Author: Luisa A. Igloria

Your foot snags on the corner of a bumper.

The tiled floor of the grocery is many
shades of dirty gray. 

Your instinct is to shield your face,
your head.

Minutes before, the woman at the cash register 
says have a nice day and looks like she means it.

Just an hour before, you are mistaken
for someone else.

Wind whips the edges of the tarp loose.
The sound it makes, like flapping wings.

Cold air snags in your throat
on the way in.

Noon light is visible when you turn 
your gaze to the left.

Your knees compose the retort you 
should have made.

On the way back from the voting booths,
we see it on the sidewalk: dark and 
stiff, mahogany as a branch left too long 
in the fire except for a visible shin 
bone and a row of teeth jutting out 
from the pointy area in what used to be 
its face. Was it perhaps struck by lightning 
or a charge of electricity as it ran 
across a length of wire? Whatever it was
charred off all its fur and left only skin, 
taut and dry like jerky. Whatever it was 
must have been quick: no time for heart,
nerves or brain to signal distress. 
Shock and stun, instant paralysis. 
 

Neruda wrote about salt
and soap, tomatoes and tuna;
the lemon's round cathedral windows,
pairs of socks. To think about how 
salt sings from the depths of the sea 
and the holds of ships, how a sliver 
of lye and citrus oil can melt the day's
aches away in water— who wouldn't miss
what gives these small, ordinary joys 
the chance to graft themselves onto
our days? If the things we love are also 
the things we'll miss the most when 
they're gone, isn't all language
and every kind of poem, at heart,
an elegy? Hello, sun rising in 
the east. Goodbye as the light
changes from blue to gold and gone.

It's as if no one 
      is supposed to change
    in any way, as if 
the self in the moment
       it meets another 
    becomes fixed in
that knowledge of
       the other. Remember 
    that day, salt 
in your hair, sunburn
       peeling off  
my shoulders? The shore,
    receding then 
as it does now. 

Every day she walked in and out of that green garden gate
from the world inside and its little rooms. The world outside,
the sky's ceiling, criss-crossed with stars and constellates, 

held out a promise of myriad destinations. Not late
at all, not yet. To bloom has no fixed season, no guide. 
Every day she walked in and out of that green garden gate.

With time, distances gradually increased. The hand of fate
waved, conjuring one mirage after another. She was its bride.  
The sky was dark, the star-crossed ceiling its vast estate. 

Things had not happened yet. Pages unwritten said Just wait.        
But she learned— she too could choose a move, even a joyride.
Every day she walked in and out of that green garden gate,

straightening her spine and collar. How many steps to checkmate?
Water doesn't disappear, only shifts with riptides, moon-tides. 
The sky's broad ceiling, criss-crossed with stars— calculate

how long it took them to find their place, the space
for measuring the length and depth of their existence.
Every day she walked in and out of that green garden gate.
The sky's vast ceiling ticked with stars and constellates.

~ 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.