Author: Luisa A. Igloria

the forms of our diligence, the meek
demeanor, the tongue held in check
that pleased the elders. We held back
our appetites, letting others go first, 
whether that meant the heel of a loaf 
or a last pail of bath water. But it was 
their strange admiration of those unlike 
us—their friends'  fair children who spoke 
impeccable English and were fluent in
French or Italian, and knew how to be 
cheeky in all of them. They traveled. 
They carried themselves with a certain 
élan. It was the impossible, the alluring 
contradiction between home and the world. 
 

the heaviness and certainty of the impending.
Finally I took out the binder and started to enter
information that end of life planners think
will be the most useful to those who’ll have
to put my affairs in order. Let me tell you,
these things are not a breeze. I filled in perhaps
two pages. I haven’t reached the part where,
seeing the light, Dante might exclaim
that within its depths, he sees Bound by love
into a single volume, Pages that lie scattered
through the universe. OK Dante, I’m trying
to get it together. The wood is also dark
tonight, a storm bearing down, the sea
a typewriter carriage endlessly recording.

early morning, the red shutters
not yet flung open, everyone else 
in Vitebsk still asleep (except for someone 
relieving himself by the fence). A goat grazes
in the yard between the stable and the house.
Mist and fog cloak everything with the quiet 
of not-moving. If there's any ripening and harvest
in orchards and fields, this isn't in the picture.  
Neither is the war looming over Europe 
and the rest of the world.  But you and your wife 
rise into the powdery sky like something of joy 
that's escaped containment.  Like the landscape 
soon folding inward into cubes shows you a dimension 
it wants you to remember above everything else. 

~ after Marc Chagall

 

a mango flayed to its seed, a styrofoam box
with mounds of mashed potato. There are
such wonders sometimes on the sidewalk: 
a plastic knife and a melting tub of cream
cheese beside an everything bagel, pristine 
and unmarked by teeth. Amid the thickest
growth of leaves, the insides of ripe figs
spill out of themselves. A ransacking,
a feast, a drama enacted offstage or 
just out of earshot. If I feed you a TV
dinner, will you stay and tell me 
about all the books I haven't read? 
The loneliest food I've ever seen was one 
saltine cracker drowning in a bog of soup.

the midrib of the year, quavering bone 
dividing the rooms into before and after.
Or, history and who knows what comes 
next. The stoics argue that you should never 
allow the future to disturb you, for it will come 
to meet us, regardless. Or you'll run into it 
first, depending  on your willingness to receive 
without nostalgia. Morning light tints the walls
the same color as what leaks into the streets.
You swing your feet over the side of the bed
and they look for slippers, as if they had that 
small, separate autonomy. What does it mean
to live without asking, or expectation? You arms
slide into sleeves, lift a cup of water to your lips.

hotter today in the southeast than it was
in south Texas, according to the news.
The difference between dry heat and humid
heat isn't a matter of philosophical degree.
In 1911, train tracks buckled in the heat 
and roads paved with tar turned syrupy. 
As summer wears on and El Niño takes
hold, heat index charts are mostly fiery
orange. If it's not heat, it'll be lightning 
strikes or tornados. In the great heat
wave of 1936, clouds of blistered grass-
hoppers fell through Midwest skies. A line
in Revelation describes a sea of glass mingled 
with fire, no fleet of cruise ships at the ports.

the luck of the draw. Fortune you can acknowledge,
as long as it's good. A handful of luck supposedly
brings you more than a sackful of wisdom. Lucky
to be in the right place at the right time, rubbing
elbows with the (right/wrong) people. Then again,  
what worse luck could your bad luck have saved  
you from? No cat crossed your path, no bathroom
mirror fell and shattered on the floor. Add up all
the numerals in your house number. If the total
is a round number, congratulations. It seems
you made a sound real estate choice. Whereas
one day, the furniture and belongings of the people 
who lived three houses down got thrown out on 
the curb. Random or not, that was not lucky.
 

just a joke, wasn't meant to be serious.
Why can't you lighten up, why be so thin-
skinned? It's so unnecessary. Couldn't you 
just laugh along, be a good sport? It's just life. 
It's the loudest voice that gets to go on stage 
under the spotlights. It's the ones that say 
they went on their knees and then a vision
opened up of what God intends for them. Amen.
A Destiny made Manifest. It was a skirmish, not 
a fullblown war. It was for your own good. You 
wouldn't be here now enjoying the four seasons— 
summers picking vegetables and fruit, following 
the salmon in fall. Jumping trains winter and
spring, in this big country of big, blonde men.
 

all those years of managing. With a capital 
M. By myself. As in, taking on the various jobs 
of accountant, short order cook, paper shredder,
juggler, on-call first responder. I told myself, breathless 
just meant I was getting things done. A trip downstairs 
meant an ocular survey of what I could check off my list 
both going and coming. Lug a load of laundry,  start 
the machine. Empty the old coffee filter. Drain the catch 
basket. Put away clean dishes. Toss the half-bottle of fizzy 
water gone flat. Charge the twin pack of weed whacker 
batteries. I have perhaps a B average on bathroom stall 
refinishing, but  an A+ on bidet install. At the grocery,
there are marked-down trays of fish or chicken labeled 
Manager's Special. In my case, Hell yeah. 
 

nothing short of bizarre, but with equal parts
whimsy and genius. They're a kind of diorama,
a moving show, folding and unfolding little 
grey-haired aunties into scenarios—they fly 
in and out of kitchens crowded with soy sauce 
bottles, chopstick holders, plates of steaming 
omurice and jelly salad. They dive into luggage 
with more hidden creases than the laugh lines 
on the sides of their eyes. Next thing you know, 
the suitcase opens up again. One of them has 
a motorcycle helmet on. The other climbs up
a gallery wall to join other aunties installed as
an audacious kind of Mount Rushmore above
the welting. I am telling you this is a thing.