Author: Luisa A. Igloria

I too believed: not magic,
but the will of the mind yoked
to the merest prayer or wish.

In my heart, too many saints
before which votives were lit.
When my child languished in her bed

not wanting to live, with my own hands
I tore the bark from certain trees
and boiled them into tinctures

for her bath. In dreams, cruel oracles
spun wildly around the hearth, desperate
to guess our names. I climbed to the roof,

bonfire of wild fragments. I thrust
the hot iron of myself in the maw of night,
not caring anymore. Not backing down.

In response to Via Negativa: Sleeping on it.

Piecing together the way a word
arrives on the threshold

and then maybe is followed
haltingly by another; how a memory

might hold a little water, the sound
of a particular morning long ago

when the child woke to a tumult
in the household. The way a hot wind

that comes in the middle of the day
reminds her of catastrophe

and ghosts standing behind
the drapery, mouthing tremors—

When she hears others talk
of the important work of poetry

she wants to exit the french doors
and sit on the balcony to throw

pieces of bread to the birds, to count
how many shirts are drying on the line.

At the edges of the yard, some grass
and early daffodils coming back.

The stenciled arms of the maple
pushing out rounded points.

Even the river’s dark
surface made choppy by wind—

like skin a hand passing over
has recently roused.

In response to Via Negativa: Earful.

~ for Dave Bonta

Does a seed anthologize
the customs of trees?
I’ve read books but sometimes
the sea’s voice is more insistent.

When I peer through shop
windows, I’m startled by my image
warping around the dusty hip
of a teapot.

There is never a prescribed
time for a foot to blurt
its confessions in the narrow
toe box of a second-hand shoe.

When I bend to investigate
a dead bird on the walk,
I remember a gate of feathers
and behind it, a face made of milk.

In the dark room,
something brushes against
my bare hand. The moon fluoresces
before I can pull on the cord.

In response to Via Negativa: Capital punishment.

3

Confetti and streamers, jubilant change
proclaimed from windows in the business districts.

In far-flung provinces, a more tempered watch—
change comes slower where people live

in the shadowy in-between. Rebels still populate
the hills, come out to collect their tithe. Put

a gun in the hands of anyone with a grievance
and take a gamble on the outcome. Who lost

their land, their titles, in the takeover?
Such business goes back and farther back

to feudal times. I know of a wealthy clan
that once laid claim in northern territories.

What underwrote their vow to side with the people?
Their own fall from grace, their dispossession.

2

Always the work of history: pustule that comes to a head
and breaks. Impatient flood, gathering waters that finally

break the dam; conflagration goaded by individual
sparks. The night the dictator and his family flee

their after all flimsy palace, the people swell
the streets, pushing past barricades— right up

to the gates which they find can be scaled and breached.
Students and activists, welders and plumbers; cerveza

drinkers, slum dwellers; shop girls, out of work carpenters,
taxi drivers. In the innermost chamber, dialysis machines

and oxygen tanks. Jewels, shoes, bank notes their papers
of state. And on the mountainside, dark halo of crows

circling. When the dispossessed return, they pour the blood
of slaughtered animals on his bust to exorcise his evil.

1

Baguio— In Malcolm Square that January we stood
among others dressed in bright (not sickly) yellow:

yellow t-shirts, bandannas, visors; and waited
in the streets for the slain senator’s widow

and her retinue. Nervously we scanned the faces
in the crowd— who was friend? informer? potential

traitor?— so previously unaccustomed to being
this publicly exposed. But here among soldiers in drab

and camouflage, police on foot with megaphones, light
rain starting to fall— none among those gathered

thought to leave. Evening had fallen when a wave of sound
came down the avenue— her name a chant on everyone’s lips,

her sign raised in the chilled air by five thousand hands: L
for Laban (Fight). The future a rift, a hope that suddenly electrified.

In response to Via Negativa: Repressed memory syndrome.

I listened to the reporter on the radio
interviewing volunteers who’d gone to towns
devastated by super typhoon Haiyan—
how the grim business of rebuilding
has to do with lives, not just infrastructure
even if across the channel there might be
churches open again, schools, shops, clinics.
Like nothing they ever saw, is all they can say.
Every form blown open, every home turned
inside out. A young soldier remembers
how a woman and her two children
climbed into an empty refrigerator
and paddled with their hands
through a river of debris.