Author: Luisa A. Igloria

Last night's rain gleams dully in patches
on the tarmac, where planes come and go

like fleets of birds with cargo heavy in
their bellies; and motorized lorries wait

to unload all the luggage we carry 
with us to varied destinations— 

On the flight I took, hundreds of men, 
some young, most in middle age, returning 

from brief visits home to family; now, 
again en route to Doha or Dubai where

they work all year to send remittances
back for their children's education,

house repair, a daughter's wedding,
a funeral, a sister's surgery. Let no one 

say we didn't do whatever it took to lift 
our own from life mired in the quicksands

of debt and penury, from the thousand
ways circumstance passes for fate 

because you can't afford to buy 
a ticket out of your history of

disasters. Waiting at yet another 
terminal for the next connection,

observe how even light laminates 
and crackles; how it oils surfaces 

puddling in the pass of bodies 
more sleekly fueled, rather than 

passing cleanly through. Impediment—
from Latin, impedire: literally meaning

to shackle the feet. Who or what takes 
such pleasure from cleaning a plate 

of glass to sterile transparency, so small  
creatures mistake the gleam for opening,

so the joy of its sighting is swiftly
cut by the ripples their bodies make?
 

Nobody has to love anybody. 
Nobody has to be happy, if they even
know what that means. Since these 
states are so mercurial, is it better
to talk about intention? What is 
the distance between crave
and need? Listen, I'm told I
never really listen. My voice makes
the sound of a small, discarded
husk on a rainforest floor. 

Once I read in a poem a recipe 
for curing yourself of your pain
or your ghosts. The way it was 
written, they seemed synonymous,
or interchangeable. I don't have
dirt or rum or herbs, so I must
improvise. Lifting the lid of
the rice pot, I hold my face
above the rush of steam. 
When my eyes clear, at least
momentarily I can tell again
the difference between the water
grief makes, and water that lies
dispersed on formica and tile.

The neighborhood hilot pours 
warmed coconut oil into her palms
then straddles my back, working her
way down the length of my spine. 
There's a cold weight there, she says:
sleeping in the sacrum or pelvis.
I don't know how to tell her how 
long I'd been curled into myself, 
nautilus asleep in a larger shell. 
So much has pressed down on you all
these years. How do you know what it 
felt like before that? Close your eyes, 
she says. I don't realize when she's 
left or when I've fallen asleep.

I am trying to remember 
the smudge of hills that seemed 
to tower over our town when it 
was small, the trails where pony boys 
led the animals before they were saddled 
for hire, the red fringe of bottlebrush 
that swept your forehead as you passed. 
How have I come to be so unpinned 
from the canopy, jettisoned like a stone 
that now finds burrow in a sandy plain?
In the morning, I palm a handful 
of coffee beans before I grind them.
Sometimes it is almost noon
when the fog finally lifts.

A poem is a fruit
      you grow from seed.

You give it everything
      you think it needs,

but you don't know 
      how long it will take

to ripen, or if it will.
      You are ashamed of all

the things you took,
      or took for granted.

You want to know how
      to make it up, to make

it better. The fruit 
      is patient. You are

no gardener after all. And
      the leaves that fall off

exude such fragrance,
      even when crushed.

that gouges her breast 
to sustain her young.  

In that story, everyone
revives and the wounds
don't prove fatal. 

It isn't always so 
in real life. Shouldn't 
the dark quilt 

of adversity be torn 
apart from everyone
making effort?

for the language of apology, 
the kind that could address 
the enormity of what I cannot 
say but feel and hangs awkwardly 
in the balance of all we do 
or cannot do— Though in the end 
I know my failings are my own, 
including the accidents 
and omissions, the missteps, 
the touch that never fully 
landed, the arrival several 
years late. I never believed 
that one could have it all. 
Never thought myself specially
exempt from certain circumstances. 
I've seen the swift descent 
of change, the departure of 
what we thought we'd fixed
on inviting soil. The only 
constant is how we move 
from station to station,
no longer logging impossible 
miles; only hoping for small 
kindnesses like the sight 
of water or birds. 

 
I can't participate in that game
     where they want you to highlight
           the best of what you did or 
learned in the last ten years, when the past
     year alone has seemed like at least
           a decade. So much accounting 
all the time. And when you don't say anything
     because you're unsure of anything,
           you risk being called a liar, 
or worse, manipulative: a cherry-
     picker. My dearest wish was only
          enough time to read all these 
books. Only enough heart to carry
     what I can for the ones I said
          I'd love until the end.

In this version of me all the ghosts of the past 
have left, having tired of pulling at the corners
of my mouth and squeezing the area just below
my diaphragm. By that time, perhaps no one 
will think to ask why I never seem to smile 
in pictures. By that time, perhaps sleep
will be an ordinary bed with an ordinary pillow
instead of a narrow, unlit cell where I turn
in a frenzy all night. In this version of me,
rain is no longer the only mercurial element
and onions do not make wounds weep. What's left
is some light by which to see I am not the only
one who can't swim, who throws a slight shadow;
who plucks at the strings of broken mandolins.