Author: Luisa A. Igloria

Labyrinthitis is caused by the inflammation 
of the labyrinth, a maze of fluid-filled 
channels in the inner ear. 


I threw up into a plastic bag
all the way down the mountain 
road, six hours from the city.
When I was done, my insides  

felt completely wrung. Not only
was I lightheaded— also, I thought
the light glancing off the car's
side window was a sword or

the finger of God. Now I know
that the tingling in my palms was
probably from dehydration, and not  
some fearful prelude to a rapturing. 

Imagine the body rattling in the air, 
in the throes of its disintegration— 
though we're told the soul can neither 
be created nor destroyed.

~ after Mercedes López

I've come to love the milky taste 
of tea with no actual milk in it, 

and the tang of salt in the air on dry days
in the mountains. What are the scaffolds 

on which we build if not the ghosts 
of magnificent cities, whose blueprints

sycophants and tyrants tried but failed
to obliterate? Here is a lattice studded

with diamond points of light, an oceanic 
generation of forests. I want to see 

not monuments but grids conducting  
the hum of a different electricity, lanes

and highways overlaid with cool moisture;
every pewter cell of night cast open.

Human: mid-15c., humain, humaigne, "human," from  
Old French humain, umain (adj.) "of or belonging 
to man" (12c.), from Latin humanus "of man, human," 
also "humane, philanthropic, kind, gentle, polite; 
... in part from PIE *(dh)ghomon-, literally 
"earthling, earthly being," as opposed to 
the gods (from root *dhghem- "earth") 
                               - etymonline.com



Given a choice to do the right 
thing, what is it that people do? 
At Villamor air base before the former 

president is flown to face the music 
at the international criminal court, his wife
and daughter scream "Humane, humane,"

stalling for time. He's an octogenarian 
now; his health is poor, he's waiting for 
his children, because because because—
 
Police close ranks and bodies form a shield 
but not a weapon clicks in place. His rights 
are read to him, unlike the thousands 

he ordered shot because "Human rights, 
son of a bitch." A milky fog, a kind of gauze 
bandage, drapes over this ordinary day. A dog

limps down the alley. A partly disemboweled
squirrel's plastered on the road, syrupy
rot beneath the traffic stop. 

Fortune can be a fickle lover, 
can be a beggar standing outside 
the gate in blood-stained rags, 

waiting to turn the tables on you. 
It can be a miser who keeps an eye, 
two feet, two hands on his hoard 

of coins because he thinks the world 
is only out to impoverish him. The sun 
shines on his back and on the bustling 

city, but he won't be allowed to buy a stick 
of cotton candy on the beach or a golden 
bullet for the gun in his secret pocket. 

Fortune this week is the despot shuffled
off a plane and into a cell, there to await 
trial; while in the hallway, his wife 

pleads for mercy. Fortune pulls a sword 
out of a gleaming cloud as if to smite 
the mountains and part the sea and all

else in its path. Every blade has two edges,
every sky a moon and sun. Fortune slaps  
one cheek then asks you to turn the other— 

a game it never seems to tire of. Fortune says
this is one way to rid yourself of illusion, 
and prepare for the breakthrough just ahead.  
 

The trains of Norfolk Southern rumble 
past the new cafe. It's the same line 
that carried vinyl chloride in 2023, 
when something overheated and 38 cars 
derailed on the edge of East Palestine, 
Ohio. Think of the rain that must have 
hissed and crackled in the aftermath. 
Of dark plumes rising into the earth's 
free troposphere, as families packed 
their children and pets into cars
and drove away. A couple of years after
cleanup, some people have returned 
but some have stayed away. I don't 
blame them. How does anyone know 
the earth has no more toxins, 
if air and water particles are 
no longer sheathed in emissions? 
When even one coupler misaligns 
and a railcar wheel slips the track, 
your mind runs away with it— You won't 
even have time to blow kisses or wave 
goodbye, in the brief moment of cartoon 
suspension after you're run off a cliff. 
 

"...you are not as heavy as the cup of earth, 
not placid as is the cup of water, not 
turbulent as is the cup of air..." 
                   ~ on the Four of Cups, Rider Tarot



In the card, the man seated crisscross 

under a tree wears a mildly petulant 

expression. A hand emerges out of a cloud, 

offering a draught from a golden chalice. 

In the foreground, three other cups in a row 

might mean he's already drained them. Did he 

not like the flavor in any? Does he no longer 

care for the offer of another chance? Under

its tunic waistcoat, the tired heart looks  

for the hinge in every conflict, the signs

saying it's time to push out the long skewers 

that have turned it into nothing but a plump 

pincushion. Just look outside: someone has raised 

an arbor, started to deck it with flowers and fruit. 

The mascot of my school is a lion; a monarch,
to be exact. Meaning king, the creature who sits
atop the food chain in the wild. Except its statue 
on the quad has no cojones; just a rough undersurface 
of concrete. Is this departure from anatomical 
correctness intentional? A conservatism made
sure the mermaid mascots around this port 
city are flat: flat-hipped, flat-chested, no tit-
illation of boobs beneath painted bandeaus. 
It's not clear when balls was first used  
to mean both the possession and lack of bravery 
or nerve. Decades ago, my ex pushed my father 
against the wall and swore lukdit mo to his face, 
meaning dickhead. We were living with my parents 
and he was angry at not being the man of the house. 
I didn't have the nerve to speak up against this
injustice. Perhaps I hadn't grown my own balls yet.
But really, I had not yet come to understand 
how strength, like in the Rider tarot, can be 
a woman subduing the fearsome beast so it lets her 
pat its head and scratch its chin, while the symbol 
for infinity whirls gently above their heads.  

"...late 14c., prouynen, proinen, of a bird, "to trim 
the feathers with the beak;" of a person, "to dress 
or groom oneself carefully," from an extended or 
transferred sense of Old French proignier, 
poroindre "cut back (vines), prune" — etymonline.com


They tell Mark, we have no tall ladder, 
no tools to dismember the limbs of the tree: 
this annual pruning before spring's promise 
of regreening, so summer will be full of fruit. 

They also show him three planks on the deck's 
back steps— ends rotted through, middles soft— 
they need replacing. Along another length, 
dark streaks which call for power washing. 

He will cut, he will replace, he will fix
what needs fixing without fanfare; an hour
here and there in the weeks ahead, after 
his day working at his construction 

sites. They will pay him the honest cost 
of his labor by the hour, plus materials. 
The arrangement suits all of them. They come 
from people with histories of migrant labor—

people who've bent to furrows in the soil 
for ten cents a day and climbed the roofs 
of orchards when everyone else declined; 
people who've always struggled 

to make do with less. But today, as he
sits on the bottom step, he pauses; pulls out
his phone and tells them he's just returned 
from the islands, where he had to claim 

the body of his son from the morgue; 
arrange cremation, and then for the ashes 
to be sent to him. Only twenty, felled
by bullets after his own family 

kicked him out into the streets.
The photo he shows them leaves 
no doubt this child grew from 
the tree that is his father. 

Tall and willowy of build, angular 
jaw, smooth skin; so young. Eyes 
already shadowed by knowledge of what 
the world exacts by way of maintenance.   

Sometimes I am a sieve; I sift the day 
       into smaller pieces that can fall 
more softly onto the clay. At times 
       I am a raucous cawing, staking 
territory in the trees. Today I am an ivory 
       handkerchief edged in lace, beautiful 
heirloom stained with tears. Hand wash,
       cold water only; lightly iron.

"The Great Wave off Kanagawa," Hokusai, 1831;
on a dishcloth from Maruyama Fiber Industry, Japan


How slender the boats beneath the cresting
     waves; how bent over the oars the people
in them must be. What they do is more
     necessity than recklessness— bring in 
the daily catch, plow a path through ebb 
     and flow; avoid the treachery of rocks 
and undertow. Wave upon wave upon wave  
     breaks against the mountain's solemn  
shape. Where do they get the courage to say 
     goodbye, when no one knows if evening 
brings them back unscathed? I think of tiny
     lantern lights in windows on the shore;
and above, dark sapphire sweep gathering  
     the spill and swirl of fractured light.  

 
~ with thanks to Nini Teves Lapuz