind while
                     neighbors flee to evacuation 
shelters? By an act of God, we mean what's
                     out of the range of our control,
outside further capacity to choose. All my life I've tried to
                     play the parts that I've been given,
seen how to turn accidents into opportunities or salvage
                     quests gone awry. But you know?
The heart can only take so much 
                     repetition without relief. 
The heart wants to sometimes not have to choose, instead
                     surrender; to not pretend to know
all the answers, or where to find them; 
                     to quietly admit there's only
so much it can do, despite the largeness of its desire,
                     unstinting hope, unlimited 
ambition. I read about someone sitting under an apple tree,
                     vivid witness to fruit 
taken past ripeness and falling toward rot in heaps, 
                     wasting their sweetness. 
And yet somehow not one was wasted, not even those
                     exempt from the maw assigned
to eat them whole, take them alive.  
                     You try to be like the fruit: you give
as much as you can in leaf, in flower,
                     zest and bud, before you too are taken.   


                     
 
                     

Before joy, the moments that could be
     but are clearly not yet joy. The pause,
         the windless plain; then, curtain
after curtain saying not this one yet,
     perhaps the next. You might as well
         slow down and learn all this other
rhetoric of passing for. The orator,
     speaker, teacher, master, pulls 
         a line of knotted squares 
from out of the liquid air; look how 
     they ripple, peach and lime-green, 
         burnished gold. You love most 
the moment before or the moment 
     after because it is how you know 
         something bloomed briefly there. 

Everything I said in the throes
of darkness was taken from me,

then turned into a cloth 
of a different weave. Try

as I might, I could not return
the original color of my speech

or thought. I touched the out-
line of my knuckles and felt

with the tip of my tongue
the small gaps between 

my teeth. I wondered how 
others could be so sure

of themselves, how quickly
they could call up different

selves and still say I: one 
wearing the coat of self-

righteous fury, another the robes 
and gavel of a judge; a gallery 

of hairy gods who, out of boredom, 
paper the gates with fireflies. 
 

For days now, geckos and lizards 
       have slid up and down the walls, 
not only at dusk. The air smells 
       of burnt rice, boiled green shoots. 
When the sun comes out, it tints 
       small portraits through any surface 
with holes. Therefore my children 
       are offended when I talk of having 
the sense of running out of time.
       If only the light could carve
amulets on my arms, on my body.
       If only words were not fevers. 

  

Cradle the heads of pineapples
dusted with ash; go from one

statue in the garden to another
to make sure which ones are animals

not completely turned to stone.
Rub the hem of the Virgin's 

robe to see if she can remember
at least two words for blue.

Understand that what burns
in the sky has come up 

through the earth from long
before you. So when your tears 

make tracks on the floured table 
of your cheeks, remember how far

away stars are from the wounds
that made them. Pray for rain,

for the earth to finish rocking.
Sparks flare; wings darken the skies

and the blacksmith sees how, after
the blows, his hands are still shaking.



 

There were no armoires there anymore,
no libraries of dust competing with 
the weave of cotton; no scroll-
backed chairs resting like guests 
at a garden party organized for you 
years ago, to which no child 
had been invited. Water moved 
through the pipes like an unmarried 
aunt taking her time, sweeping 
the rain with a broom fashioned from 
a handful of sticks; every excess
dumped from the heavens must be 
carefully tended. When the sky
filled with sand, it was 
the volcano waking up, finally
able to sing the song stuck 
in its throat for decades. This
is how you know the dead 
still love you. They have not
forgotten. They will take you back.