Author: Luisa A. Igloria

The sheep's mother said Uh-oh, no, 
perhaps not understanding that 

a disability isn't equivalent 
to a death sentence. And so 

at the farm they cobbled together 
a wheelchair, really a wagon 

on wheels that it learned to drive,
pushing its nose against the joy-

stick. The grass is always greener,
the clover sweeter, over on the other

side. You can talk to the horses
and the cows in the meadow, cause

a chicken commotion, bask in a grove
where gumballs and chestnuts fall.

Apples dot the field with extravagance.
The softer the flesh, the more easily 

bruised. The sweeter the ripening which 
ripens when it's no longer expected. 

I want to get to a future
where we'll worry more about  
patching cracks in the drywall 
than the collapsing of foundations, 
where our neighbors don't leave 
their houses for work with the fear 
they might not be able to return.

I want to get to a future 
where disagreement is just a sign
that there are many interesting paths 
to the same clearing, but each of us 
could still find the road, giving 
friendly recommendations for snack 
and dimsum stops along the way.

I want to know there's someone
who'll agree to come fix the broken
gate or help cut the grass, in the same 
way I'll gladly pick up groceries or send
a package for them in the mail. Aren't there 
those who have willingly and without question 
donated a kidney to save someone in need?

When we arrive at that future,
I want it to be a place where apology walks
hand in hand with repair of the splintered, 
with return of what was taken by force. Under 
that sky, perhaps we'll finally understand 
how to write history without muzzling 
the tribunes and chroniclers in our midst.

(1900-1905)

What did it take to turn
      puny horse trails into a road
             cutting through the Bued river
and up raw mountainsides, make 
      rock surrender to pickaxe, dynamite, 
             brute force? In unyielding rain,
soldiers' boots filled with mud.
      When scaffolds snapped, they and native
             laborers tumbled over the cliffs,
disappearing into a green but forlorn silence.
      In this land now the empire's new
             possession, what was it they signed up 
for, here so far away from their fathers' 
      farms in the midwest, the jobs turned down 
             at the glassworks factory in Poughkeepsie? 
Promise of a cool Eden in the northern pastures,
      a map drawn on top of existing landscape.
             Commerce arriving after dispossession. 

This cloudy day, you do 
deadheading of the brown and 
brittle blooms that never let go 
even as the cold strikes down all 
other vegetation. This small violence 
is supposed to encourage denser growth 
after winter, make vengeance out of 
luxuriant comeback. But this and other 
ordinary chores seem weightier or more 
premonitory than usual. The blades, 
precise but indifferent. On the stove, 
the kettle's strident hiss. In the mail, 
not a letter in flowing script but bill 
after bill, cramped with figures spelling 
out debt. You put away the shears, pour 
hot water into a mug for tea which you 
will drink with lemon and honey. 
You water the drooping pilea and 
in half an hour see it visibly revive. 
The laundry you fold smells of clean 
sunlight. Through the window, you see 
that the sky is still not blue, 
though it is still the sky. 

 
Our mothers' tears pool under the very 
bridges. In every pot, their griefs melt clean  
with marrow bones. They want to make

us strong, and so, feed fronds of torment 
to the fire, drop sacs of bile and muscled 
strips into the soup. Did you find a clutch 

of red roses bleeding on the snow, crickets 
interrogating piles of stuffed animals? Such 
are the times we live in. Not atria or cool, 

vaulted ceilings, no warm glow in windows 
but vigils lit by candle-flame. Oak, sycamore 
and pine line the avenues. Willow-braid 

and damask magnolia, pale fronds of grass along 
the shore. O moon floating detached above the broken 
skyline, will you not promise even one green leaf? 

Listen when philosophers talk 
about their memories of bunkers 
and bleak years, but also when

they speak of hope. Envisioning
the future helps us act in certain 
ways, so we might make that future 

happen— a world where mycelial nets 
underfoot give irrefutable proof 
of the impossibility of borders, 

where fields become living archives
of species we can name again in our 
own tongues. I'm not saying 

that atrocity did not happen, 
that there are those who didn't will-
fully withhold aid as they blitzed 

from world to world, torching what they
found for sport. I'm not saying forget how
destruction proceeds in methodical and

not random ways. The call to violence 
at times can sound deceptively like prayer. 
A congregation gathered on the steps turns

into a mob. History is a record. Poems
gather inventory of what we lose, grieve,
survive. This is how we remember.

- after Beckett


Here we are, making plans
to meet again soon in this new
year, to catch up over coffee or 
maybe take a walk on a day that slips
rare warmth between weeks of cold  
and miserable rain. As we did last 
time, we'll bring updates— stories 
of any small brightness despite 
layoffs and a son's crippling 
despair, the still raw grief 
of a widow almost a decade after 
her husband's passing. The news, 
yet again, of blatant injustice.
Disappearances and deaths 
in our neighborhoods, another 
family bereft of a mother tonight. 
What's worse is that evil, that snake 
slithering through the grass since 
the world began, has been ramping up
its falsehood campaign. How we should
just learn to wear something called 
resilience in the face of loss. How,
since everything in life is provisional
anyway, we should cultivate an attitude
of resigned acceptance— Too much. No use,
give up. Can't expect to change it. But
what is it that instinctively makes us
wrap our arms around each other, open our
hearts inside unbearable sorrow? In such 
holding, we feel the weight of what was 
taken, what could still be lost. If 
we did not hold each other, the world 
would truly have ended. We would not 
have the strength to set another place 
at the table, to wrap a blanket 
around the shoulders of the one 
who can't stop trembling. 

When I push open the screen door, plop
the garbage in the bin and snap the lid 

back shut, the neighbor's dog two 
houses over starts to bark. How tuned in 

it seems to the smallest shift in its universe. 
The sound it makes in reciprocation is either 

alarm, question, or warning. The crows, too, 
startle at my approach, though they are 

quicker to size me up and dismiss me 
as of no consequence to their foraging 

in the gravel. I wish I could meet 
the world with that kind of unerring 

intuition, prickle to a presence that could
either be kind or unkind, well-meaning or

mean— and in that heightened watchfulness, 
be more present. I know I've made my share of 

wrong judgments, been ungenerous when I 
could have shown more forbearance, less 

defensive snarl. The cold afternoon light 
still is light. The harsh weight of darkness 

is hours yet away, and like mercy, 
the moon makes an early show of its face. 

In the hours between midnight and morning
I dream of shadowed hills, the scent of night-
blooming datura spilling over our old home.

What was the question that nudged
me awake, that I know still
has no answer? 

I have a memory of pork 
smoked over embers, the mumbled
prayers of mambunong, rice

wine scattered on the ground 
for blessing; knives slicing meat
to dress in a bowl with lime and pepper.

My tongue is always bathed
with longing. Daughter, I can't remember 
anymore what it was that severed 

us from each other. The language
for what I want to say scrolls
into the ether but its root

is still there. I want to believe
the broth hasn't cooled. I want to believe
we still drink from the same bowl.  

Someone counted to seven, then
stopped. The great pyramid, the hanging
gardens of Babylon, a statue of Zeus.

The Temple of Artemis, the Colossus 
of Rhodes, the Lighthouse at Alexandria, 
the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus. 

Such grandeur. But how does the tiniest snail 
never scrape its head on the lintel no matter 
how many times it goes in and out the door?

Who taught the tuberose and the night
phlox to dress themselves with scent
after the sun goes down?

While you sleep, your brain eats up 
the debris it creates from doing all 
the complex things it does.  

A chicken was nearly beheaded 
by an axe which missed its jugular 
and most of the brain stem. 

For over a year it was fed 
with an eyedropper through
the odd-shaped hole in its neck.

Thousands of exhausting miles 
from the sea, salmon and trout 
struggle upstream to spawn.

Something about home— Wonder 
in the ordinary stones, the astonishment 
at how much the body can remember.