Author: Luisa A. Igloria

“Even now, I don’t know much/ about happiness.” ~ Ada Limón

Numbness in the toe persisted; so, having terrified
myself by looking online at all the worst case
scenarios, I gave in and visited the doctor. She
activated a button on a stainless steel wand and set it
atop my foot, and asked if I could feel the vibration.
Next she asked me to close my eyes as she grasped
my big toe and bent it this way and that: up or down?
down or up? down or sideways? I think I did well,
or she didn’t really say— but sent the tech with vials
and syringes for drawing blood. Make a fist, he said;
and after: relax. I thought, isn’t it always like that,
swinging from one constriction to another? Suspension
in that time of balling up before release. Everything
burrowing into itself until the sense of danger passes.

The last time you weren’t here, no one
turned on the TV for a week or used
the drip coffeemaker. A roll of paper
towel lasted a week. In the quiet
of evenings after supper, I put
the kettle on to boil for tea
and tried to read my book, or wrote
things on the computer while laundry
tumbled in the background. The same
is true tonight. Though I still hear
the chirr of cicadas in the trees
that ring the neighborhood, they seem
quieter now too than at the beginning
of summer. A man can be himself
only so long as he is alone, wrote
Schopenhauer. How often was he
truly by himself, without having
meals brought up to him or laundry
taken away discreetly in the morning?
The truth is, we all crave that sort
of solitude that isn’t merely loneliness
tinged with exhaustion or some kind
of worry. In other words, a woman is
never really alone, even when she’s alone.

In the early hours, it comes to me
there’s a numbness in my big toe at the tip
and along one side, as if on that peninsula
some kind of drift has taken place overnight,
spreading sediment to build a barrier
against feeling. If this is some kind

of warning sent up by the body,
I can’t decode its telegram, can’t
figure out how long it’s taken to arrive;
or why something in that not so distant out-
post should be walling itself off, going
quiet, preparing for undetermined siege.

Three summers ago, my youngest
daughter and I toured the streets of the old
Walled City in Manila. On foot, in the heat,
the same cobblestone streets Indios— brown,
like us— walked to do the bidding of
their masters: from the 16th century until

the hero turned to face the firing squad
before he fell on the dirt in the field
of Bagumbayan; until peasant armies rose up
waving flags, brandishing their muskets,
their balisongs, their iták… We crossed
the courtyard with a fountain, looked up

at ramparts lined with ancient brick and terra
cotta. From the Baluarte de San Diego, sentinels
on patrol might get a clearer southwest facing view
for artillery defense against pirates and foreign
invaders. How many versions of this are there
in myth and history? Before the maps themselves

are inked, the eye calculates space against
only two basic measures: here, and there.
Or, what falls outside the boundaries drawn
thick on parchment, and where tribes cluster
around fires that mark where they believe
they’ve managed to command the dark to fall

away in retreat. With my hands, I chafe my feet
to goad the blood’s circulation, to work up heat.
It’s impossible to intuit all the pulses ticking
on the blurry edges. History tells of sudden
movement— of one shot fired in darkness
across a bridge, and the long war that ensued.

To not have been the homely sister, good
only for sweeping dust from under the stairs

To have the courage to say here
kiss me here and here and here

To drink the silence of afternoons
gratefully in long cold gulps

To surrender the plate, the spoon,
the knife, the fork, after I am done

To keep back one kernel of sweet, one
serif, several bedsprings of light

To carve the likeness of a saint’s hand
after it has been severed from the wrist

A woman winds silk scarves through
the arms of trees by the river. She drapes
brocade over stones as if competing with moss.
At the parish hall, the emcee holds up a taped
box, urging people to place their bids. The child
sitting on a stool in the middle of the stage
is tired and drowsy; with the heels of her patent
leather shoes she kicks at the rungs. Now
the woman wants to weave a garland for the child:
what flowers? She bends toward the rushes
and pulls. She will make her wear it
at the May festival, standing atop a float.
Wave, she commands; smile. Don’t squint.
The sun presses against the hinges of bivalves
as if that way, a process might be hastened;
as if that way they could give up a pearl.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Missing.

Do you remember the exact words in a proverb
about wisdom and all things coming together
miraculously with age? Me neither. But I’m
always overhearing other peoples’ conversations
about this topic: in a pho restaurant,
pinching off purple-veined basil and squeezing
lime into my bowl, I overhear a conversation
about ageism in the next booth— how,
according to the fiftyish woman in a smart
blazer with matching statement necklace,
it’s terrible that nowadays, only the young
and beautiful with perfectly groomed brows,
luminous cheeks and highly developed
social networks get attention. They get
the jobs, promotions, prizes— so unfair
to people in her age demographic who aren’t
valued for the decades of experience they
can bring to the table. I was reminded
of a board meeting of the poetry society,
at which someone said rather bluntly
that it was a very bad idea to throw
early honors at the young, because
they would get a big head before they
even learned to reflect on what wisdom
or the world were really about. I tried
to think of what I was like at sixteen
or eighteen: definitely not sage-like,
definitely still green; married with kids
by twenty-one. Tsk. Still, had anyone
told me I didn’t know anything, I’d
have risen to the occasion, that kind
of reverse ageism. You don’t get to reflect
on what’s thrust upon you: violence and war,
and the closer hurt when you’re defiled,
then disbelieved. The mind shrinks even as
it expands to admit the knowledges visited
on the body. I see it in my young students
too: the beautiful, hurt stories they write.

Who’ll remember to speak of history
as the woman running away in the night
with only an umbrella and a child
wrapped around her neck under a rain-
coat? And who writes of the way
every window in the avenue closed
like an eye covered with a bandage,
or how whole herds of water buffalo
offered the music of their ribs
to the drought? There are women who,
long into their dotage, cannot bear
to hear certain songs played on the radio
because they’re brought back to the night
bombs started falling and every tip
nicked with moonlight in the garden
looked like bayonets adorned
with the limbs of children. Neighbors tell
of the man who jumped out of bed and through
the window and the next day soldiers
were wearing his clothes. The barbers
shut their doors and turned off the red
and blue swirling lights, hiding their good
blades. Fishermen gathered up their nets
and hid them under the rocks.
Grandmothers choked down tiny
gold earrings. So many stories
lined with fire and drowning at sea.
In every field, find the glint
and jagged teeth of broken zippers:
some of them still open, despite
the blood and rust of years.

A dream of the green gate:
the garden grown derelict, hulls
of boats rotting on the porch.

*

Evidence of half-eaten fruit:
what makes the sudden movement
when you peer into the branches?

*

Tell me how something other
than sorrow repeats in three
tongues: Tapat. Natalek. Faithful.

*

How does a memory that’s gone
walking in borrowed coats
return to its owner?

*

After the downpour, a clearing.
But the rain is never enough now
to dispel the heat or haze.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

“The year is full of warnings of its shortness, as is life.” ~ Thoreau

Of the now gone family home, what I remember
is how it was before it became a slightly more

expanded idea, the way some tables are smaller
before the extra leaves unfold to make room

for guests joining the holiday meal. Three small
dark rooms and an apron-sized kitchen, one closet

into which everything was stashed: brooms and dust
pans, tools, the bag of good rice. Pulling on window

sashes, you’d wish the perpetual rain didn’t so surely
seek out all the open seams. Thinking ahead to a time

when the plain wooden door we barred at night
with a beam could finally be replaced, you bought

a pair of ornate Chinese urns scrolled in brass
to flank the entrance. I can’t remember where

they are now, though I remember the year a staircase
was finally built to lead to the hope of an attic

extension— soft pinewood turned on a lathe, curves
that polished to a honey-colored gold under stress

though the steps led to nothing more than rafters
where stray birds nested and the wind blew in

breaths stippled by dust. For that was how we tried
to pin the future’s vague shape to the present:

by trial and error, by moving slowly from one rung
to the next, trying not to look back or down.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Tailor or sailor?.

~ after Hugo Simberg, “Dance on the Quay (Tanssi Sillalla),” 1899

On Saturday nights, in some little town,
someone with a guitar and pick or an accordion

player is there, tapping his foot at the edge
of the quay— And in summertime, when the light

in late afternoon is the color of new butter,
when the weight of the week has not yet dissolved:

who wouldn’t be tempted to step into the arms
of a partner who can twirl and lift you into the air

though his cheeks are hollow and his frame gaunt
as bone? It’s a new feeling to give yourself

so trustingly to a music you’ve never heard this close
or this clearly before. Others too are quietly waiting

their turn to step across the threshold, give
their hand to the one waiting to lead them across.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Ship burial.