Author: Luisa A. Igloria

"...whenever the winebowl emptied, it 
refilled of its own accord." 
        ~ Ovid, Metamorphoses Book VIII, 616-724



In Café Stella, over at the next table, 
the medical students have their textbooks 

open and are comparing notes on neuroanatomy 
in a clinical context. For memory: the amygdala,

the hippocampus, the neocortex. I want to ask 
them: if clairvoyance were a thing, what part 

of the brain is responsible, and how can that
ability be cultivated? Regardless of how ready

we might be, all that we learn from the sum
of hard years and rare moments of feathered 

joy line the bowl into which we dip our faces 
each day— Which one now, which one tomorrow?

In the future, when it's time, will one of us
turn into a linden and the other into an oak, 

braiding our limbs even as leaves fall to mark 
the seasons? Across lifetimes, eternity sends 

signals. Sometimes, we think we can decipher them;
then they turn into the haloed green of fireflies.  

         Who are we to know what role
we get to play in life— whether
    hero or foil, or character 
meant to swell a scene or take
         
         the fall for someone else— before
we're unremembered? On the surface of   
    Exekias' amphora, the warrior bends,  
preparing to fall on his own sword.  

         Is it shame from dishonor, every  
battle fought well and bravely but still
    coming in only second best? One of
my college professors said the idea

         of an afterlife that's nothing 
but liminal space (impenetrable 
    fog between here and there, 
with neither joy nor pain) might be

         enough to goad even the stoic 
to some kind of action. But reward  
    is never the kind we expect, nor is 
punishment. The goal could be noble 

        (unless feigned), when putting 
collective interest ahead of individual 
    gain. Why did Ajax want that shield 
so much, and why would that kind 

         of desire be too excessive? 
Today the invocation of his name 
      brings to mind a character 
in the Marvel universe; or a popular 

         powder cleanser whose main
ingredients are calcium and sodium 
      carbonate. Yet Ajax bore Achilles'
body off the battlefield and fought

         for his friend's armor. Down
the centuries, though, it's the beautiful  
     favored ones always striking poses, 
their oiled bodies gleaming in the sun. 

(La Union, Philippines)


The city of my father's birth
bears the name of the King of Castile 
and Galicia— canonized 419 years after 
his death. I couldn't find any reports 
on miracles he may have performed. But
Ferdinand drove out the Moors and 
expanded these kingdoms for the Church, 
which makes it sound like that kind 
of good work is enough to get you 
sainthood. My father is not a Spaniard, 
and never was nor wanted to become  
a priest. His mother liked to boast 
that she was some part (not pure) 
European— mestiza, india mixed 
with the colonizer's blood. I wonder 
what happened to the house where he 
grew up, windows overlooking streets 
lined with aratiles trees— in summer, 
filled with cotton candy berries, festival 
berries; doves purpling in their shade. 
San Fernando lies in a gold and crystal
casket, in the Cathedral of Seville— 
dry, leathered, but his body 
incorrupt (another test one must pass 
for sainthood). In the northern coastal
town where my father was born, surfers 
and artists who say they're tired 
of big city life have set up 
cafes and studios. Rather than pure 
blood or pedigree, perhaps some 
of them are even there to seek out 
the native in their roots.  

                        No stone
is safe from our probing, no seabed
spared from the sweep 
                      for copper, 
cobalt, nickel, zinc. History abounds 
with pictures of extraction— 
                             Open pits 
tunnelling into the earth, 
ferrous-tinted water  
                     coursing through 
the gorge. Layers of salt crust, lithium 
brine conveyed to evaporation  
                              flats— 
Lithos, the Greek word for stone.
It's light and soft— so soft 
                              that it 
can be cut with a kitchen knife and 
so low in density that it floats 
                                 on water.
It lights up the temples of this world 
and has the power to change 
                            the brain.
Around Hieronymus Bosch's famous
painting, gold-scrolled 
                        letters read:
Master, cut the stone out, fast. Ward off
madness with a scalpel, an amulet, 
                                   a flower bud.
                    

"We look at the world once, in childhood.
The rest is memory."
                      ~ Louise Glück


It's true, everything was undiluted,
intense; often, sudden as a stroke  

left by a blade of grass as you passed, 
but which you were only conscious of 

as a bloom of dried blood inside 
your palm after you arrived 

at the house. Now you really want 
to know what happened that night— 

You were not yet three; all you have 
are fragments: the scumbled memories 

of others. Imagine plates on the table, 
from which your parents have eaten; 

and another for a guest who comes 
each Friday to visit your mother. 

But on this night, this friend has poured 
rat poison into her coffee. Did she wait 

until someone left the room before 
pushing her lips over the edge of this 

well and drink, to the dregs? Every 
aspect of the world comes with a haunting. 

In that interlude between spring and summer, 
for instance— when you walk up the steps, 

a drift of faint fragrance descends 
from trees not even in flower. 

         A tinge     A minim        Something of the smallest

size         In such 

                      increments          the sense 

         of doubt doesn't feel      so overwhelming 

But also can't 
                be completely overruled

         If some days      I can hardly complete 

a thought                      perhaps it's because I can't

bear                   to arrive     at its irrefutable 
conclusion      

            Imagine if you could rewind     outcome

     back to before process         
               
                                     Cajole

a fish 

       
       back into water
                           A bird

                                      into the air

That which constantly recedes into
its background, because by nature it isn't
considered remarkable to observation.

That which is familiar, and thus
might still step lightly outside 
narrowing circles of thought.

Here is a cup and here 
is a saucer, one of a few 
from a set no longer complete. 

You trace the faded garland of ochre
around their rims— pattern that used
to be ubiquitous in many cupboards.

The starting point of every day
is often the everyday: towel on
the bar, ashes on the grate.

The beginnings of phenomenology:
what is the first thing you see
when you open your eyes? 

And yet, I confess I love the rung 
on the ladder that Aristotle calls
the vegetative soul— look at

the simple wonderments of 
proliferation: dirt under your finger-
nails, yeast on a sponge of bread.

A sprig I pluck from a bush 
and set in a jar of water builds a root 
network finer than hair. How does it know?

After the noodle-like camera snakes in, 
          you see that bit of flesh hanging 
like a little grape or teardrop in the back 

          of the throat. Above the smooth
pink walls of this cavern, twin doors leading
          to the ears; and below, the well of

the esophagus. Here, it's positively  
          tropical: an orchid's open mouth. 
But think of the moment after Tereus has had
  
          his way with the girl, and torn out
her tongue. A nightingale and a swallow fly away
         over the roof. Do they wish they were

cormorants standing on the rocks, wings spread out
         to dry? Bright sapphire, inside their bills.

"Rafter of Satin and Roof of Stone-"
                     Emily Dickinson



the days, falling upon each other.

Weighted yet weightless.

You dream of a stage on fire, explosions
just outside the range of vision;
birthday candles that keep re-lighting. 

The future should be on everyone's lips.

Imagine its voice speaking 
from under the bridge, through 
the arms of trees, from milk
cartons tossed into the trash.

If someone keeps stopping
to ask for applause, there will always
be less time for actual speaking.

How fast can you sign a thing
back into actual being?

By actual I mean not mirage.

I mean spring coming back
with more than just softness.

I mean every thing starved 
or thrown overboard or left 
for dead getting up.

Even limping is better 
than complete stupefaction.

At that time I am more
than willing to put my hands 
together, and clap. 

"...to transcribe is just that— to bring a message 
across a threshold" ~ Mary Capello




And in this way, everything is a note—
            fan-shaped siftings of sunlight 

                       in the corner where a woman is talking
       with someone, headphones cancelling out

            the noise in the rest of the room as she
herself takes notes— 

                       The shirtless man jogging in the direction 
       of the bridge, insistent message of heat
 
             traveling from brow to nape to somewhere 
along the middle
               
                       crease of the spine's crumpled envelope—
And isn't language indebted in this way  

       to both the image and to thought? When the leaf 
              in the window bay emerged

                       as one of many along the stalks 
       transferred from some hothouse into a heavy urn, 

did it just then start to stipple its undersides in yellow,
              each dot circled as if in red pencil, or

       wasn't it always quietly transcribing in the dark? 
              Signals proliferate the way a lighthouse blinks, 

its one eye furious in a storm, the way
                        one cry, one blast, gives birth to whole

galaxies— Miles and centuries from the instant,
       are we not among the things still rocking in its wake—