Author: Luisa A. Igloria

~ after “Leaping Into Eel’s Death Colors,” Jessica Damen


From the underworld of dreams and origins,

it cleaves the darkness with its amber breath,
scattering roots, ground beetles, sand, silt.

It only needs an opening. A fissure in the earth,

a wound, a well choked with the residue
of time. We say depth, but we can hardly imagine

the measure of what can’t be fathomed.

Scientists call soil layers horizons—topsoil,
subsoil, and between these, clay, metal, rock.

The sun, rising and setting in caverns.

Whoever drinks the water in these pools,
talks to the dead and the drowned.

The eel hoists its silver spine and gleaming

banners up, and you know you’ll run to meet it
where the currents of life and death dissolve

the salt of all our longings, and the self

can no longer tell green from grave or garden,
and whether it is ending or just beginning.

Nights when a hurricane bore down,
          we pulled a mattress into the living room.
We stuck candles into the tops of empty
          Coke bottles, caught the wax drippings
and formed them into balls. We were still
         all together then. No one had yet passed 
away, no one had left or shaken the dust 
         off their feet at the threshold. We were 
happy, or I think we were happy, knowing nothing
        about the world except that we believed 
one day, as long as we were good, we'd make
        our fortunes and live out our days eating
apples and grapes or smoking cirarettes 
         like thin people did in the movies. Waiting 
for the endless rain to stop, we ate tinned 
         mackerel poured on mounds of hot white 
rice, then lay back on the pillows as the aunts 
         clicked their way down one wooden 
rosary bead to the next, intoning prayers. None 
         of us had yet left for another country, nor 
written letters about our loneliness on thin 
         blue air mail paper that would arrive with less 
and less frequency. Our houses, which were more 
         than a hundred years old, shivered with every 
blow of wind. Our mothers searched our heads
         for lice before tightly braiding our hair— so
tightly it brought tears to our eyes, but the kind that
         did not yet feel like we'd lost a whole world.

         

A swallowtail waits out a hard rain
on the sill. The neighbor’s dog barks
three times then stops. We pray for signs,
as if gathering them might make it possible
to walk an outcome back from the edge
of imminence or fulfillment. A doctor calls
with news. A child breaks a long silence
so we can finally exhale a long-held breath.
Mostly, we endure from one turning to another—
fire to flood, ripening to rot. Wind pushes heavy
clouds from west to east. How does one influence
a mind that no one can fully enter? How long
have I waited like this for the one on the other
side to open the door and walk through it? Lights
are on in the all-night convenience store and gas
station on the corner. The stars, too, remain lit. As if,
seen or unseen, being there is a kind of intervention.

One corner of the lattice is chewed 
through. Some nocturnal animal, trying 
to force its way beneath the deck where 
it's cooler than anywhere on the surface. 
I call our handyman to measure the lengths
between the wooden supports, so he 
can repair the broken slats and add a gate. 
In the afternoon, we find the deck umbrella 
fallen on its side. No one heard the wind 
making any kind of incursion. And yet.
Rilke said, What fights with us is so great. 
I think he meant overwhelming, more than 
wonderful. Is anything difficult in life, then,
an Angel? Are we supposed to give ourselves up
just like that, to the more powerful force
instead of working in opposition to it?
I want to win, even sometimes, 
over some greater being. To bring all
my fight into that arena which is always
sold to me as worthy. To feel extraordinary
even if not eternal, in that one moment 
deemed most likely impossible, glimpse
a tiny door that opens to the other side. 
 

Beneath the leather 
covering, layers of yarn.
Double braids in red,
a hundred and eight stitches.
Aimed at the catcher and pitched.
 

On Tuesday, there was an extraordinary number
of lightning strikes. 24,453, according to our local
meteorologist. That’s a whole lot of flash-to-bang
calculations. Approximately 16.98 strikes per minute
over the course of the day. A manual count is considered
inaccurate and prone to error, but there are radiowave
and satellite sensors. I saw the maps they produced:
the carpet of stylized zap lines, like the chest emblems of
Shazam and Captain Marvel. All the way from Tappahannock
and Chincoteague down to Williamsburg, Hampton, Norfolk,
Franklin, Ahoskie, and Elizabeth City— Bolts as tightly
overlapping as the keratin scales of the pangolin, one of
the world’s most heavily trafficked wild mammals, thought
to be the source of the coronavirus. And yet, for all
the tightness of this armor, the sense that the smallest
gap is all it takes to electrify the entire field.

I don't speak the language of chiromancy
or the language of astromancy, though I know

both derive divinations by examining the maps
of the hand, or the movements of celestial 

objects through space. The month of my birth 
is September, and aster is the star flower 

assigned to it. An asterism is a group of stars, 
any one of those you might see on the ceiling 

of the night sky as they form the shapes of hunters, 
animals, domestic implements. Bear, water dipper,

belt— Emblems hang on distant limbs in the tree
of heaven. Each hides a heart or a mouth insisting

on the usefulness of light produced by bodies, despite 
the impossibility of knowing if they are still alive.   

After what seemed forever, the mind, that
ancient fish, moved slowly from the depths.

Tired of keeping its own counsel and tired of the long
winter, it remembered the pleasure of summer clouds

scattered like boats across a mirror-lake of blue,
each drifting out of sight. The mind rose to follow

in their wake, skimming through water-weeds
to get to the pale gold light coming through

little gaps above them. How warm it was near
the surface, touching the water’s skin. Stillness

was rest, until the silence became restive, became
coaxing. Until only what the heart said was audible.

I've heard it said: ask forgiveness later.
             Which means do what, exactly, beforehand?
Haven't we at one time or other wished to end
              the terrible suffering of another—a wound
beyond repair, the animal whose body crashed
              into a car in a dark country lane, the speckled
trail of blood leading into the even darker woods?
              Trespass is a word I first learned in prayer—
forgive us this thing we do, that others also do
               unto us. Haven't we gathered into our arms
the ones whose voices broke at the threshold,
               when the fence could no longer hold against
the flood? Before absolution, our bodies long
               to enter each other's grief, to gather
what can still be gathered, to stay awake or sit
               beside. Often it feels hopeless, but we
offer water.  Forage for whatever might give balm.
                 
            

"The sky is a century with no windows."
                                 ~ Eduardo Corral

We are poor though we have everything we need.
Out in the yard, the fig tree is resplendent with still-

green fruit, even while its leaves begin to speckle
and yellow toward fall. Through the laundromat window,

we see shaded clouds grow fat over the roofs. Yet they
withhold rain from the afternoon. Papery blooms multiply

on branches of crepe myrtle. They bend over the sidewalk,
threatening to crown the heads of passersby. Evening 

comes and afterward, the ordinary breathing of night. 
The bowl that breaks on the kitchen floor makes 

a chime like a bell. We sweep up its fragments and drop it 
into the trash, where glistening bones of our fish dinner 

lie almost intact. And still we want everything we do, 
though the world breaks our hearts every single time.