Author: Luisa A. Igloria

 
Your therapist reminds you that neither fear 
nor hypervigilance are equivalent to devotion. 

Roses in the bowl wilt despite the flower food 
you stirred into the water. Hinges will rust 

from being out in sun and rain, eventually 
making it hard to push open or close 

the gate. But you have a hard time separating 
from scenes of disaster that play constantly 

in your head. Has something terrible happened
if you don't hear from one of your daughters?

Does the silence in the alcove mean your spouse 
has fallen into an irreversible trance? Light leaks

through the blinds. Spores speckle the undersides 
of mushrooms that shoot up overnight after rain.

The moon comes out of hiding, its face gashed
with shadow, puffy from the blunt force of wind. 
 

"I am a little breath that always goes the distance
Longing requires...."     ~ Larry Levis


It is flooding in the south and in the north
and all the islands between, so the rice crops
shed their pearls before any harvest 
and ferry boats topple their load
into the mouth of the bay. This was  
a country with two seasons. But now
there is only one, into which whole towns
disappear, all the way to their church steeples.
When everything we used to know is erased
from the face of the earth, where does our
longing go? As evening fell, when I was a child
I would turn my eyes to the hills, crowned
by two radar dishes and a haunted seminary.
We lived at the bottom of this teacup, and
the world lay somewhere beyond. 
Archimedes discovered that an object
submerged in liquid displaces a volume 
equal to that of itself.  How long 
has it been since we were tipped out, 
since we fell from the rim?  We strain
to hear the sound a pebble makes
bouncing off rock, arriving.

             Well past middle age, I still hear the tide
in my blood rush up on the shore and back 
             to where its pulse begins, and when I close 
my eyes I see a long-legged wading bird 
             step carefully into the water, intent on its goal
just beneath the surface—its whole attitude 
             keyed into the certainty that what it wants
will yield as long as it is quick, as long 
             as its aim is true, as long as the ceiling
we mistake for sky has not yet fallen in—
             and perhaps this a way of looking at 
the world from habit, which is to say, 
             according to beliefs we were taught: 
one day, there will be earth enough yet 
             to inherit; one day, those who mourn will be 
comforted, the wounds of the broken-hearted 
             bound and healed, the dead restored to life,
both love and dread absolved in gentleness.

~ after Larry Levis


I will begin with this cicada shell,
exuvia a dull bronze armor cast 
thinner against the early light. 
Where the body clung to this
form and where it emerged,
there is a split back. Waterproof
chitin yet husk-thin, paper-thin.
I think of all that lies dormant
underground where moles 
build tunnels with no windows,
where warmth and light are rumors
until suddenly the soil, too, rips
its casings open. The gardens, wet
with rain after weeks of near-drought.
The waterspouts garrulous again.
This artifact of long-held desire, 
this proof that there is life after 
a long imprisonment in darkness.

I, too, am still trying to find 
             ways to go on, the courage
to look daily griefs in the face
instead of pretending not to see them.

When I became a mother, I learned
             what it means to always keep one
eye open, my ear cocked for the merest
sound of danger. Even now, with grown

daughters, I still check
             the weather by means of other signs.
Pushing my grocery cart past bins
of shining produce, flowers,

little boxes of temptation right by
              the cash registers, my mind forms
the same questions—are they safe,
are they fed, are they faring 

well enough for the world to not
             destroy them or their joy? In my gut,
hope jostles for space with the acids
of worry as I will my hands not to shake.

On the news this week, it was reported
that we claimed ownership of the moon—

its hammered surface rising over beaches,
schools, parking lots, and detention centers;

its cratered Sea of Tranquility where Apollo 11
touched down and the astronauts left bootprints

that are still there because the moon has no weather
to wash them away. Perhaps someone will also try

to claim ownership of the bees and their gold
cells, the rivers and all their tenants folding silver

light beneath the bridges. Could we claim
ownership of the seas’ republics that predate

our own, the fireflies threading messages
in the dark, the sweetness spilled from honey-

suckle throats on the vine, the fields with too
much fruit because now no hands are there

to harvest them? Could we claim the bright
speckle of salt on the shore, the shoebill stork’s

voice mimicking artillery fire? Orchards before
blossom, seeds before they wake. Hunger

that opens its mouth all day without seeing
how taking is not the same as receiving.

The TV's on in the other room and you hear a talk 
show host ask, Is it possible to have a midlife 
crisis at eighty? There's laughter, so you don't hear 
the guest's answer. Folding underwear in the bedroom, 
you think, Why not? Surely one can be seized even at 
that age by the urge to buy a sports car or motorcycle,
take a lover half their age, quit being the sensible 
grandma and go on an open-ended vacation.
It's not that you want your youth back, or feet 
still smooth and without bunions. But you want
to put down the things you've been carrying so long
without complaint, to hear someone sing the syllables 
of your name instead of the formalities you're known 
by—Ma'am, Dr., Ms., Mrs. If by midlife we mean a place 
where the crease feels sharpest, a place between
everything we've known and everything that's still 
not manifest and therefore a mystery, then there's time 
to learn to tango in Argentina, skydive from a plane, not 
have to be the one to stay behind while everyone else
boards the tour bus. It's perfectly fine to look through
costume changes backstage, pick out something
bold and outrageous for your next entrance.
  

"I shall not lament
the human, not yet." 
                       ~ Dorianne Laux
 

Poor little girl with the golden heart who winds
up working for the rich and heartless, in a house
with a staircase wide enough for egos dressed

in silks and suits: they treat her like she's lower 
than a maid. Beggar or slut, tramp who's wriggled 
her way somehow into their world. Other fledglings 

find their way into her care—the senile grandmother, 
the child who refuses to speak or eat. In the first
episode she finds a way to gain their trust. 

In the next, they're utterly changed, almost 
as radiant as their former selves. Then the music
changes, doors bang open, the mistress's hand

lands on her cheek. We keep watching, though we
know it's all perfectly orchestrated: predictable script, 
the makeup of both villainess and heroine still perfect

after marathon fighting and weeping. They've got 
the tropes and the melodrama. We want to see love
win, see karma find those who wanted to ruin everything 

What do the labels with barcodes mean, affixed
to one corner of each plastic-wrapped tray
gleaming in supermarket freezers? From what
barn and what pasture, from what processing
plant and what ship, through what border
have they come for inspection, in order to be
stacked in a hold? Before landing between two
halves of a bun with a slice of tomato and a frilled
lettuce leaf, what variety of cheap trimmings and cuts
did your hamburger patty subsume? Another day,
another recall— as though it were only a matter
of putting down the fork, pulling the steak or
the slab out from under the gravy and back
to the store. Or throwing away the milk, the eggs,
the berries and avocados, wondering what we’ll
have to live on besides water and air, as clouds
shaped like cows drift through a gingham blue sky.

"The price of kissing is your life." ~ Rumi


You wonder how many times you're allowed 
to pay, knowing you have only one life.

Cooler air after weeks of sweltering. Ants swarm the front
steps, a line of them as ephemeral as your one life. 

Who owns the line of clouds scudding across the horizon,
every anecdotal instant making up your one life?

Crews work overtime during the holiday weekend. How 
to fix a sinkhole that opens up in the middle of your one life?

Your friend recounted her summer job in college, processing
fish in a plant as though that were the purpose of her one life.

Fires and flood, volcanoes waking beneath oceans.
In their aftermath, what becomes of your one life?

Doves call from church towers. Though the world is
ending, you are allowed to wed in your one life.