Author: Luisa A. Igloria

“There are only 31 horse burials in Britain and they are all with men.”

Out of a pit, they’ve found a woman’s bones— whittled by time,
beaded with dust, clutching the ambered remains of a cow.

Was she matriarch, widow, wife? Did she die struck by illness or blight?
Archeologists say her wealth and status are proven by this cow.

Some days, I quip to friends and family that my name might as well be
Bob (short for Beast of Burden): but, life’s yoke being heavier than a cow,

would I really want to take it with me? In Chinese burials, the dead
(their spirits, that is) are ferried to the afterlife: not on cows

but in paper limousines inked with symbols for wealth; stuffed with coins, bills,
sweets, cigars, what one liked here enough to take to there; but not a cow—

In the winding Cordilleras I call home, the dead are neatly tucked among
the hills, with jars of betel nut and agate beads— never with a cow.

And a friend writes to remind me: in Hindu myth, should the population
be in danger, they’ll save the women, children, and their cows.

The cow that in this life was cow, does it remain the same? Does it dream
of feathered grass in the fields, of gnats, the low symphony of fellow cows

chewing their cud? They poke at beetles the color of jewels
—embellishment on face plates of sleeping mummies. The cow

as sacrifice, as plenty, as months of food and fat and solid warmth.
And the woman: how was she loved, missed, valued more than cow?

In response to Cow and woman found ... in Anglo-Saxon Dig.

Some words are only names, but some
are grenades of color— How else to explain
the corrosive red of dragonfruit, tart

and scaly pucker in each syllable of rattan,
pale, warning-light diminutions of the loquat,
lightning fire asleep but rousable in cobalt,

fermenting sweetness in ambrosia (and oh,
Ambrosia, weren’t you the long-legged girl
every boy on the street fell in love with

and could not wait to date)? And some names
are not merely words but decoys popping up
on the shore of bland expectation,

paint a little off, or streaking, or applied
to all the wrong places— For instance,
the students tonight doing freewrites

on language, begin to share: one says,
The guy I work out with at the gym
is Evian; his sister is Dasani, and all

his other siblings are named after
bottled water. And the student
whose mother works as a nurse

at a clinic pipes up, Once there was
a girl who pronounced her name like this:
Shi’thay-ed; Shi’thay-ed, but on the form

it read “Shithead.” And the class by now
has burst into uncontrollable farts
of laughter. And all the rest

of the evening they shake their heads
and ask, Really? Who names their child
Shithead, Shi’thay-ed, Shithead?

In response to Via Negativa, Remembering Rio.

most mornings, scorching
at noon. Then storms blow in
sowing rain, the cold
hard bluster of hail.

In response to small stone (104).

Courage and fear, those alternating currents. Like whips of lightning that stripe sheets of rain, the boom of close-by thunder. A rattly noise on all the roofs and windows: and we realize it’s hailing— I imagine chunks of ice like dice rolled in a cup, bouncing on the pavement, into the ditch lined with weeds. It’s hard to see on the road, through rain’s white noise and the Friday evening rush: everyone wants to get home, to flee to somewhere dry and dim, backlit by tea lights and amber-colored bottles of beer. Somewhere, a siren. A police car flashes its emergency lights every few seconds, steering motorists away from the flooded underpass. Umbrellas are no match for the wind. Secretaries from the engineering building wade into the flooded street, their high-heeled sandals tucked into their lunch bags. Be careful, someone yells out a window. Are you almost here? texts my friend. It may take a while, I say. We’ll get there when we get there. Nothing to do but ride this out, observe: we’re here, we’re here, still here.

In response to small stone (103).