Author: Luisa A. Igloria

Not this but that, not what crept 
along the ground but perhaps what grew 
on a vine or on a tree. Not what can't be 
peeled or skinned, not what has furrows 
and bumps where pathogens might 
have burrowed and hid. We stand 
in the frigid air of the grocery store, 
unsure of what we can take into 
our bodies, wondering what the next 
recall will be. Now we are suspicious 
of lettuce and kale, spinach embalmed
in plastic clamshells. Rinsing won't be
enough to banish the germs waiting
to breach the body's defenses. Once
inside, they'll sprint unseen through 
its network of tiny roads leading 
to the stomach, the spleen, the heart. 
The apples in the bin wear their brightest 
and waxiest smiles. Cuts of meat gleam 
in their trays, red as berries and marbled 
with fat. Any of them could lodge in our 
throats on the way down, before they
even have a chance to wring us dry.
 

Summer's over; dark begins to come on 
more early. Some nights I wonder, has it always 
been this quiet? Up and down the streets,  
praked cars in their driveways or by the curb. 
Not a flicker of wind going through the arms 
of the crepe myrtle, only humidity pressing
into the center of your brain, holding like
the thumbprint of some heavyset god. 
Not much going on behind windows: 
shades drawn, blinds pulled down. 
Perhaps I'm mistaken—perhaps I only think 
the quiet means something's never coming back.
Moths keep interrogating the porch light—
so many small insistences, against the stance
of something that won't budge. The trash 
bins wait to be returned to the corner 
of the yard beside the browning hydrangeas, 
their mouths agape. I shut them close, then go 
inside and wash my hands. But dark does not yet fall 
like an anvil or a heavy curtain. Sometimes, just as it's 
about to flood the threshold, a small rift opens. 
And then a chorus of frogs, a choir of crickets.

After the floodwaters              rose and covered

the plains          and valleys                    all you could see

along         what used to be          the river's edge —


a cast                of trees shrouded        in nets 

woven       by spiders             who'd climbed upward

and up    to keep             from dying


Acacia      and neem     gnarled sheen

of the tree of heaven        Ghostly in returning

light           and in the soupy heat 


Like smoke           or veils made muddy 

in suspended bridals          Design of panicked 

weaving          that holds           so they've survived

to turn against its user. The treadmill 
fails to warn you of its desire to speed up. 
Because it does, in one spectacular burst. 
Perhaps there's a race it always wanted to win, 
a record to break? It's now or never. You 
were merely practice. You try to hang on 
to the bars, but a great wind sweeps you off 
the rolling hills that only minutes ago 
you were climbing so earnestly—one foot 
after the other, your timer a modest promise 
that all trials are temporary and come to an end.

The piano player begins as the grainy black and white
film starts— A wedding! The hero walks out of the church

with his sweet bride on his arm. The world, though silent,
seems their oyster. They have a house to put together 

(by number, like Ikea) and their love will be the glue 
and the finish. But disaster is a spurned, jealous suitor,

switching the plans for doors and windows, tilting
the roof so it sits like a trapezoid opening its mouth

to rain. But our hero is earnest. He believes in ropes
and pulleys, a trusty hammer, a box of nails. He walks

into brick walls, falls from a height, yet he is nothing
but pure conviction. He is unfazed— like a trick 

birthday candle that refuses to be put out,
an optimist with a smacked face and likely

many bruises under the jacket and suspenders. 
They must have an upright piano in the living room! 

A bathtub below a natural skylight—anything
for his love! The train is coming down the tracks 

straight at them, its only thought the decimation of whatever 
is in its path. The girl still believes in him, the way we believe 

goodness is there like a sky which isn't just a painted 
backdrop,  though the world is full of breakable things.




 


  

a crane fly folds  into itself, unmoving in the corner

regulars at the coffee shop, coming in for last-minute orders

rounding shelves stacked with glass noodles, two white boys
check out the Asian candy
 
we lift grocery bags into the trunk: chicken thighs, eggplant, 
okra, onions, potatoes

a woman approaches, points out scratches on the bumper

who even put them there 

she asks if we know who did that

she keeps saying she has a camera on her truck 

we don't respond 

what is that even supposed to mean

Profusion of limbs and leaves as the gardener runs 
a hedge trimmer through the jasmine. He follows 
the porch contours—cutting away what obscures 
the view, leaving what climbs two pillars: what's 
allowed to reach toward the edge of the roof. 
There are no blooms, just this economy of green.
As if proliferation can be ordained, and every 
fragrance bottled as proof. Late summer's boiled 
syrup in the South, alternating with drenching rains. 
My body moves between these two frequencies, 
trying to intuit the measure of what still is possible 
amid the wildness of oceans and the deep sorrow 
of the earth, the glacier rush overcoming everything
in its path as if to remind us of who or what we 
would rush toward in the moment before all is lost.

"...Who could ask for more?
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I'm sixty-four?" ~ The Beatles


Back in Liverpool when he was only 14, Paul
McCartney plunked out a melody that would go on
to become When I'm Sixty-Four. I can't remember
what I was doing when I was 14—perhaps hiding 
in my room reading novels or the latest issue of Jingle 
Songbook, lip syncing to Pers Lab on the radio. 
Now I'm 64, on Thursday I'll turn 65. Evenings,
when I come home, all these moths with glitter
on their wings crowd around the porch light. They 
obviously have a better night life than I do. I still have 
most of my hair. I can't mend a fuse, but I installed 
a bidet all by myself during the pandemic, when everyone 
was worried about toilet paper shortages. In my head 
I'm still in my thirties, much of my life ahead of me. 
Time to sing a few more songs around a bonfire, 
remember what it's like to be young and bright 
and reckless, though by now I have a bed I'm always 
being told I should lie in because I made it. I've lost 
more than one of a pair of earrings, and many of those 
I love are gone. There are days  I feel every bit of hard-
earned knowledge wrapped around my bones—
a kind of armor it won't be easy to shrug off  
even if I tried, but I am still tender enough
to want and ask for more. 

Every night for a week now,
some creature digs through the soil 

in the largest planter on the deck, flinging sod, 
trailing earth. What it's looking for, we're not 

quite sure. But it comes back to the same scene,
bringing the energy of its need like an offering.

Nothing gets left or buried there. Only the traces
of a small frenzy of overturning, which a trowel

gathers up and returns in the morning. Clearly,
whatever it seeks has not been found. This

may not be a kind of love, but it looks like 
devotion. A prayer, which is what it is despite

(or because of) the absence of an answer. 
And me? I've held out my love like a lamp

in loamy darkness, hoping it's bright enough 
to be seen. If I have a face that looks as if

it could not be moved, it's only because 
I'm holding my breath, waiting for what 

has not yet broken through, believing
it should only be a matter of time. 
 
  

Allow yourself time to return to that
borrowed house, your body—

crumpling into itself if not now then
decades ahead. Pull the shades down,

ease into the interregnum between
faith and despair: just a quiet

giving no more to one than to the other.
Harbor no grief that isn’t yours to keep, or

isn’t anyone’s judgment to give. Is it possible to feel
joy without paying for it with coin or

kingdom, without giving up the texture of
laughter pearling in the mouth? Your

many avatars are known to pursue light equally.
Normally shy, they’ve learned hunger is not

opposite to need, nor agency to hesitation.
People stand in loose circles in a room, dis-

quiet soothed by chatter, wine, crackers with cheese.
Remember you’re all here by chance, even if

summoned by invitation. Far away, glacial
torrents sweep through villages, markets, homes.

Under the rubble, how many hearts and singing bowls?
Vast is the universe, and you are in it: rejoicing or

weeping, bending toward what bends to you
exactly as it should, as the light flickers no or maybe or

yes. The body remembers both the sweetness and the ache,
zones of seeming emptiness filled with ordinary awe.