Author: Luisa A. Igloria

“…I dress myself for the dust” ~ D. Bonta

As rapidly as I
was made, I will
be unmade. Buttons
and hooks are
timely preface.

Past bloom,
speckled orchids
drop like rumpled
washcloths. Soft-
ness on tile.

The mood is
always preparatory
to farewell— until
the gurgle in the gut
establishes the hour.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Raiment.

Little woody star, your resinous perfume
wells up as if from the depths of ancient

wardrobes. In your breath I smell the hot
winds of summer, dry husks of grain

yellowing to chaff in the sun. I love
your foliate points opening outward,

the seed in each narrow chamber
a polished eye observing the daily

encounter. Pressing your outline
into the middle of my brow, I wish

for the kind of sight to carry me over
from the blackened hulls of the past, to drop

into the bottom of a teacup where no leaves
clump into calligraphies of dark foreboding.

The occurrence of three or more sounds
with no intervening vowels within a word

is what linguists call consonant clusters:
as in diphthong, glimpse, and angst. One

of my favorites, perhaps, is ironclad—
that steam-propelled warship encased

in plates of metal, which in the 1800s
toted some of the heaviest artillery

ever brought out to sea, often equipped
with an elongated underwater beak for the then-

hot craze of ramming into enemy ships in ocean
warfare. In this navy town where we now live,

there are no hulls of old ironclads; but in the downtown
harbor, the Battleship Wisconsin is permanently berthed.

Just blocks away from the MacArthur museum, it houses
paraphernalia from WWII, including pictures of operations

east of Luzon in the Philippine Sea and along
the coast of Mindoro. I read that this battleship

weathered many violent storms and skirmishes,
but proved to be most seaworthy— There it stands

grey and gleaming in shallower waters, next
to pools of cultivated koi and sculptures of flat-

chested mermaids. As for the ironclads, those three
consonants tightly breastplating the middle of the word

remind me of stories of how the Portuguese explorer
Ferdinand Magellan met his end— in Philippine

waters, at the hands of a native chieftain, who
was supposed to have rammed the end of his spear

through the hinges of Magellan’s armor and up
his thigh. Poor Magellan, he never did manage

to circumnavigate the globe. His surviving crew
left him in Mactan to die, while they sailed

back eventually homeward, bearing cassia bark,
ginger, cardamom, turmeric, pepper, and cloves.

Some nights I am blank
as a sheet without creases,
the interval before water
stretches and swells
into wave.

Tonight I cannot be the swan,
lovely in its white arching.

I cannot be the rich gleam
hoarded in padded vaults, smug

about tomorrow. Tonight I can only be
the fox, some creature loping in the hills,

raising its ragged strip of a voice
like a flag, always soldiering on.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Joy.

You wrote of the sand, the trees,
the sea’s constant whisper

those months you labored to learn
the language of your travels—

And in the darkness before dawn,
fishermen ploughing the moon’s

silver shine before the day
began. We were all younger then

and did not mind so much the heat;
then, turning a corner, the sudden,

all-encasing fog; the way the sun
could disappear for months

behind a heavy curtain of rain.
The little deprivations help

to train the body and the spirit:
short courses in stoicism, just

enough to help in that exercise
of weathering. But I know

how weak we are: which is to say
we think, with care, we might

actually get to live longer.
I also close my eyes when it seems

too much, when my fears lurch ahead:
glistening creature made of my own parts,

straining to outdistance the one
who appears at every crossroad—

the one I’ll have to carry
on my back wherever I go.

During Holy Week, we hire ourselves out
to row them around the man-made lake named

after the famous Chicago architect— tourists
dressed in woven tops, sweating in new acrylic

sweaters, afraid the flat-bottomed boats
shaped like swans might tip them over

into the tea-colored water where
they will drown. We don’t tell them

the water’s only thigh-high, that fifty
years ago a fountain strung with simple lights

sprayed clear rainbow jets into the air at night.
We pull on the oars and go in circles, answering

queries about where to find the sweetest
strawberries, that carved figurine of a little

man whose member springs to attention when
you lift the wooden barrel encasing his loins.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

How marvelous
that we make something
out of nearly nothing—

rich stock
out of vegetables’
cast-off skins,

gold dye for wool
from mud and
turmeric paste;

idols of fish
and stallions from blocks
of ice for a rich man’s feast.

How lucky we are when
an eyelash trembles loose and
someone says Quick, make a wish.

Every now and then they make
their appearance in a dream—

the dead beloved I last glimpsed
from a high window, brushing

their teeth at the chipped yellow
porcelain sink, then drinking

from a small plastic cup
to rinse. Or sitting in a sliver

of moonlight, in a white metal
garden chair, dressed in nothing

but undergarments. I look into
their eyes of cloudy agate, filled

with the sorrow of a child who can’t
find anyone in the empty house

to tug her buttons into place,
to tie her difficult shoelaces.