Author: Luisa A. Igloria

I've always been afraid
of getting in any water that looks
like it will definitely go over

my head. Until third grade, 
I used to be afraid to even stand 
in the shower and let water run 

over my head and face. Close your eyes, 
I was instructed. But what does it mean
to fear drowning even on solid ground? 

Nevertheless I tried learning to swim 
once. The group instructor at the Y 
gave us foam noodles and showed us 

how to kick off. The first few times 
she'd lead us down to the middle 
of one lane then turn back around. 
  
I can say I learned at least
how to float. But holding on to a rubber 
board and trying to propel my body across 

that deep, it's like I forgot how to breathe. 
I stood up in a panic. The rest of the class
was learning to turn their heads: one 

side first, then the other. On the far 
end, children in bright suits jumped in, 
paddling and stroking without fear.

Where I grew up I was taught save
     everything for soup or sauce: fins, bones,
the heads of shrimp for their orange fat—
     dripping sweetbreads of the slaughtered  
animal to bulk up a meal, spread like a blanket
     over many days with sizzling onions and
wild lime juice. There are whole towns who've 
     perfected the art of chiseling lace
out of watermelon rinds, roasting rice
     wafers to string with thread and float
from windows on feast days— feast being less about
     tables groaning with the weight of food  
and more about yoking endless hunger to 
     the ceremonies of using every part: every inch
of skin, every sinew; each chalky eyeball swimming
     in its papery bowl, as sweet as everything else
milked from another body in the world for you.   
     

what does one do               with ruin 

who is ordained                to bring

order to the land              & seasons

to flowering                   i am no king

languishing                    at the border of life &

death                          waiting for          

an elixir of                   bird-song or magic

no bottomless                  wellspring am i  

gladness ready                 to pay off 

tithe collectors               in the morning                 

what does one feed             the furnace

always eager to devour         to shreds 

leashed dogs no less           heartsick 

than those                     without  
 

The cycles between
     episodes of exhilaration 
           and sorrow. The faint thud 
              of heartbeats until they fall 
              silent. The wilder pulse
           of the everyday, detonating
     like a series of bombs 
in the next room. 

The mind is large: an auditorium
       that could shelter whole neighborhoods
unhomed by a natural disaster. Or maybe it is
       some kind of ancient labyrinth
whose blueprint could only be memorized
       by touching each object along the way
and reciting their names in order. Then,
       weeks or months afterwards, one
finally steps into the center and comes
       face-to-face with the creature
that sat so long in the dark waiting
       for your arrival. It asks you
what you've brought besides that filthy
       ball of string which used to be red 
but now looks caked with mud. Wouldn't you
       like to know, you say, handing it to him
and taking his place in the center as it moves
       toward the opening in the hedge. 

       

Among the many varieties of grief, I come
         across ambiguous loss, also sometimes known

as uncertain grief: hanging about in a doorway, 
         unsure of whether to come in or stay outside, 

just on the porch. When I ask what he
         wants, he says I'm not sure or I don't

really know. So tell me the news
         you've brought, I say. And he clears 

his throat half a dozen times 
         and tries to begin, but can't seem 

to form the words. In the half-light 
         he looks like a child who might have lost 

his way but is too embarrassed or scared  
         to admit it. Then he turns, and he looks 

much older— a five o'clock shadow
         on his chin and around his mouth. 

He reminds me of the cousin who came 
         knocking one night, crazed with the grief

of not knowing if any of his family
         had made it out of their house in a land-

slide, after an earthquake. In such 
         a situation, it's natural to think 

of the very worst possible thing that could 
         happen. And even if it proves not to be true,

the terrible swing from one moment's hope
         to the next moment's stomach-churning panic

is the only thing that registers. Tell me,
         I say again; I'd rather know. Wouldn't you

prefer the clarity of such a loss, such a grief,
         rather than being kept in the limbo preceding it?    


 

In our wild gardens, we grew
        no apples goldening in late light,
                 no pears or plums. What animals  
nosed their way into our simple plots   
        tore pages from tightly bound greens,
                 leaving fiddlehead ferns 
to sleep undisturbed by the shed. 
        If any star fell into the belly
                 of an apple, we did not hear
about it. We did not cut its flesh
        crosswise to find a sign about
                 our origins and fall, our 
banishment. In the smudged fields,
        tubers marbled patiently, waiting for us  
                 to pull them up and out of the earth  
like babies. What crescents crowned their  
        arrival! And of the air, roots of orchids
                 spoke to each other in their own 
vernacular. Of flood, we knew nothing  
        until galleons pushed their way into 
                 the channels. Of grasses, we knew
which could bind and which could forge
        canopies to repel rain. How are we
                 blind and how misled when we've coaxed
stones into terraces leading to the gods? 
        Laid end to end, they would make more
                 than a girdle for this earth.
 
                 
          
   
  

 
            of its own fevered dream and almost  
doesn't find its way back to the hive.  
            Who told it to gorge on flowers of 
fermented lime, to drink past the limits  
            of necessity? Every bristle that brushed
against bursting tendrils, dark gold
            and orange, comes back freighted
with so much more than it went out  
            to find. But there's still the problem
of getting past the sentinels 
            who wait to tear off its legs,
punishment for straying too far, perhaps 
            too long; for making the daily drone
a drudgery even more wedded to certain
            death. In my own life, how many times
have I taken that kind of risk, the kind
            that leads from these little cells sticky
with the rind of industry, where comb is one
            letter away from tomb? I never wobbled
when I walked, though sometimes I turned
            morose and cried or spoke of secrets.
     

I want to remember what word 
to use for rain that falls

through a curtain of sunlight; what 
word to use for rain that makes one 

sound when pouring on balconies, and 
another for when it reminds you of eggs 

beaten to a cloudy texture in the bowl. 
Is there a word for loneliness in the shape 

of a blade, and another for when it is 
the whetstone you could press your whole 

self against, because the world has not 
stopped delivering wounds? Emerson wrote: 

We were put into our bodies, as fire 
is put into a pan, to be carried about. 

So then, if we are more than rain or
the absence of rain; if we are, as he says, 

not the conveyance whether made of tin 
or of beaten copper but the fire itself, 

made of it, then let the damp, sputtering 
sequence of days not be impediment. Let 

the body sway in the world as a metal rod  
ready to conduct flame, or feeling.   
  

Rain again; and regrets. Or shadows.

Waking to rain you thought
you heard someone playing the piano.

Once, you read that strings 
tuned to the same note 
are called unisons—

Unison: as in to strike with one
accord. As birds in the rushes rise,

an arrow assembling from many parts.