Author: Luisa A. Igloria

(a cento)


12

The stones, twittering distantly, speak to me

but how do you describe a color
you've never been allowed to see?

If not utter stillness, at least dedication

This song is not for your fight but it is a song
from the dark, landing in the creek

Thank you, objects, for your autobiographies.

I understand. I do. I used to lie back
so much. Let us strike, again, the pose of plenty.

I could have listened forever. But before long the dreams

switched to airplane mode, the atmosphere returned
pure as a body saddled with sentience.


Line sources:
Sarah Giragosian, Joshua Jennifer Espinoza, Anna Lena
Phillips Bell, Dean Rader, James Crews, Susan Firer,
Lisa Fay Coutley, Rose McLarney, Lynne Knight, Matthew
Prior, Kristine Ong Muslim

(a cento)

11

How a river disappears into the night and is never still.

I asked, have you ever been approximated, does it

matter,

"Here" is just a part of the soul your body shows to me.
and someone memorizing hard how to ask for it again.

You thought your hunger mattered

A fig eaten like a kiss in a stairwell. Your lips, potable wishes. 
          The quiet

to feel the flame of breath gutter but keep burning.

And what are your parties like without me?
But if you're waiting for me,

nine little black dresses and a birthmark
as if some vital clue needed to be found.

Let me love the cold rain's plinking.

The stones, twittering distantly, speak to me.


Line sources:
Chi Lechuan, Gillaume Apollinaire, Jennifer Nelson, 
Lisa Russ Spaar, Ada Limon, Paul Tran, Kendra DeColo,
Traci Brimhall, Lee Upton, Annie Stenzel, Lynn
Schmeidler, Edward Denniston, Maggie Smith,
Sarah Giragosian

(a cento)


10

Beneath me, a male world thrums with every strung kind.

One man asks me to the dance floor, one asks me

Amid the stubble and the stones,
among cinquefoil, as the toothed moon rises

Darkness spills across the sky like an oil plume.


You       who I don't know     I don't know how to talk to you

something encloses the impossible in a fable
and illuminates what's outside it

You don't see until you're cut.
Then you begin, slowly, to read the whole story.


A human is a meager thing
in such immensity, the way a little shoe is small on the stones

How a river disappears into the night

             And is never still

          

Line sources:
Nicholas Wong, Rigoberto Gonzalez, Stanley
Kunitz, Louise Gluck, Craig Santos Perez,
Jean Valentine, Juliana Spahr, Mahmoud Darwish, 
Cornelius Eady, Mary Oliver, Chi Lechuan, 
Guillaume Apollinaire

(a cento)



9

We're skilled at living in the ruins of our cities.

There is shame in it, the craving
for prestige.

Later is more difficult to picture,
And now that the sun is going
the body's betrayals piling up faster each year, 

some bills marked Urgent!
some Immediate Attention!

                                         The mice ransack
our rations, score them with teeth-marks. In the kitchen, fire

the fossil of your stopping in the wax of the candle

Yet the wars continue. In the West Bank
a child blown to bits, playing by the sea.

Beneath me, a male world thrums with every strung kind.



Line sources:
Carmen Calatayud, Diane Seuss, Jehanne Dubrow, Olatunde
Osinaike, Nancy Naomi Carlson, Eamonn Lynskey, Julia
Bouwsma, John W. Sexton, Rafael Campo, Nicholas Wong

(a cento)


8

What does it mean to be rootless?

ragged sheep
huddled in the rain

Now the empty frames, the cream of margins
in the way no frame can minimize nor contain horizon

I never feel so alive as when I am

the eye of God is planted between my brow

a blue river flowed above me at night
what if it's loneliness that keeps me alive

That's why I'll never go back

We see around things when we're seeing well

The thing about instability is we rarely see it

we could wake up under the right pattern of stars.
We're skilled at living in the ruins of our cities.



Line sources:
Jane Wong, Damir Sodan, Jenny Xie, David 
Maduli, Youna Kwak, Ashley M. Jones, 
Matthew Zapruder, Amorak Huey, Brynja
Hjalmsdottir, Matthew Cooperman, 
Rachel Sierra, Ewa Lewis, Carmen Calatayud

(a cento)

7

Singularity in passage.

A body of water is, in the end, bu a field
That which in you that was cut

Undisguise me, said the stone to the river

But how long can one return to the sky, how long does it take to reach

burnished grasses, bending slightly, my feet crush crickets, trample

Like time it is everywhere

We love in silence
I think of my mother sitting in a front row of folded chairs

under the silk wind

I have to close my eyes.
I'm alone in the night again thinking
                    
                                   what
does it mean to be rootless?


Line sources:
Marija Knezvevic, Ariana Benson, Rebecca 
Morgan Frank, Brynn Saito, Yu Xiuhua, Sarah
Audsley, Alice Fulton, CD Wright, Bill Mohr,
Claudia Prado, Todd Davis, Brendan Joyce,
Jane Wong

(a cento)


6

we're almost there, a man says to a child
Go and find solace in sleep.
A kind of silence lit for only a moment.

I love you I love you even in my sleep

        I am a good student. Voted most likely to try

Sunlight fills the empty lot.

Matter teaches me to sing by singing in the emptiness. Yes it does.

Will you stay until the anemones fold back into the land

Surely it is a privilege to approach the end
One window is enough for me

opening another world of greenery and vines

So small, so precious. Something to behold.

If you have grieved you have loved. Twinned,
Singularity in passage.


Line sources:
Jorie Graham, Robert Chiwemba, Marcelo Hernandez
Castillo, Kim Hyesoon, Traci Brimhall, Janice
N. Harrington, Bruce Bond and Dan Beachy-Quick,
Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, Louise Gluck, Forough 
Farrokhzad, Danusha Lameris, Joan Kwon
Glass, Joanna Klink, Marija Knezvevic

(a cento)

5

It has been this way so long

the dead earth candling its sorrows
the way a mother cradles the child

My mind has a slow metabolism, it is slow

What would it be to live a life in which even one petal was unfurled?

The monumentality of this

We come into the world and there it is.

I look at a tree: I see, I sense, I know

      And, when the winged gods finally interfere

how spring undoes the year like a knot

I am tired of feeling guilty; I am tired of running up a tab.
for beauty, I cried, and leaned my elbows on the balcony

I could praise the present tense and begin again.

we're almost there, a man says to a child



Line sources:
Marissa Davis, Gillian Cummings, Joseph
Campana, Rick Barot, Bhanu Kapil, Julia
Guez, Juliana Spahr, Tomaz Salamun, Carey
Van Landingham, Brian Teare, Diana 
Khoi Nguyen, Pere Gimferrer, Steven
Leyva, Jorie Graham

(a cento)

4

                    Every dusk,
the longing.

Out in the sky, a comet flails.

Some thirsts should not be quenched.

You might still have something to say to me.

the stairs feel as if they descend further than they do.

or feel like a room in themselves, an afterthought.

Is it foreboding if
             it's factual

I live in intricacies of the obvious. Into which I permit

The most beautiful thing about being
all by myself, is that nobody is there

One day we will be allowed to exist

it has been this way so long



Line sources:
Ayesha Asad, Isabel Baafi, Rewa Zeinati,
Mebh McGuckian, Stephanie ANderson, Aditi
Machado, Izzy Casey, Jennifer Espinoza,
Marissa Davis

(a cento)

4

                Every dusk,
the longing.


Out in the sky, a comet falls.

Some thirsts should not be quenched.

You might still have something to say to me..

the stairs feel as if they descend further than they do,
or feel like a room in themselves, an afterthought.

Is it foreboding if
            It's factual

I live in intricacies of the obvious. Into which I permit
The most beautiful thing about being
all by myself, is that nobody is there

One day we will be allowed to exist

It has been this way so long



Line sources:
Vievee Francis, Ayesha Asad, Isabelle Baafi, Rewa
Zeinati, Mebh McGuckian, Stephanie Anderson, Aditi 
Machado, Izzy Casey, Jennifer Espinoza, Marissa
Davis