Author: Luisa A. Igloria

“I am myself the matter of my book.” 
               – Michel de Montaigne



With moss and twigs, I build 
a diorama. Branches knock against it

in wild weather. Tiles of slate 
loosen in wind. Here, I clear a small 

space, cover the walls with questions
like Montaigne did in his citadel.

But my retreat isn't made of stone,
and the hours I spend here are not  

as leisurely as I'm sure his were. 
How many days will it take to arrive 

at the smallest room, and what flint to strike 
for warmth and light? In this work of inwardness, 

the dark is not necessarily made of grief, 
the silence not necessarily an ending.  

See: 
Orpheus, who learned 
too late that looking back 
can be fatal.
 
See: 
Plato, who gave us the tale of humans 
as originally whole, round with four 
arms, four legs, two faces. 

See: 
How the gods were shook by the thought 
of what could happen if these four-
limbed beings challenged them. 

See: 
How of course, after we were split in half 
like melons, even in bed side by side, each
half longed perennially for the other. 

See:
Sisyphus, who didn't start out 
doing it for cardio, but most
likely looked ripped.

See:
The grocery cart with one
bad wheel, barging away from the meat
and into the vegetable display.
 
See also:
Time, which doesn't make sense
however way you cut it, and yourself,
making sense where you can.

There are things I can do 
and things over which I have
no influence. I can mail care

packages and transfer funds, check 
in even if I don't get a response. 
That winter, a weight arrived 

uninvited and stayed. I know 
I can't erase the accumulation 
of hours the body has 

already lived— a long chain 
of hallways from whose windows 
you glimpsed a train 

whistling through the tracks, 
the frozen landscape. All I want 
for you is a normal life, 

by which I mean mornings that don't 
require courage, afternoons moving
forward without obstruction, 

nights when sleep doesn't need 
to be won by exhaustion. I scour
my world for words to hold

against its unforgivingness,
for words to lift without denying
the fires walked through, the wounds

and barbs. Since prayer is more  
than asking, is waiting, then I wait for 
the tender spots to show themselves 

again, for the drain to clear and water 
give itself so the spirit rinses even
just enough suffering from the day. 

The terrible trials still come. 
They haven't stopped. Weather 
that stays in place— days stacked 
like wet wool, nights that press 
on the ribs. Please let up already.
 
We're stripped down to nearly 
only the bones of our humanity. We
have to work so hard to even feel
capable of moving through the days.

My heart breaks for how much you
have to bear, as the rest of the world
blithely goes home to soft lamplight
and rest. It takes such work to coax
the soul to sit up straight in the body,
to convince it the music hasn't ended.
That it still has the capacity to dance.

Let today be the day, Lord. Send 
a sign that a flood of clear air 
is coming, that you won't begrudge 
the handful of coins in our hands. 
Give us mercy and a little hope. 
Our due at last. Fists unclasped. 

Did your father keep cash
      in a sock then slide that under
the mattress? and your mother, did she  
      keep bills in separate envelopes  
labeled food, water, light? Having lived 
      through the war, my parents knew 
the fear of losing everything, having 
      nothing but the kind of debt which has 
a habit of growing bigger while you sleep. 
      I must have formed my attitudes toward 
money from them: fear that the universe 
      could punish you for spending on frivolous
things instead of just the necessities— good  
      cheese rather than cheese spread, fruit 
rather than juice from concentrate.
      That vacation postponed for the nth
year in a row and perhaps forever, since
      the price of fuel is even more expensive
now. Our savvy friends talk about making
      their money work hard for them
while they sleep: a tool they say, used      
      well, frees you for longer stretches
you could fill with conversation, hobbies,
      or books and art. What is it worth
to work overtime without pay, catch
      only four hours of sleep a day
then fall asleep at the wheel? With every 
      paycheck, pay yourself first but set 
aside twenty percent for savings and debt 
      repayment. Clear accounts. Know 
what you have and where it goes, care for it 
      as you would an animal that remembers
its wild, fanged nature, but now will fetch,
      sit, and come when it is called.    

Counting, like in the tales
where girls are given impossible
tasks to numb their fingers and hearts— 
Separate grain from pebbles by nightfall, 
sew seven shirts without speaking a word 
for seven years. Silence itself, part 
of the spell: a clause in a contract 
you don't even remember having signed 
in blood or ink. Only in those stories
are there helpers: talking mice, 
birds, ants, meaning belief 
in the kindness of nature which 
somehow bends toward you because 
it intuits an injustice. But I want 
to know how the curse can be broken, 
how the loop of bad luck can be severed 
once and for all, not just reversed. 
I want to drop this needle and 
burn this loom, see my loves 
emerge out of the forest or 
soften from stone back into flesh. 
Let whatever I may have mislaid 
be suddenly found in the corner 
of a coat pocket, the toe of a shoe.  

Feeling slightly out of alignment with
the world, I stop at the grocery store 
looking for something to nudge me back 
onto the road of purpose I drive each 
day— home to work, work to home. I think 
of getting flowers, but would that be  
admitting something I can't say aloud? 
In there, the sunflowers are smaller 
than I remember: heads disheveled 
under LED lights, faces turned nowhere 
in particular. Have they, too, forgotten 
how to follow the sun? There's not one 
particular cause for blame— not the hike 
in oil prices nor the increasingly infertile 
soil from climate change, not the store 
and the unpredictability of supply and demand. 
Once, the hills of my childhood were dotted 
with the same yellow blooms. Their brightness 
reflected a light I never questioned, as if 
it would always be there, forgiving me 
everything before I even thought to say
what for. I try to think of that light again 
here, and in the end I leave the flowers 
with their price tags exactly where they are. 
I walk back into my day, hands empty 
of everything but this honesty.   

wills and directives— if this,  

then that. If we're lucky, or
not. Who benefits from certain

actions? Who gains from my love 
of bathing in sunlight, loses

from my habit of pulling up weeds 
with bare hands? I know the cost

of not putting things in order. 
I also know also how impossible 

it is to itemize assets vs. debts,
time spent vs. time held against

future use. Finally, I'm learning
to sort the mail as soon as it

comes, to believe in dreams 
as dreams instead of prophecy—

one springs from the mind
of what can be, and the other

from the mind of what seems
to know what can't be known.   

except in all the ways my being
an immigrant are different 
from all the ways you experience 
your being an immigrant 
differently from me.

And yet we are capable 
of the same joy, the same
grieving, the same terrible
capacity to break and be
broken open, to choose rice 
over bread, both salt and sugar, 
soft instead of hard.

Language isn't 
the only gate you think
leads to the garden. 

Try to enter the mind 
of the one whose work 
you're translating. 

It might be easier to bribe
the watchman, but where 
is the charm in that?

Before it existed as riddle, 
the poem beat against stones 
at the foot of the cliff.

Or it hung among particles 
caught in the lighthouse beams 
sweeping across the channel.  

The sound of air passing
through the mouth is a variant
of a form that can't be seen. 

The chest rises and falls. The water 
recedes. Sometimes you can walk so far 
without encountering a ripple.