Author: Luisa A. Igloria

In Manila, the poor are rattling 
mansion gates and pelting glass 
windows with balls of mud. 

When floodwaters rise, they rise
with the force of imperfect contracts—
Would you build a dike lined with straw

and filched copper wires? Would you 
build an empire with melted chains from 
designer bags? Another hurricane is brewing 

off the coast. Streets turn into canals 
and their currents stir salt into bile, 
bile into spite into storms of hatred.

It is a marvel, how others can look 
upon the world as if without fear.

Tomorrow is a horse waiting at the gate.
Mounted easy, sure of where to go.

Locks spring open: one 
burnished one after another.

If I were the rider, would I
let the horse have its head?

Doubt begins small—sight of a gold
shell left on the side of the tree.

Where does the spirit go after
the body wriggles free of its case?

Between pleasure and trepidation, 
        the tongue's anticipation of sweet-

mess versus the sudden burst of bile. Between
        fight and flight, the crackle of

neurons firing in the brain. But everything else
        in the in-between cannot be only flyover

country. Sometimes you are oblivious even to 
        yourself, until a shadow falls between

you and the light, until unexpected danger
        presses its thin blade against your throat

and whispers Give me everything you've got. 
        People draw their curtains close. Street

lamps flicker. What will you pull out for a weapon
        that was waiting for just this moment?

How will I know when it's time? 
You'll know, say all my friends 

who have retired. Retire, as in 
to pull away; withdraw, retreat—

like armies backing down from 
the assault. Or to move into 

seclusion, leave the noise
of the gathered throng and 

climb into your bed's cool 
sheets instead. When no one 

else can wear your number 
because you're unsurpassed: 

like Michael Jordan's #23 
jersey, and Kareem Abdul-

Jabbar's #33. But if re- means
anew, once more, doesn't retire 

also mean to tire again? The pet
you have to take outside never

seems to tire of pulling at
the leash, or bounding back—  

here he comes again, meaning
throw the ball so I can fetch.  

Many winters, I lived
where there was no winter.
Instead I lived within 
cycles of heat and rain,

which had no names
other than what they were.
Scorched skin or flooded
skin. The mouths 

of downspouts always
open, never resting 
between begging for more
or begging for less.

The smallest diamond
of loss is still a loss—
whether in the sand, or to
the superfluity of water.

It is the year Mattel introduces Barbie's
new boyfriend, Ken; the year a Soviet
cosmonaut is the first human to cross into
outer space. I know that proximity and 
closeness are not the same, and there 
should be no reason for my parents to think 
Harper Lee's receipt of the Pulitzer for To Kill 
a Mockingbird the same year I come into the world 
augurs well for their child's career. Princess 
Diana was born two months before me. That same 
July, Ernest Hemingway, who wrote For Whom 
the Bell Tolls and once tried to walk into 
a spinning propeller, took his own life 
in Idaho. In a magical universe, there are 
no accidents. We already know we don't get 
to live forever. And yet, there are as many
times we stick to the plan as there are when 
we improvise or defer action. The launch 
attempt for the first orbital mission 
was postponed because of cloudy conditions. 
But it finally happened a month later, in '62. 
After a steak-and-eggs breakfast, John Glenn 
climbed into the Friendship 7. From space, 
he reported dust storms and flashes of lightning; 
earth's atmosphere a bright blue band, glowing 
particles he could only describe as fireflies.

Most of the time, we don't know 
the extent of what we can do until 
we do it. Until the hair wound around 
the throat of the instrument tightens 
and has no recourse but to break, 
until the sentries open the metal 
gates themselves to let in the rioting 
crowd. Someone says look at the trees
now afire with the songs of omen birds—
look at the light that slants across
house roofs and knights them as
cathedrals. Water and salt, rock
and clay— these are the things
that made us. We were there 
at the beginning and we will
be there until the end.

We forget the mystery we come from— 

Sheets of quartz and jade where mountain
deities live, their fingers touching

globes of fruit as they pass to make

them sweeter. Forest spirits in the trees, 
conversing late into the night, sometimes

moved to show their faces to the living

as if to remind us they continue to miss
this life. And why would they not? 

Appetite is fed by desire, and desire

by knowing the potency of need. 
And so we let them be. We ask 

their leave when we cross into

the shimmering field— it’s just
there, seemingly out of reach but

really, closer than we think. 

We sit   in spaces    the dark

      Clears for us       Breaking soft

tallow off tapers   As wind    tears through
  
              Our terraced   mountains

Avocado and guava    trees run     out

       Of ammunition      And moan

their    acquiescence     Whatever remains

               Unshredded     in the morning 

joins the new        day’s litany     a prayer
 
        To gods     who fall      asleep  

to the sounds       of their own         anger.
     

- after Linda Gregg


Let osprey return to river.
        Let avocets with their upturned bills.
Let diablotín masquerade as haunters 
               in the dark.
Let yellowlegs fish for ghost 
        crabs, and willets race along the shore. 
Let gannets weave their nests like aunts
               in widows' caps.
There is time yet and it is what we inhabit,
        whether it colors the sky purple 
or mends the broken crags with gold.
               Let the small grasses sleep
at the edge of the road and not fear
        the eye of the storm.