Author: Luisa A. Igloria

~ after Joy Harjo


Remember your last name,
where that thread came from,
connecting you to the one who came
before, and the one even farther back.
Remember your middle name,
the one that tied you to the womb
before the cord was clamped at two
ends and cut, then the flash of light
and your mouth opening into its first
cry. And remember your first name,
how someone plucked it out of a page
perhaps, or a list, or a story with
a face a mouth a nose upturned 
like yours, eyebrows whose crests 
touched a universe of hopes. 
Remember all your names now, 
for the moment you'll stand 
in a window well trying to remember 
how you're called, how to call. 

Are you ignoring my message or are we
in the middle of some strange 
literary cliffhanger?

I'm pitching real readers, real reviews,
real visibility, and you're giving me
the silent treatment like I'm asking you
for your Netflix password.

Reading your work felt like stepping
into a space where memory, language,
and feeling are held with such
tenderness and clarity that they
reshape the air around them.

What struck me most is how your voice
moves between sharpness and gentleness
the way a single line can evoke
both joy and ache in the same
breath.

Poetry that lingers 
deserves a wider audience.

I promised myself I would't turn
into that person who follows up...
but here I am, waving like a slightly
unhinged fan at a book signing.

We could never— how could we know?
At first it's as if we have all
the time and space in the world. 
That room with too-high ceilings, 
the old but beautiful claw-footed 
tub; windows without insulation,
radiators with globs of cream 
paint from the landlord's yearly 
re-do. Only in one apartment did we 
remember having a trash compactor 
in the kitchen sink. The novelty 
of grinding down little fish 
bones, leftover strings of bean 
with a finger-push of something 
that looks like a light switch. 
The sound of that maw churning 
things to pulp, like a pig in a pen 
underneath the floor. For the last 
dozen years, we've lived without 
such a convenience. There's a hand-
lettered sign next to the tap 
saying No garbage disposal. Do you 
remember the home repair contractor's 
face, almost accusatory? He said
There are rice grains near your sewer 
cleanout. Boxes of books weigh heavy 
as bricks. There are mugs from every
vacation, racks groaning with clothes.
I was surprised to hear the famous
tidying expert admit on radio it's OK 
to hang on to things still meaningful 
for you. Yes, this beautiful golden 
light trickles away so quickly. 
And yes, we too will go.
 

They've been at it 
for the last fifteen 
minutes at least, 
and still going— 
two girls crossing 
and uncrossing  
their legs encased
in tights, leaning 
forward then back 
against the coated 
steel bench as a brisk 
wind teases their locks. 
The sun angles and they 
angle an arm away, 
the merest tilt 
of the phone.
Everything is 
angles. Everything 
is spontaneous 
but composed. Bent 
over the screen they 
check the images
just made; swipe
left on the screen, 
then right, then left,
deciding delete, delete,
delete. Just one more. 
There. Perfect.

The hair on top of my head feels thin— 
and it looks visibly thinner in photos 
people have taken, where I have my back to 
the camera. Is it vain that I worry about 
what it will look like, as increasingly 
the clearing gets bigger and wider with time? 
Will it be a little pond on which gnats 
will skate in the heat of summer, a shallow 
saucer of drought the birds will avoid? 
I remember being told as a young mother 
about the soft spot on the head: the fontanel, 
where the bones in a newborn's scalp have not
knit together tightly yet. Maybe I am unknitting 
myself at the top. Maybe that's what people mean 
when they talk about becoming soft in the head.

Sometimes I dream the light
shining through there falls down
a great shaft without end.

~ Maguindanao


The last time I read of a backhoe 
in the news, it was used to bury 
bodies in mass graves. They were 
journalists and wives and sisters
of small-town politicians, walking 
together for safety in order to cast 
their votes. In that town, the man 
who wanted to be king (or the equivalent 
of king) ordered their massacre. He wanted 
to send a message. Though the world took 
notice, it was too late for the victims. 
When I see "backhoe" in the news today, 
no layer of concrete, whether torn down 
or re-laid, can erase the vision of
mutilated bodies in the earth;
of a would-be king watching 
unmoved from his tower.

The hills are flocked
like velvet. Birds drowse
in the shallows near the bridge
from which people toss candy
wrappers, crushed cans of soda.

A tiny floating house
made for the ducks by 
a professor at the college
one whimsical year is still
tethered to the wooden pile.
 
How unchanged the world looks 
in these kinds of circumstance. 
Though it's tipped, no one seems 
to register the shift. Acorns pinging 
onto the surface hardly break the silence.  

Calcium absorbs more radiation, 
rendering the bones chalk-white. 
Soft tissues admit less, and show

as gray. Beneath the pale ceiling  
of the pelvis, slim pillars lengthen
down the leg. Imagine an orchard

outside— the moon rising to limn
persimmons with one more layer 
of gold. Consider the other 

trees giving up their leaves
for beaten copper, and the cry 
of a loon limping across water

as if toward a beacon. White,
green, red. And then the soft
furl of darkness afterwards. 

~ Antirrhinum

Flax flower, dog flower with a maw
gaping under the weight of a bee
or pressure from fingers— 

Is the soul really stronger 
than it believes 
itself to be? 

So many filaments
in the canopy, tugged 
by an unseen force. 

Where the sun begins
to disappear from the world,
the light is briefly gold.

I too have opened 
my mouth even when
it was not asked.

Those years I couldn't swallow
anything with the skin or stench

of a fowl, with the fur of fruit, 
with a salt-shell or pod. The juice 

of tomatoes wrecked the lining of my gut, 
the flush of their cheeks stippled a flat 

tattoo on my calves. The first time I met
the ghost of my own mortality, I cried into 

its knitted shawl. I know it was only 
practicing how to reconcile with itself, 

but my shaking has never stopped. Nor 
has my need to dress my sharpest fears

in finery while opening the door to lion and
lamb, letting them both sit and eat at my table.