Author: Luisa A. Igloria

Not many sleep anymore
with the shutters open.

Sometimes at the grocery store,
near the rafters, there’ll be

an errant bird that wanders in
on some warm draft. It flutters

confused above the ordered glaze
of bell peppers and bumpy lemons,

the curled decline of greens.
I rouse from sleep late at night

and feel my way to the bathroom,
trying to recall what I know

of accidental things— what finds
the one seam in the lock, the loose

partition; the weakness in
the careful armor. And there isn’t

any particular explanation for why
a pigeon should be wandering the hallway

at 4 o’clock, yet there it is,
as the man snores in the guest room

and the woman lies in her own bed,
in sheets soaked with her own urine.

We push the shovel through the snow
to find the walk again, the border

of stubbled grass. On either side,
white banks grow. I can’t help

recalling that winter tale, the one
where the girl was taken under—

some fissure in the earth lined
with moss, lengthening drop

of dark shale. How far and how long
could a handful of red beads fall

before you’d hear their tinkle echo?
Our arms and thighs burn; late light

gilds the mounds we scrape and toss.
A stinging wind pushes the empty swing

back and forth, back and forth— the way
we repeat what we should have learned.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Cutting back.

a winged thing carved a hole in my heart.

I didn’t mind, I let it nest there
because it sang a small

defenseless song that lofted

marbles into the air. I wove them
into a tiara I wore on my hair,

not knowing yet how every note

of shimmering blue could drown
eventually in the wood. There is

that moment between two chords,

invisible space between a foreground
and what pounds beneath— and always,

one eternal tear that slides

down the middle of my chest
as the world turns and the sky

fills with the raucous cries of birds.

~ after “Once Upon a Time,” acrylic on canvas, 2016; Ulysses Duterte Jr.

Fog. Rain taps on the roof.
Someone says, it is the fingers

of our dead trying to remember
what it was like when cold

still touched them. Inside,
we sit huddled around the table.

When we long for moonlight we heat
small puddles of milk in mugs.

Why do we call it midnight
when no one knows what it is

that darkness cleaves
so one part falls

and the other,
falls away from?

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

It is impossible
because you cannot love it,
and yet you must do it.
How can you love it

when it asks of you
the impossible— To bring
water in a sieve, braid
a rope out of ashes,

carry fire or wind
in a paper house?
Last but not least,
and not always in the fine

print: to rip out your heart
or skewer it, return it
to its place, then
do it over again.

Why does the flesh of this peach
just yesterday so perfumed and perfect
now look like a small purse collapsing
into itself, and beginning to darken

to a shade reminiscent of sepia
on the table? Perhaps the warm
yellow wedge of light falling
so picturesquely on the bowl

of fruit through the half-moon
windowpane set into the kitchen door
has something to do with its too rapid
onset of decline. Perhaps, and this

is likely, it was on its way there anyway,
despite our good intentions now thwarted:
in other words, our intentions to take it
in all its glorious readiness, to slice it

into a bowl at the peak of sugary firmness.
And having ingested all of it, skin and flesh,
down to the pit, don’t we customarily sit back
and say its purpose has been most sweetly

fulfilled? Which is to say,
what it comes down to as the measure
of experience is mostly and still
our own: assortment of little yardsticks

against which the mercurial universe
schools us about accretion… So this slowly
wrinkling globe becomes differently endearing:
how unlike a hard, bright abacus bead

it wants to be; how it seems instead
to want to be cupped in its loosening
garment; to be held and only regarded
as if in remembrance before its dissolve.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Ministry of truth.

~ “everything changes, nothing is lost,” Katie Griersar (2014)

Look at their faces in the box
of old photographs— how young

and thin, and already with child;
how slender in loose second-hand

flannels, how vaguely sweet
the eyes not filled yet with any

knowledge of great shift or harm.
And here, his arm around her waist,

her neck caught in the moment after
tremor. There was a rainstorm that swept

every tin roof clean. A wind that set
the chimes in someone’s yard to beating;

a rivulet that swelled with water.
Now she can put them back without anger.

She can pass a mirror in a hallway
without turning completely away.

“…With wings as drifted snow, with eyes as flame.” ~ Basque carol

At midnight we lit six
morning glory firework wands

and watched their dying etch
brief swirls in the dark garden,

their passing light so swift
the movement of our wrists

could not even deal out all
the looped letters of our names—

What could we do with a whole
extra second added to the year’s

last minute? Each orange fizzling stub
dwindled to a stream of ash. In the morning,

not even a trace of their scattering
remained in the stubbled grass.

When the water recedes we see
the sludge at the bottom: a crust
of gray matter and castoff wrappers,
a yellow plastic gallon container,
the skin from downed tree limbs
unravelling. When the tide rises
the surface looks clearer.
None of this is of any real
consequence to the small fleet
of white wading birds picking
through the shallows there.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Fast away.

You may take your shoes off by the door
You may hang your coat on the rack
You may use the facilities
You may go upstairs and open
the first door on the left
You may lie on the sheets and cry
into the pillows
You may fall asleep and not
hear the bell for the evening meal
You may sit in the armchair
You may read and write by the window
and put a teakettle on the stove
You may draw the shades open
or you may keep them closed
You may open the door to the balcony
and sit on the wicker chair
You may cross out one line or rewrite
the same one ten times over
You may wrap yourself in a blanket
and go out to look at the stars
You may count down in silence
and around each letter of your name
You may sit in the warm bathwater
You may look at the ceiling
or close your eyes
You may listen as hard as you can
as frogs begin to sing in the ditch
You may leave with this last
note still ringing in your ears

 

In response to Via Negativa: Incipient.