Author: Luisa A. Igloria

This late in our lives, the sugar still draws
us to its source. 

This side of it, I look into the rain 
and my thoughts are always and to the end, 
of you.

Can someone tell me what rain is
besides weeping? 

Precipitate
means both the cause of falling and flowing, 
as well as headlong, hasty. 

In his room, your sister's child is reading 
the first of a long series of novels 
aloud to himself. He is still 
unhurried; he tells himself
he will finish.

There are many bright pictures
when I think of you at that age—
so many more than the ones
brushed with rain.

" Over one hundred thousand humanoid robots will be deployed 
in the real world." - "5 AI Predictions For The Year 2030," Forbes,
March 10, 2024



They are in warehouses, moving crates 
and boxes; or in assembly lines, flipping 

cars over with one arm then welding, painting, 
sealing. In Japan, there's a robot whose out-

stretched arms help lift residents in a care home 
out of bed and into their walkers. Little round

vacuum cleaners spin all over the floors
of houses, only occasionally bumping into

corners or falling down the stairs. At a marina
country club in Singapore, robot waiters bring 

chicken rice or chilli crab to your table. They're here 
now, but nothing ever completely surrenders. 

Our hearts still ache when we look into the vastness 
of space or hear water lapping against the shore at night.

I want to be able to say as you say 
              that something has purpose, 
is needed, will come to no harm.
               I think that rather than belief,
this is called active hope—action
               being a setting forth in 
motion, the carrying out of an act,
               a deed. As when a father
wraps himself around his child 
               as they cross the border, 
hiding in the boot of a car; as when 
              a guard peers in then shuts 
the trunk, waves to the sentry 
              at the gate as he yells All clear, 
nothing here! and we know that each 
              of them carried such a seed, 
each one had a moment to decide 
              what he could do with it.

 
I don’t know if poems are conversations
           with God, though I tell my students to think
of poetry as a way to enter a conversation 
           that has been going on through the centuries,
but one in which they can add their voices. 
           At this point, I try to think of a party
analogy, though I have never been very good
           at parties. More likely, I would be among
those who sit on the edge of a couch pretending
           to nibble thoughtfully on an hors d'oeuvre, 
one among a rapt circle listening to the life of any 
          party pulling out one brilliant silk square 
after another from inside his sleeve as beautiful
          birds of thought flutter in the air.

When all the guests are gone and we have gathered
          the napkins, piled the glasses on trays, and wiped
the counter clean, I want to ask those birds a question 
          (where have they gone?) which is really two 
questions, or more—What is the best way to enter, 
          and what is the best way to end? I’m asking 
about poems, of course; but also about the beautiful
          chaos past the middle of this life. One part of me
loves order: an empty hamper, the laundry folded, the sink 
          scrubbed clean. Another part of me loves improvising.
This one turns off the 6:30 alarm and goes back to bed; it wants 
          to return to a dream where I am having conversations with 
people I love who are gone. One of them says don’t hold back,
          spend it all now; another says wait and see, there’s more.     

Straight up is how I'm supposed to pull
the weight from the floor, how my arms 

are supposed to push the dumbbells up
and away above my shoulders— a clean

line, says the trainer: work the deltoids, engage 
the back muscles, tighten the glutes and core. 

What I've heard about people growing older— taking 
a fall, breaking a wrist, a knee, a hip— isn't mainly what 

drove me here; I don't suddenly want to run a marathon,  
hike the Pyrenees, or swim the English Channel. I just want 

the strength to pull my trash bins to the curb, heft 
grocery bags without stumbling; look forward 

to walking around foreign cities I've always wanted to visit:
nipping in and out of museums, bookstores, and coffee-

shops; falling into bed after a whole day of exploring, then
waking up in a body excited at the prospect of doing it again. 

The yolk and white returned to the un-
damaged chamber. Spacecraft launched

beyond escape velocity, crossing
the Kármán line. That a man in a pressure

suit planted his feet and a flag on the moon
while I was learning two-digit addition

and subtraction at the kitchen counter.
Years later, that I birthed not one but three 

daughters; and each time the threads 
suturing the episiotomies close, melted 

back into my body (self-healing, the doctor 
called it). That I sat in a high-ceilinged room 

and nearly signed a document laid on two
sheets of carbon paper, saying it was my fault 

my marriage did not prosper—this being 
the only way I was told I could apply for 

annulment. In an earthquake, that the firewall 
cracked, roof to foundation; and the dining 

cabinet slid from one wall to the other but 
not a single glass shattered. Every year,

storms flooded poor, makeshift houses 
around the quarry, but every year, they were 

rebuilt. And I remarried, though I swore I'd 
never do so again; and bore another daughter 

when I was 40. That I am still alive somehow,
after a lifetime of breaking and mending.

"Exaltation is the going" ~ Emily Dickinson


How many months, years now, 
has she scoured the countryside 
for traces of her lost 

loves? She's leaning more,
day by day, toward trails 
bordered by nothing 

more copious than vegetation,
devoid of signposts to a life
where everyone just learned 

the roles they were expected 
to play, then passed these 
down to whoever came 

after them. How many rule 
books have been broken, 
how many rituals 

revised? Let those who don't 
wish to be found remain 
in their kingdom 

of braided walls. Let her 
choose to inhabit her own time,
stop hanging gauze in each tree;

let her eat and drink simply, sleep 
and wake while she can, walk 
by the water under the moon.

She is tired of the mole-
blind days, the silence 
and cold of winter broken

only intermittently 
by the rasp of ice 
sliding off the roof,

or the rare snowplow 
diverted to these smaller 
residential streets. Once, 

she may have thought
she could survive on a diet
of clear broth, herbal tea,

fruit whose insides 
you could pare thin as 
the skin of windowpanes.

Who, again, is enforcer
of her removal from 
the world of normal

mothers and daughters, 
her isolation in a cave
of her own displacement?

She pours some flakes 
of cereal into a smooth white bowl, 
tops them with a surfeit of berries.

- Hedychium coronarium J. Koenig 
(Ginger Lily, Flor de mariposa)


This one
grows wild, wrapping its heady 
scent in circles around the untended

garden. Among branches of loblolly 
pine, a cadre of yellow-crowned 
night  herons, watching.

It is always the case that in myth, 
for whatever reason, a girl 
is changed  after 

disobeying some rule. 
Perhaps she survives, but 
suffers from being herself.  

No matter. She keeps
the softness of her hands 
white-sheathed, in green blades.

What you named, you must have loved 
enough to name: to press onto the form,

a languaged version of the form which then
you can write in flowing script across the top

of a postcard, or fold into a letter— Letter
being both the name of the missive addressed

to the one whose name you love because you also
love the person, as well as the name of the inked 

units making up the name. Copper or midnight
blue, liquid black, lay the letters down so their tails 

scroll into each other. Hope that when you release it
in the mail, it finds its destination; that the letters

don't run, that the writing's legible, that the one
you're writing to is still there when it arrives.