Luisa A. Igloria – Via Negativa

Entr’acte

Luisa A. Igloria — Sat, 24 Oct 2026 02:31:38 +0000

In the stillness that follows a great
abandonment, the smallest motifs 
acquire consequence. Once there was
a patch of milkweed where now there is 
raked gravel. The woman in the workshop 
tonight spoke of what she called red doors—
those threshold moments that tick like a lure 
and like a warning, and after you've crossed 
into them you realize there's no returning. 
The scent of spores, of old musk, lines the air. 
How many more calendar squares are left 
in the year? To be cocooned in cold, to slowly 
run out of words. To surrender to a force 
and without the least bit of guile say 
It appears you have won—for now.

The Students are Writing Signs

Luisa A. Igloria — Fri, 23 Oct 2026 02:55:49 +0000

The students put up these signs in front of the building
where yesterday, one of them fell to their death
from the eighth floor.

The signs are lettered using their own hands, fingers
curled around markers.

They tape them up on the glass panes
and you can see every finger smudge.

The signs are unafraid of using words
like suicide instead of incident.

Like accountability. And care, community, humanity.

They are composed on the spot, fueled by feeling,
by anger, by sadness, by fear, by frustration.

Nothing a machine would understand enough
to generate something real.

Something not immediately trying to isolate
and contain.

After: A Zuihitsu

Luisa A. Igloria — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 02:39:56 +0000

I distrust what preaches of progression toward certain resolution. 

It was a blue and gold day. The first of many tinged with the growing colors
of autumn. 

Leftover blue of a wing; a wave, cold and crested by a lone surfboarder. 

A sky that looked almost like memory preserved whole. Almost.

We stood on the periphery, craning our necks upward.

Afterward is not just what or how much might remain, not just 
the message of consolation as repair. 

Sirens moved down the boulevard as trucks and buses moved aside.

It is rumored that there are now only two custodians assigned the cleaning
of one building.

The labor of love is equal to the labor of grief. 
Someone has to climb the ladder.

Coats in the hall closet look like they have kept the shapes of 
shoulders that have long slipped out of them.

There are messages left on office phones that do not ask for a reply.
Messages made entirely of silence, and yet take up time.

Taking inventory sometimes means only fragments remain.
They still matter, beyond any account of their usefulness.

That pause in the weather. Half a sentence carried by wind.
The scent of soap, the trace of oil on a sleeve.

The Baculum

Luisa A. Igloria — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 02:52:36 +0000

can be the longest bone in some
mammals’ bodies—for instance,
the walrus baculum can be over 2
feet long and thus the longest bone
in its entire body. Strangely, as well,
the blue whale—not only the largest
mammal but also considered the largest
animal alive on earth—doesn’t have a penis
bone. During late night TV shows, it’s surprising
how many commercials seemingly target an older
generation of viewers concerned about their blood
pressure, weight gain, fading memory, or erectile
dysfunction. Ads for the latter used to roll out
images of crooked cucumbers and language
overflowing with barely disguised metaphor—
You’re either going to lie down or you’re going
to stand up, or Don’t let being unable to get it up
get you down. In some of the world’s largest
natural history museums, mammal skeletons
have been prepared for display without one,
for reasons of modesty or prudishness.
Elsewhere, collectors whittle them smooth,
might even use the ones from raccoons
as toothpicks. Behind glass, a tray of impressions:
curious bone that’s often not attached to anything,
that just sort of floats in the soft tissue. Dog, fox,
coyote; otter, black bear, badger, mink, skunk.

Apparition

Luisa A. Igloria — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 04:00:00 +0000

As I turned into
       my street tonight, a pair of
small emerald eyes
      for a moment glinted back
and morphed into a raccoon.

Dioramas: Building the Hill Station

Luisa A. Igloria — Sun, 18 Oct 2026 04:00:00 +0000

Later

Luisa A. Igloria — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 04:00:00 +0000

Dioramas: Building the Hill Station

Luisa A. Igloria — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 04:00:00 +0000

7.

Perennial scrutiny of fog 
over the hills. Here, American
officials can dress like they did
"back home" and not stew

in their own sweat, like  
they would in the lowlands:
long, double-breasted frock coats, 
white dress shirts, silk top hats.

A cravat and a stickpin. Wives
in billowing dark linen skirts. Even 
lower level employees wear three-
piece sack suits: boxy 

jacket, waistcoat, slim-cut 
trousers. For Thanksgving, turkeys 
and cranberries shipped from the United 
States are unloaded at the docks 

in Manila, then carried on the backs 
of mules or native porters. Up the muddy 
mountain trails lined with fern, the purr
of buttonquail zigzagging in the grass.

Dioramas: Building the Hill Station

Luisa A. Igloria — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 04:00:00 +0000

6.

Eight beds under thatched roofs.
Three cottages making up the early
sanatorium. A health-restoring station

for convalescing soldiers. OBJECT NUMBER 
12-61-70/10861.1.4380 in Harvard's Peabody 
Museum shows a wraparound porch or veranda, 

houseposts raised at least four feet from the ground 
and cut from rough timber. The print is black and white 
adhered to paperboard, but in the foreground,  

the unmistakable tint of mossy green. Panoramic 
views of the hills, including the one seen in OBJECT 
NUMBER 12-61-70/10861.1.4380 listed as 

Burying ground for Baguio / Igorots of Baguio, Benguet.

Dioramas: Building the Hill Station

Luisa A. Igloria — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 04:06:00 +0000

5.

Chartered City, stamped 
crisply on the diagrammed map. 

Sepia pictures capture the sweep
of the newly assembling zones—

A greenway. Main thoroughfare,
the halls of government. The post

office at one end, the market at 
the other. And branching out, plots 

for residences. On market day, carts 
and baskets piled high with cabbages, 

beans, kamote; bananas, wild rice. 
Sacks of highland coffee. Natives

wearing the novelty of an Americana
over g-strings. Frost in September.