Author: Luisa A. Igloria

(a cento)


6

we're almost there, a man says to a child
Go and find solace in sleep.
A kind of silence lit for only a moment.

I love you I love you even in my sleep

        I am a good student. Voted most likely to try

Sunlight fills the empty lot.

Matter teaches me to sing by singing in the emptiness. Yes it does.

Will you stay until the anemones fold back into the land

Surely it is a privilege to approach the end
One window is enough for me

opening another world of greenery and vines

So small, so precious. Something to behold.

If you have grieved you have loved. Twinned,
Singularity in passage.


Line sources:
Jorie Graham, Robert Chiwemba, Marcelo Hernandez
Castillo, Kim Hyesoon, Traci Brimhall, Janice
N. Harrington, Bruce Bond and Dan Beachy-Quick,
Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, Louise Gluck, Forough 
Farrokhzad, Danusha Lameris, Joan Kwon
Glass, Joanna Klink, Marija Knezvevic

(a cento)

5

It has been this way so long

the dead earth candling its sorrows
the way a mother cradles the child

My mind has a slow metabolism, it is slow

What would it be to live a life in which even one petal was unfurled?

The monumentality of this

We come into the world and there it is.

I look at a tree: I see, I sense, I know

      And, when the winged gods finally interfere

how spring undoes the year like a knot

I am tired of feeling guilty; I am tired of running up a tab.
for beauty, I cried, and leaned my elbows on the balcony

I could praise the present tense and begin again.

we're almost there, a man says to a child



Line sources:
Marissa Davis, Gillian Cummings, Joseph
Campana, Rick Barot, Bhanu Kapil, Julia
Guez, Juliana Spahr, Tomaz Salamun, Carey
Van Landingham, Brian Teare, Diana 
Khoi Nguyen, Pere Gimferrer, Steven
Leyva, Jorie Graham

(a cento)

4

                    Every dusk,
the longing.

Out in the sky, a comet flails.

Some thirsts should not be quenched.

You might still have something to say to me.

the stairs feel as if they descend further than they do.

or feel like a room in themselves, an afterthought.

Is it foreboding if
             it's factual

I live in intricacies of the obvious. Into which I permit

The most beautiful thing about being
all by myself, is that nobody is there

One day we will be allowed to exist

it has been this way so long



Line sources:
Ayesha Asad, Isabel Baafi, Rewa Zeinati,
Mebh McGuckian, Stephanie ANderson, Aditi
Machado, Izzy Casey, Jennifer Espinoza,
Marissa Davis

(a cento)

4

                Every dusk,
the longing.


Out in the sky, a comet falls.

Some thirsts should not be quenched.

You might still have something to say to me..

the stairs feel as if they descend further than they do,
or feel like a room in themselves, an afterthought.

Is it foreboding if
            It's factual

I live in intricacies of the obvious. Into which I permit
The most beautiful thing about being
all by myself, is that nobody is there

One day we will be allowed to exist

It has been this way so long



Line sources:
Vievee Francis, Ayesha Asad, Isabelle Baafi, Rewa
Zeinati, Mebh McGuckian, Stephanie Anderson, Aditi 
Machado, Izzy Casey, Jennifer Espinoza, Marissa
Davis

(a cento)

3

closer than secret
the peonies rise up from the soil just to see
        the roots naked, render
What I learned by height—

that's the story

How could I say no to you

at one time we couldn't see
where the water was born

          Yes, of
course I'm afraid of death, but no less so
       my
own life.

But the dream repeats itself. Every dusk,
the longing.



Line sources:
Yalie Saweda Kamara, Sally Wen MAo, Airea
D. Matthews, Kaveh Akbar, Brandy Nalani
mcDougall, Tarfia Faizullah, Vievee Francis

(a cento)


2

                I only
borrowed this dust

pleasure
like a little animal

Scraps of lists, a paper flower

I've got questions of my own but
let's give a little

between here and gone,
a distance of hard words

you cannot dream with your mouth

Did we falter when love took us
the way that soap loves an airborne virus

we are closer
than secret


Line sources:
Stanley Kunitz, Fiona Templeton,
Elisa Gabbert, Adrienne Rich, 
Douglas Kearney, Keith S. Wilson,
Sappho, francine j. harris, Yalie
Saweda Kamara

(a cento)


1

the day could do without
me.

as though time in the heart never started
I dipped my feet into its emptiness
but upon which I lay my skull at night

A hawk flies over summer's body

Dough rising somewhere

The earth saying language and vision
are nothing

                              I
refuse, I refuse.

I worry about lost time
                           I only
borrowed this dust.

*


Line Sources:
Taylor Byas, Bejan Matur, Yaxkin Melchy Ramos,
Cate Marvin, Yiannis Isidorou, Ari Banias,
Sandra Lim, Andrea Cohen, Christian
Gullette, Stanley Kunitz

Four trucks parked on either side of a narrow street.
Electrical repair, plumbing, appliance delivery.

It's trash pickup day, and the city RCV can't seem
to navigate its usual route. It backs up and out
the other end.

Meanwhile, despite little rain, on 49th and several 
intersections, signs of coastal flood warning. 

Morning like a damp washcloth on your temples.

Mist in the air, all day the intermittent 
drizzle. 

Someone sights a line of pelicans 
flying alongside the wind. 

Look up, look up, how their wings
litter the sky.

(a cento)


     The heart is not where
the heart should be

I read a book about microbes and fungi, how these critters
find a way into us, never leave 

What else to know
of loss but how
a man's breast might cool
beneath your fingers

I created more loss where I meant to make less

Here, my one raucous prayer
coaxed from this poor drum,

my double heart

More than enough
is what I keep
getting

We are kin of the same ilk

here you are, a resurrection





Line sources:
Rigoberto Gonzalez; Martha Silano; Paisley Rekdal; 
Dan Beachy-Quick; Patrick Rosal; Lia Purpura; Linda
Hogan; Eleni Sikelianos and Courtney Stephens

If there's something you don't want to do, you find
a way to avoid it. My father, for instance bit the ear

of the man charged with taking him to school. Granted
he was only a boy; and it's mostly cartilage in the ear.

I envy his gumption, even that bit of originality— not
thumb or hand or arm but a leap up, closing in on the ear.

I imagine he ran away through the fields, laughing while
their househelp bellowed on the path, clutching his ear.

When they caught up with him, did he get an earful? 
Did someone drag him home, or to school, by the ear?

What I don't hear from the story he told, I fill in.
Then it's passed around, a little legend learned by ear.

Note that I don't say lie— think of the fleshy outer cup
and how it folds sound. Like jazz, I play ouido, or by ear.