Author: Luisa A. Igloria

Hodegetria (Ὁδηγήτρια, Gr.) —
       "She who shows the way" 


Our names will be carved on the base 
          of the grave marker in the family plot—
     right now, for those of us still around,
birth year followed by a hyphen, then
           a clean space (to be filled in when 
     it's time). The year I was born, these 
251 acres were consecrated as burial 
           ground. The name is taken from Jasna
     Góra, a church in Poland where a black
Madonna and Child painted on linden panels
           preside over the altar. Two gashes 
     stripe her right cheek. There are more  
on her neck: wounds sustained from an  
           attempted theft in the 1400s. Mere
     strokes, wing-like smudges. But I believe
moths are always a visitation from our
           ancestors; and once, as I sat vigil 
     by my father's casket, a hummingbird 
brushed the glass briefly then was gone—   
           an apparition. I am surprised that I 
     don't think this writes an earlier order 
for our deaths, though our names will, 
           one day, truly mark the spaces where 
     we'll be laid to rest on that bright hill.

 
Pleasure boats circumnavigate a man-made 
lake. At the edge of the frame, assorted 
scenes of ordinary life: ice candy vendor, 
mother pushing a sleeping child in a stroller. 
Flies circle a sticky puddle of melted sugar. 
Willow branches bend low enough to touch. You 
know the smell of rain and the flicker of heat
that occasionally precedes thunder. 

In the open, in plain 
sight, can be the best 
place to hide.

Cows in blue harnesses attached to helicopters rotate in midair. 

They are being airlifted out of the valley because a glacier 
has just collapsed on an entire village in the Alps. 

There is logic to this, but what is the first point in 
the syllogism? the last? 

I wish I could say How funny or How strange or even Words 
fail me.

In the yard, runways of mud. Evidence of tunneling. I suppose
it makes sense to try to live underground.

Rilke wrote: If we had to exist to become the one we love,
what would the heart have to create? 

The idea gives me goose bumps— that everything 
I love, including myself, I would have to also somehow
bring to life in the world.

When we invited the parish priest to bless our house,
he put a flask of holy water into the child's hand. 

Go ahead, he said. It's you who will be living 
in this space. 

        On a weekly radio show about words,
a caller asks about the use of amount
        of versus number of. She is annoyed
when she hears people say things like
        There was a large amount of people 
at the protest rally yesterday, or What
        is the amount of books that have been 
banned under this administration? The show's 
        hosts agree: countable nouns should be
used for things or people to which we can apply
        some discrete unit of measurement;
and uncountable nouns for quantities 
        that can only be measured as a whole, 
like water, or sunlight, or time. But they also 
        remind the caller of how language 
is always evolving— now we use words 
        that used to mean entirely different  
things: a spinster used to refer to someone  
        who spun thread; in "Henry V," there's  
a line that goes I love the lovely bully — apparently, 
        it used to mean sweetheart or darling, not
someone who intimidates or harasses through  
        aggression. There and their, its and it's,
your and you're— same, or different? Mantel, the lintel 
        or decorative shelf above a fireplace, where you 
could put little framed pictures. Mantle, a cloak or 
        shawl; or that part of the earth between 
the surface and its superheated core— where scientists  
        have recently discovered two large, continent-
sized structures. Made of oceanic crust and 
        other unknown elements, they've quietly
thickened under our feet through millennia; and we
        don't know yet how exactly, someday, they'll  
turn inside out everything else we know of this planet. 

"The federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour."
                              - www.usa.gov


      Shouldn't we just be sitting
doing nothing— sitting pretty 
      in a garden or before a fire,
nicely balancing risk and reward? 
      We might take a quick look at 
an investment portfolio before booking 
      tickets to Iceland or the Azores. 
I read on my Kindle as I walked 
      going nowhere on a treadmill
at the gym: You spend your life
      accumulating things... then 
you have to maintain them. Likewise,
      will we spend all our lives 
maintaining our lives, for the sole
      reason we'll wind up in
the shadow of the church tower, 
      next to our departed kin? 
The Iowa senator defending Medicaid 
      cuts said We're all going to die, 
for heaven's sakes. Sure, maybe,
     but before that happens, I guess
we'll be required to work 80 hours
     a month— nothing like a life
of hard work before we die and go to
     either Jesus or the tooth fairy.

You were a disease without name, I was a body gone flame...
                                 - Meghan O'Rourke


In a dream, I screamed myself hoarse
       though I didn't make a sound. I was home,
inside walls and behind doors with little
       fan-light windows at the top— each like 
half of a pie. If I put two together,
       would they fit perfectly like a key
into its lock? Would another universe
       open, in which there is no pain; or
if there is, it's the kind we could name,
       and by naming, vanquish? May you
live in interesting times, peals 
       the bell of a blessing. It suffers from
no vertigo no matter how many times it rams
       its body within the hollow which holds it.
It lives on its own echoes, which every ear
       in a five- to ten-mile radius can hear.  

This last evening of May, the sky rains a hard 
volley of ice. Against the gutter, syllables 
ping louder than rice grains— but not louder 
than the drumming in my brain. The wind makes 
intermittent noises, like it's stuttering. As if 
it can't decide how to punctuate its sentences, or 
how to push the carriage to the left so it can begin 
again. The days are supposed to get lighter, but 
when night falls, it still falls hard. Tomorrow 
there's supposed to be a solar storm with possible 
radiation; tectonic, vascular, communication impacts. 
What kind of rain will fall then? Beyond sight, light 
clears and blurs, congeals into blocks like jelly,
drips into pools that can never get enough of it 
to drink. I have a burnished stick carved from a gourd, 
its once soft insides studded with the sound of falling 
stars, the bleat of accordioned glaciers, the ghostly chorus
made by animals leaving parts of themselves on the ground.  
 

the age of your college teacher when she
                 was about to retire? Strange  
word, that: retire, as if to get spent,
       exhausted all over again, but good; 
from whatever exertions caused you
                 to tire in the first place.
As in second wind, perhaps? or as in
       those kinds of physical activity 
that increase the height of derivable
                 pleasure the more you sweat
and pant? A sheen breaks out over your fore-
       head, down your back; all your little valleys 
and the fireworks in the sky. I used to quip:
                 if we're going to die, we might 
as well die of pleasure. I'd say it again
       even now, though some think the store of 
the world's true remaining pleasures is dwindling 
                 by the minute, maybe even by the second. 
You wonder what tidbit remains that hasn't been  
       colonized; or what the ultra rich tech bro
was thinking when he first decided he would suck out 
                 his son's plasma, believing it will keep 
him young forever. Then there's a celebrity who uses 
       "medical leeches" to clean her blood. How
could you bear to drink powdered shakes for the rest
                 of your life? You swoon at the slightest 
thing— like when, at the Greek festival, a vendor hands you 
        a toothpick dipped in honey from the sap of fir 
trees. The note it carries says not only flowers, not only  
                nectar but a warm wood can open in your mouth.

Some days, I ask myself where exactly 
I am on the scale between emerging 
and established; or if I've been filed
under the category older poet. No, 
I've never been in the BAP; never 
gotten an NEA nor a Guggenheim (yet)  
though believe me, I've tried; barely 
make it on the lists of must-reads 
for AAPI or FilAm history month.  
I had a student who is now a Very 
Famous and Important Poet; I don't 
think she remembers me much 
anymore, if at all. I had a teacher 
who said, It's really about who you know. 
But I still believe in the poems I want 
to write, believe in the air I breathe, 
the tiny electric pulse which begins
as a prickle somewhere in the brain 
or sensorium, informing me I need 
to sink into the shag carpet of that
moment and stop asking only the logical 
questions; because then a trapdoor 
might open and who knows what bright, 
surprising universe I might fall into? 
One of my daughters is busy planning 
a birthday cake for her soon-to-be-second-
grader. Last year, the theme was Lego 
Ninjago; she made everything by hand, 
including a little bridge, and temple arches 
painted red and gold. This year, it's Dungeons 
and Dragons: she sent me a photo of a fierce
fondant dragon lording it over three layers
wrapped in royal icing and dripping with candy 
treasures. You're so good at this, I tell her; 
you should consider doing a side gig. Except, 
she says, and rightly so— it wouldn't feel 
fun anymore. And I realize it's the same for me
—though it's easy to forget, when the world is
so pushy-noisy. I want to live inside the names
of things that can take me close to the heart 
of those same things, and also somewhere else 
I've never been: their mycelial networks
holding hands in the dirt, while overhead
a canopy of oak and elm and maple publish  
their own versions of feeling, thinking, being.

There was a restaurant in Chicago
we loved— in Chinatown— called Three 
Happiness. We used to joke that we'd be
happy even with one, or two. This year,
for the third or fourth or fifth time, 
I didn't make the list. Short list, 
long list, whatever kind of list I was 
competing for. But thankfully, of late, 
people have been spelling my first 
name correctly, instead of slipping in 
an "o" or forgetting the "u." The woman 
who owns the yarn store that she's packing 
up to go into real retirement this time, 
remembered what kinds of color skeins I 
used to buy. I picked up sock yarns 
called "Meadow" and "Midas Touch," 
grateful I could still imagine finishing 
a small project I knew would demand my full 
attention. Two weeks ago my good friend  
passed away in another country after a surgery  
he didn't recover from. Another friend told me 
she saw my eldest daughter, who hasn't spoken 
to me in almost five years, at his wake; I 
was grateful for the report that she looked well, 
though I will admit sometimes I don't know 
what that means anymore. I saw some pictures 
someone had taken— now her hair is long, 
cascading curls like in pre-Raphaelite 
paintings. I am still seized by an impossible 
sadness whenever I think of her; I suppose 
it will never pass. But yes, I am grateful 
she is alive in the world. Today and all 
the rest of the week, it will be rainy 
and cloudy. There is a flood watch too, 
though the weekend promises to be clearer.