Author: Luisa A. Igloria

The former leader of a small 
southeast Asian nation sits 
in a jail cell awaiting trial 
at the Hague. Well-appointed, 
with its own kitchenette, but 
jail nontheless. When the petition 
for his interim release is denied,
his followers weep and embrace
carboard standees. Elsewhere,
families of victims in his "war
on drugs" follow the news by video
link, and clap. They clutch pictures
to their chests too— of husbands 
and children felled by bullets 
fired by death squads, masked 
and riding tandem on motorcycles.

At the beginning of the holiday 
season, the 12 Days of Christmas 
plates come out of their Williams-
Sonoma box shaped like a rope 
tension drum. The song's a counting 
ritual: it starts with a bird 
in a fruit tree, adds on increments 
the sum of which supposedly equates 
to "true love:" turtledoves and 
domesticated fowl, golden rings, 
a jubilee of animal and human
antics and pastoral labor. It's also 
a counting down to the end of another 
year— how we've moved through space 
and time, how we sense the dark 
slip beyond the hills as we reach 
for a spark to kindle the broken twigs 
in the hearth; how the flame sputters 
as if catching its breath, before growing 
brighter and pouring out of itself. 

Though they have the same plush, velvety look,
Marimo aren’t moss but a rare form of algae found

in freshwater lakes. Scientists say they're among 
the first plants to have moved from water to land 

over 500 million years ago, even outliving 
dinosaurs. No wonder they manage to stay alive 

for over a hundred years, though kept in glass bowls 
filled with water and a bed of smooth stones instead 

of out in the wild. The need for tangible softness 
must be a trait passed on from one generation

to the next: somehow, part of the strategy for
surviving extremity— the open hand allowing

for flow in ways that a clenched fist 
would not. Take kissing— mouth to mouth 

contact not only for the purpose of passing 
or masticating food— and how there’s evidence

neanderthals and humans kissed. And moss 
spores taken into space, with little to no direct 

contact with light, not only surviving but 
germinating after returning to earth. 

I was drinking my coffee when I felt
a familiar sensation— do you know it?
Like being naked but not exactly, 
just because I forgot to put on 
my favorite earrings. At the same time, 
I remembered where I'd left them: 
on the counter in my hotel room just
before I checked out at 3 in the morning,
anxious about Thanksgiving traffic and lines.  
They were a pair of gold-colored, simple 
circlets mounted on a stud. I am good 
at remembering, but after the moment I was 
supposed to remember. Maybe 6 years ago now, 
I bought those earrings in the Portland 
airport coming back from a writing conference. 
33 years ago I remember waking my daughters 
so they could see me off at my departure 
from another airport. I did not have the heart
to wake the youngest, a toddler, from the depths 
of heavy, blissful sleep. I hope they remember 
things like this, more than the leaving. 

 
I heard someone say torch, and recalled
my friend's story about how, when her sister

was married, her new husband gathered all
her underwear and threw it into the fire.

This was supposed to show how his passion
for her meant all other loves before him

were to be incinerated. Some words eclipse 
others in the wake of their arrival.

She received new ones, cotton and silk, 
handpicked by him. There are other ways 

in which partnerships become proclamations—
a binding with rings, an annexation with names. 

What did our mothers surrender besides what fell 
away like leaves, like trees stripped of bark.

While I can still make out the figures in the grainy
print, I call them again to the surface. Life
is long, so love might outlast the distance. 

You bend over me seated in a shiny red tricycle, 
eager for the novelty of this kind of motion. Life
is long, and I'm eager to speed up the distance.

I still feel your hand on my back. A cool morning 
in our northern hills, you in a slim sheath skirt. Life's
long fringes in the pines, love a hazy plume in the distance. 

Daughter-mother-daughter: links in a chain that keeps
going. I can go faster, but must pedal harder. Life
is long; perhaps love will outlast the distance.

Every now and then my sealed heart's pried open— 
a tomb I want to walk out of, toward the light. Life
is long, promising love will outlast the distance. 

Under the surface—
Teeming channels and stations
Subterranean, subcutaneous

Liquids moving in
confined spaces, under pressure
transmitting equally in all directions  

Our hearts have four chambers—
Seastars have no heart at all
Octopi have three and copper blood

Zebrafish can mend
their broken hearts in two months
The wood frog shuts down its heart in winter

Does this mean my daily practice has been running for
15 years instead of 14 (as I thought)? I suck at Math. 

(For Peter S., Nini and Pancho L,
Aileen and Paul C.)



Terminal hallway
Echoes at 4 am but 
not from crows calling

Between one time zone
and the next and the next, does
Fate move forward and back

Seals in their rookery 
at low tide Marine layer 
pressed on the trees

Palimpsest of hills
And the body remembers 
other hills elsewhere

We catch up with time
Meeting again under ceilings 
clothed by dreamweavers

Leaves of the laurel 
that we call bay Myth of a 
body changed by the gods

Salt spray in the air—
Maladies named and unnamed
What we seek as cure

Walls of mission white
Scalloped roofs of terracotta
Scrolled ironwork grilles

Bowls of oxtail stew—
A restaurant in a casino 
called Lucky Chances 

Departures and arrivals
Estuaries still lead to the sea 
Monuments of claiming
 
In the museum 
a robot spews glitter in a 
future afterparty

say the signs stenciled across
the wing of the plane. Meaning this
is an edge, or danger— whether 
the aircraft is at rest or in flight.
Such warnings anticipate the possible
before the actual, the impulse before
it materializes as the decision to move
in a certain direction. It means someone
thought of consequences others might not
have foreseen— and so there are neon-
colored guard rails, there are graded
ramps up the entrances to buildings. 
Break glass in case of emergency, printed
across the fire extinguisher box affixed
to the wall. Alarm Bell, says the sign
above a hand-sized red button near 
the stairwell. There are similar 
devices that only certain individuals 
can activate, if they perceive a threat
(whether the perception is correct or
the person was just kidding). Such devices 
could start wars, could even nuke our entire 
planet. In such cases, there isn’t a failsafe. 
No moment after for saying Oops, my bad.