Author: Luisa A. Igloria

But I have in me all the dreams of the world. ~ Fernando Pessoa

I want to tell the beasts I’ve led
to the river’s edge that we’ve arrived,
that the thirst we’ve held on to for so long
will finally be slaked. But what did I know
about not making promises, how could I know
there’s no more milk in the earthen jug?
I am tired, so tired. All I want to do
is lie on the silt-brown shore and let
the curtain fall, let the animals
of my need find their way or not
in the woods. Such a brilliant shade
of orange on the horizon! And the grass:
each blade numerous and distinct, making
four blue flowers such an extravagance.

~ after Hugo Simberg, “The Fairy Tale I” (1895)

~ after Harrison Forman, “Igorot Woman Carring Harvest on Northern Luzon Island, Philippines”

Charol: what we called patent
leather— its bright, high gloss

most desired for children’s First
Communion footwear and men’s dress

shoes. Mongol: most popular brand of
No. 2 pencils, thereafter the name

for every yellow-painted stick of graphite
with which we wrote our lessons. Or ballpoint

pens, all of them in our minds called Bic.
Until my father quit smoking cold turkey,

he’d ask someone to buy Marlboros for him
at the corner store: the Salem Menthol kind.

Sometimes, without thinking, I’ll ask for
a tissue by saying Kleenex. The tongue’s

colonial lessons in renaming the world
sit undisturbed beneath a canopy of recent

layers: odd artifacts on shelves and tables,
next to each other in every room of the house.

~ after Hugo Simberg, “Unelma” (“Dream”); 1900

Against the silver blue
and ghostly latticework of trees,
the soul has picked out its mate.

Here’s the husband, whose ordinary feet
move across crimson-speckled grass—
he studies in wonder how it is

they seem to know, apart from the rest
of him, just what to do. The woman
sitting on the rock feels

overcome by the weight of what she does
and doesn’t recognize. It’s like a late
afternoon drama that used to play only

in black and white on her father’s
old television console: a faint rustling
that could be wings or simple static,

before a window opens high overhead
to let a banner of grief into the night.
So gather your hair into a bun

or comb back your locks into a kind of halo.
In any clearing, at least three things will be
asked to dance: the woman, the man, the mystery.

~ after Hugo Simberg, “The Wounded Angel” (“Haavoittunut enkeli”); 1903

Until it breaks or something breaks it,
she carries a precious thing inside her.

Until the wind decides to let her fall
instead of float, she flails her arms

and hopes that someone sees her figure
plunging into the field. And so it comes

to be— this sombre procession moving past
the mouth of the bay, bearing the girl

whose unshod feet dangle like pale
headless birds between two poles. The faces

of these not-yet-pallbearers mirror ash-
colored hills and sullen waters; the earth

looks colder than the stones laid on a country
kitchen floor. Will they take her to the Blind

Girls’ School, or to the Home for Cripples?
The ends of her hair are slightly damp; they clump

a little against her shoulders. It isn’t spring yet,
though here and there are hints the season’s turning.

Snowdrops cluster in patches on otherwise
barren ground. Who picked for her the ones

she holds in her hand? Chalky white,
her linen tunic, her blindfold;

her wings, except for two streaks drying
to the color of old blood on one.

Listen, I am now old enough to tell stories
of driving through mountain passes wide enough

for only one vehicle, so the approach of another
from the other direction makes it sound like

stones falling or a word problem too difficult to solve

from the other direction. It sounds like
only one vehicle, so the approach of another

driving through mountain passes wide enough
listens: who will live to tell the stories?

The more something refuses to be pried open,
the more you want to put it in your mouth.

You too can remember a time you wanted to taste
everything hot from the pan, eating standing up

at the counter: burned fingers, burned tongue
worked quickly to unravel the mystery at the heart

of a bundle wrapped tight in banana leaves,
steamed all day until the meat and juices

ran pungent and thick. The throat knows when the cold
is coming, the gut knows lard will congeal. In the filmy

orb of the fish eye, the eye itself is a pebble of chalk
boiled and blind to the fact of appetite. Only water

might forgive what is in excess. Only evening understands
what time is made of, through what labyrinths it has passed.

I was taught suffering is another name for holy;

that the beautiful flames of pleasure always sing

like birds before you enter them and are

consumed. Therefore, they said, think of the saints

whose bare feet bore the brand of hot coals, of Agatha

whose nipples glowed like the tiniest of nectarines

between pincers in Sebastiano del Piombo’s mural

depicting her martyrdom. And good Lord, doesn’t it

disturb you that so many of these stories involve

the torture of women because they won’t surrender

their virginity? It’s not about birds or pleasure,

fire, death by beheading. What’s so terrifying

about refusing to be pried open, about declaring

that the body and its solitudes are self-sufficient?

Tossed in the river again, like a fish
injured but alive— back into the cool
currents that soothe the places exited

by barbs. There’s that story of the man
who’s always trudging uphill with his rock,
& the women condemned to gather water using

only sieves. In the thickening canopy of summer,
soon, the drone of cicadas waking from a sleep
of 17 years, after which they mate & die.

So too the towering agave that took all of 80 years
to start giving up its thousand yellow buds: right
after the flowering, its quick decline, its dying.

What theme is common to them all? Already we
live in eternity, caught in the loops of time.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Remembrance of things past.

After a cry, a nap so heavy you feel drugged, you come up
for air and test how skin might breathe again through silk,
cotton, viscose; the humidity that’s settled in your hair.
Out of every corner of the house, when you sweep, you collect

the dust that bodies have made— flakes sloughed off elbows
and knees, the head that lolled on the sofa pillow or rested
in cupped palms. How is it we haven’t managed to completely
rub away into nothing? But then again, from our 2 square meters

of skin, 30 to 40 thousand cells shed every minute, only to renew
every 28 days. So even at this level, biology resists the drama of our
zero sum games, the take-it-or-leave-its; those ideals of perfection
paired with such stubborn unwillingness to compromise—

when even the fish thrown back in the river after the barbs
are taken out leap back into the current, injured but alive.

 

In response to Via Negativa: End times.

Our living and dying, like clothes we might pick out
from a rack and put on, that we might drop on the floor
of a fitting room, or discard after the season’s trends
are tired of bell sleeves or camouflage. Mostly, we need
to tailor and repair everything to our own dimensions.
Mother used to have a cabinet with glass doors, in which
she stored the most precious of her garments. I wonder where
they are now— the damask skirts, the pencil-cut suits and
sheaths with their Jackie O collars, the yards and yards
of silver lace and scratchy tulle. In the market we scoured
the shelves of Chinese dry goods merchants, folded triangles
of Tetoron like flags giving off heavy vapors in each stall.
She flicked her nail over each surface or fingered their nap,
testing how skin might breathe through silk, cotton, viscose.