Author: Luisa A. Igloria

People are out on a humid Friday evening 
walking their dogs, buying tickets to the new
Superman movie, or just going in for a bucket
of their favorite buttered popcorn, which they'll 
take across the street to eat on the west-facing 
steps of the middle school. We lick the last of
the gelato off our fingers as rain starts to fall.
Lightning stirs inside thick-bellied clouds, then 
it's like some god or a beast is clearing its throat 
before uttering an important edict. Is the medium 
as important as the message? Is it the same message 
each time, or just the form that changes? Sometimes 
I don't know what I want to say until I say it; if you
knew, though, wouldn't the meaning be clear? 

In the early hours I hear a clink and a light
thud in the kitchen, which means now I'm fully 
awake. I wonder if I should take a look and more,
if I should bring some kind of heavy object with me 
that I can swing if whatever made the noise might happen 
to be an unwelcome intruder. There being no other sound, 
I walk in my bare feet and peer over the banister. What's 
fallen to the floor is the Fire Blanket, still in its red 
pouch but too heavy for the hook pressed to the side of 
the stovetop island. The ad said it was an important buy, 
but something the manufacturer hoped no one would ever 
actually have to use. Pressing it back in place, I too hope 
it will just hang there, a flag unfolded but ready to snap 
to full proportion, should the air heat beyond a simmer.  

The world has never lacked 
for contronyms. One of the earliest
I learned was cleave, as in Now cleave
together as man and wife; and also 
what the cook in a restaurant kitchen 
window does as he brings down his biggest 
cleaver, severing a roast chicken or duck 
at its joints. Bolt and buckle; finish, 
dust, weather. Look away and the roll
of beautiful silk winds up in the grubby
hands of a merchant who won't pay full
price. Look another way— the light is still
there somewhere, but also the sight of new 
horrors that will make your knees go under.   

~ after Dobby Gibson


 
Like a flag left at half-mast since November

Like radio announcements about defunding public radio

Like a black swallowtail butterfly circling the fig tree 

Like the fig tree announcing it was the tree of Eden

Like a gate whose visitor pass reader is now set at "Error"

Like the letter J, which occurs neither as name nor symbol
of an element in the periodic table

Like the lonely but noble gases, which rarely bond with other elements

Like the gods who find they too have to change to escape death

Like properties recurring periodically along each row of a table

Like the axolotl regenerating its damaged heart ventricle

Like mountains becoming their minerals all along a gradient

Like a jar of edible honey found in a centuries-old tomb

Like waking up alone in a monastery suspended in the air

Like the axolotl refusing to change into land-dwelling form

Does assigning a name or title to any function 
seem to make it more real in certain ways? 
For instance, you could be a submarine chef— 
a "Culinary Specialist, Submarines" or CSS, 
and work on Navy submarines to cook meals 
for the crew. When the vessel submerges 
and emits sonar pings, you're reminded of
the little tune the rice cooker plays
to let you know the rice is ready. 
You could be a nail polish namer, 
dreaming up names like Champagne 
Crush for a sparkly pink, or Radio Flyer 
for an enameled red. In seafood processing 
plants, workers who do the tedious and 
repetitive task of extracting crab flesh 
from legs and claws are called meat pickers.  
Once, on a Reddit thread, someone asked 
if restaurants provide utensils for crab
legs. A smartass replied, "No, restaurants 
provide utensils for human hands to eat crab 
legs. The crab legs are dead and frozen 
and cooked and there's no way that they 
could possibly use utensils." There's 
a name for that kind of person as well; 
a name for the one who disappears for longer
than his lunch hour, and the one who's never 
pleased by anything you do on the job. 

After the snake has swallowed its own tail— 

what then? Does it tuck itself into a scaly 
ball, stitch itself into a leathered sphere 

to be kicked around on a green playing field 

or struck with a bat as people cheer  
in unison from the stands? After the river 

has gorged itself on houses and tractors, 

gas stations and trucks that slid as if without 
protest into its onrushing mouth, did it lie 

back down in its bed, its terrible hunger 

quiet until the next time? It's said some events 
happen about once in a thousand years: planets 

line up in ways that excite astrologers; volcanoes 

wake their oldest fire demons. We think the end 
is the end, that nothing can come after. But who 

are we to know? A bent barbershop pole still twirls 

its stripes of red and blue. A clock chimes the hour. 
There's someone already working on the next prophecy, 

reading the ashen shapes traced by tea leaves in a cup.

In the evenings, in the shadow of the dorms 
during the summer writing conference, a small 
group of women would sit under the chestnut 
tree. We could hear the tones of their quiet 
conversation as night deepened, until the outlines 
of their figures softened. Then one of them would begin 
to sing— what we learned from others at breakfast time 
was a raga: improvised, undulating; a pentatonic 
framework lofting a thread into the atmosphere. 
Trembling with color, it drew us to our windows, 
out of our beds where we were trying to sleep 
in sultry heat uncooled by air conditioning. 
As it receded, it felt as though every hair on my
body exhaled a breath I didn't even know I had been 
holding in. Years later, I still think of that sensation—
to have been brought to the brink of a calm 
as stupendous and as simple as a field of fireflies.

History, before it becomes history,
lives in the realm of the ordinary:
anecdote and family story, photographs, 
postcards, letters in cursive. The news  
—carried on stone tablets, by ship, by 
courier, by decree. Warnings by lantern,
by crier on horseback, by sirens breaking
open the seals of night. From theory 
to praxis, idea to application: how 
the thumb flies into the mouth 
at the instance of a burn; how you 
run away from an impending storm or 
put your car quick in reverse when 
you see the bridge ahead in imminent 
collapse. The body, a repository 
of knowledge collected through history— 
the ache looped like a noose against
the collarbone, pain stippling your joints 
or striping your back as you toss at night 
in bed— not even yours, personally, but 
an archive you've nevertheless inherited. 

An older man and his wife ask the two
women in front of me if they're in line
for coffee; when they nod, they slide
right in as though they don't even see
me there. I don't say anything, though I
think things (like they're probably the type
who won't bus their own table, but maybe 
I'm just being judgmental). It's busy 
behind the counter. Chaotic even, with people 
changing orders: hot not iced, soy milk not 
almond, regular cold brew but no ice. One 
of the baristas fumbles with a glass cup 
and it cracks on the counter then shatters 
on the floor amid a profusion of I'm sorrys. 
A woman with a clerical collar peeking out 
of her t-shirt starts to pick up the pieces 
and the barista says No no I don't want you
to cut yourself. The artist who everyone
knows shuffles in from the back in a dark
blue Hawaiian shirt. There's always 
a reserved table for him; and copies of
his pen and ink drawings plastic-sleeved
in binders near the roaster. Over the grand
piano that no one is playing right now, two
paper lanterns sway lightly in an unseen breeze.
Above the bar there are three more, but ruffled 
like strange upside down poppies. If you look 
closely, you'll see they're cunningly made 
of layers of coffee filter paper.

After things in the world begin to seriously
     feel bound for hell in a handbasket, for months
I wallow in my inertia and can't seem to haul 
     myself out of bed to go to the gym. I feel 
the flabby parts of my body taking over the muscle
     I was trying to build, offering their soft jello 
lining under the waistband of my workout pants. But  
     it's the pain shooting from my right hip down 
to the knee and calf that forces me to go back; 
     the tightness in my legs, getting up in the morning.
Funny how this thing done with pulleys and dumb- 
     bells is called resistance training: resistance
meaning the capacity to oppose or withstand 
     an obstacle or impeding force, the biggest one
in this case being your own body— each day toting  
     its limbs and organs around, so long carrying 
brickloads of grief it's forgotten how to let go of.