Author: Luisa A. Igloria

Food prep, dinner, dishes— whatever
my in-laws happen to be doing, they drop it

when their favorite Korean telenovela starts
on TV. They live in a two-floor brownstone shared

with cousins that arrived with them and settled
here in the heart of Immigrantville nearly four

decades ago. And, no matter what room they’re in,
they can hear the sweet pop strains of the series

theme and rush to pull up two chairs, wipe
their hands on apron or dish towel. Scallions

scatter green parentheses on the chopping block;
the faces of cubed potatoes cloud over from

neglect. Neither does it matter if they’ll be
five spoonfuls into dinner— more compelling

is the need to find out if the long-separated brothers
will finally recognize each other in “Triangle,”

or if in “One Well-raised Daughter,” the girl
could hope to inherit her parents’ soy

sauce factory without having to disguise
herself as a boy. Don’t the titles say it all:

“Yoo-na’s House,” “Make a Wish,” “Can We Love?”
Look closely and you’ll see how every space

is fraught with hope and tears and drama—
the couple glimpsed through the window

of the corner coffee shop are going through
a divorce, the teenager crying in the phone booth

has had her heart broken by the boy who doesn’t
even know she exists. From her great distraction,

the young housewife has sliced her thumb
instead of an onion, uncertain of how to tell

her husband and his mother of her recent miscarriage.
And inside the ordinary-looking house, down a screened

hallway leading to the servants’ quarters
and laundry room, the old housekeeper is secretly

taking a bowl of rice porridge to her employers’
teenage son whom they believe has gone missing,

though he was only terrified to show his face
after spending a night out at a party with friends.

Over time perhaps it is possible to understand
a little more about things: how the archives fill

with scraps that began as shoestrings, notes
to oneself written on cafe napkins; soft cotton

or rags tamped around a box to make it fit inside
a larger box. And the quaint customs and manners

fanned out like a tarot deck— the smiling cherub
of the self peeling off his other face to hold aloft,

the bird of opportunity and the peacock
of avarice; the wedding in the garden

and the animal quickly gored, in spite,
by its thrown-off rider. Start your careful

peeling off at one corner of the ear, to see
the body’s teeming highway of arteries and veins.

Each one breathes differently: imperceptible flutter
of moth wings, audible susurrus of breakers in the morning.

 

In response to Symbolical Head and Via Negativa: Existential Museuming.

When we entered the room,
I thought someone said “composition.”
My eye lit on a dog-eared legal pad
in the roll-top desk, and a Parker
fountain pen still in its velvet-backed case.
They all came from a time lit
by a different glow: not the blue light
from a monitor screen, but the warm
yellow lozenge cast by a Banker’s lamp.
We changed the bulb and pulled on the chain
several times to our satisfaction.
In one of the drawers I found
a lace doily with a coffee stain,
several small padlocks with rusted keys.
In none of the papers bundled with rubber
bands or twine could we find anything
resembling a will. There was one
savings passbook; there were no blank
or canceled checks. You can read
in the rubber-stamped ledgers tiny
numbers in purple ink showing
how nothing was overdrawn.

(after Mahmoud Darwish)

I too come from there, this place of few surviving photographs.
I have some unused stamps, I have some books of yellowed paper
and a map, somewhere, whose windows are all creased.
I have a secret that is not so secret
to those who know, and siblings
where you would not think to find them.
I used to have a house in the elbow
of an alley shaped like the letter L.
Mine is the subtrahend devised of distant hills,
and the background noise of trains after midnight.

Mine is a pair of ghost
magnolia trees, and a woman dressed in white
eternally trying to hitch a ride.
And the smell of dough in the morning,
and the invisible grain of eggshells in the coffee.
How amazed I am to think that once,
at the age of nine, I packed a paper bag with a cloth
handkerchief and a toothbrush, and attempted to run away.

I too come from there, where the sky scribes its name
with the monsoon’s hundred thousand letters.
But even when it rains I know its underlying body is sunflowers,
is made of cypress and old pine.
I know it lights the tapers during power outages.
I know it burns to ash the lottery tickets that did not win.

spun of thinnest
crystal, by the bell-
ringing cricket.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Paper Trouble.

“…ash provides the most elegant
last transport imaginable.” ~ Amy Gerstler

She picked up a nest blown out of the trees in the storm. No traces of its former inhabitants, not one feather or hair.

*

A limo passed them on the highway one day in summer: from the black-tinted window rolled down, a bare leg; toes dangling a lit cigarette.

*

On a canvas pallet, amid the rubble of the fallen hospital, his slight frame shook from the effort to exhale. It was early in the monsoon season, and a fine spray of rain made outlines of every form.

*

He’d written in his will that he wanted his ashes mixed with hers, in one of the old bee-boxes from their farm.

*

Imagine the hive at night: cellular structure of breathing, each minute papered with amber, riven with unfiltered sweet.

*

In the end, the papery husk falls away from the clove. The shorn head lies in the lap of the wind, the face newly washed buries itself in the arms of elusive scent.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Horticultured.

Punch down a lump of dough and break up all the little houses of air. Roll them out flat, then gather them back to the center and they rise again, higher than the rim of the bowl.

After the dark, bitter green of herbs, here are lemons to pucker the mouth, pomegranate seeds to sweeten the fingers, sprigs of mint to freshen the breath.

A wooden block, dried buckwheat for a pillow; a cup of beans to fill a little sack. Every last one streaked with its secret name.

Was any of it enough, was it too little? Why should it be difficult to open the heart wider and give thanks to the open sky?

Year after year, the shoemaker shapes the same kind of sole. After he dies, the only blueprints that remain are those that rain and wind will not have erased from the dirt.

O with what effort everyone pushes with all they have toward the unseen— Before the plane taxies for takeoff, the girl in 5A touching her forehead to her prayer book, adjusting her veil. The man muttering curses under his breath, the child biting back his tears. Two rows back, the girl with a long-stemmed rose, the girl with a tattoo in Edwardian script. That girl swapping her boots with five-inch heels for platforms with a vampy toe. But O, the world’s oblivious to our plans. Beyond the gently bucking seats, beyond the porthole-sized windows: lakes of clouds with no visible bodies swimming in them. Render: which can mean some action to make offering, or one of a few procedures a skillful hand employs to bring fat to the surface. Mother, my thoughts turn to you like a dog paddling furiously through floodwaters. There in the mountains you grow older by the day, but appear ageless in my dreams.

Q: When you answer the telephone, how do you say hello?

Q: Describe the language in which you dream; is that your first language?

Q: Do you wear your skin like a coat, or like a shell?

Q: Should we publish your book— who will read it?

Q: How many letters do they have in their alphabet?

Q: What is the likelihood of getting eaten by a lion penned in a cage?

Q: What is the shortest distance between several broken points on a historical timeline?

Q: How many copies can you provide of your own book?

Q: What is the principle by which mercury sidles and divides?

Q: Have you ever needed to hide your true identities?

Q: Do you recognize the kind of mind that obeys aphorisms about staying in one’s place?

Q: How many words do you believe have no possible translations?

Q: Do you understand there may not be any opportunity to defend your position?

Q: You will have to provide your own reception provisions, including cutlery, food, and drink.

Q: You may stand in the foyer whole waiting for the counter to open.

Q: Please leave your shoes, umbrellas, and wet things in the bin by the door.

Q: Please make sure to leave your registration fee (no credit or debit cards, cash only).

Q: Do you understand the terms, obligations, and penalties involved?