Author: Luisa A. Igloria

(a cento)

Now the sack of sugar.

                                               That dark
energy I longed for but could not name.

Each line and curve of recollection's architecture

fronds of palmyra, the stalled clock

inside, something like home

the poker, shovel, and staw broom beside

the rosary on the bumper, 

drifting through its days, learning how to be ordinary.

How can I resurrect it now— this love I've had in all my past lives?


Source Texts:
"Self Portrait in Granulated Sugar," David Hernandez;
"I Was Lt. Uhura," January Gill O'Neil; "In Antipolo,
You Can Find a Museum," Ethan Chua translating Abner
Dormiendo; "The Brainfever Bird, Confused by Seasons,"
Tishani Doshi; "Going Home," Myes Poydras; "The Last
Catalogue," Austin Allen; "The Holy Sacrament of
Repression," Katie Condon; "The Dream Incarnate,"
Nay Thit; "Mira Should Have Known Better," Mirabai
translated by Chloe Martinez

(a cento)


Imagine where you cannot be.

                           Some
days, I lay in the morgue
of darkness, hyper-alone,

Put out my eyes: and I shall see you, too,

                                            Loving it all 
to its silky death. to its silty bottom. to its graywater demise. 

So the constellation through negation, since we’re stuck with night.

                   I give 
the world my worn-out breath 
on an old tune, I give 
it all I have 
and take it back again.


Source texts:
"One Way to Ressurect an Ancestor," CM Burroughs;
"I begin the day thinking," Taylor Byas; "Put Out 
My Eyes," Rainer Maria Rilke; "There are inanimate 
things out there loving each other," francine j. 
harris; "Note on Method," Jeffrey Pethybridge;
"Breath," Philip Levine

(a cento)

the black snakes that made a provisional home under the bow
of my dead & was made of that dreaming.

                   Here I eat you. Here, a food

the sea was vaporous and the boats were ants stranded in the air

I taste the fruit whose coarse skin
is eaten by beasts who've never tasted honey.

A shining breakfast, a breakfast shining, no dispute, no practice, nothing, nothing at all.

Muscle in the water like dregs of an abattoir.

Your pain the astrologer said A gift
for others

Like dogs for others they trained us with trays:

Meats and herbs seethed in oil and acid.

nothing is truly mine
except my name.

Worried my love's not worth much, but I always
come when called.

Bulbous buttercup, & oleander throw shade, & We live



Source Texts:
"Nothing Promised," Avia Tadmor; "SoMa." Hieu Minh 
Nguyen; "Immigrant Song at a Food Truck," Weijia Pan; 
"Capybara Hot Springs," Yaxkin Melchy Ramos; "Tender 
Buttons [Breakfast]," Gertrude Stein; "Somber Bull," 
Andrea Cote; "Empires," Anthony Joseph; "Task," 
Ari Banias; "Catering," Brian Tierney; "Cattiveria," 
Sandra Lim; "Passing Through,"Stanley Kunitz;"Self-
Portrait as Hereboy, Sethe's Dog in Beloved," Saeed 
Jones; "Lauren Oya Olamina Explains Earthseed 
to Ernest Hemingway," L. Lamar Wilson

The years unspool like birds wheeling through the sky.

It's hard to tell what the point is, when all
points are part of that movement.

Sugar in every mouthful, no matter how hard 
you try to avoid it.

What can you tell me about the future
that my past self writing to you now 
could not anticipate?

We walked through the fairgrounds, licking 
ice cream wrapped in folded cones.

When we took long road trips, the children got
excited about pushing pennies into a machine 
that flattened them into arrowheads.

Is there a star that can still be named 
after your beloved?

A telescope sits on the nightstand, pointed
at a corner of the ceiling.

A hundred fragments shake loose: which trail
is the one that leads to the moon and not
to a torn loaf of bread?

Your foot snags on the corner of a bumper.

The tiled floor of the grocery is many
shades of dirty gray. 

Your instinct is to shield your face,
your head.

Minutes before, the woman at the cash register 
says have a nice day and looks like she means it.

Just an hour before, you are mistaken
for someone else.

Wind whips the edges of the tarp loose.
The sound it makes, like flapping wings.

Cold air snags in your throat
on the way in.

Noon light is visible when you turn 
your gaze to the left.

Your knees compose the retort you 
should have made.

On the way back from the voting booths,
we see it on the sidewalk: dark and 
stiff, mahogany as a branch left too long 
in the fire except for a visible shin 
bone and a row of teeth jutting out 
from the pointy area in what used to be 
its face. Was it perhaps struck by lightning 
or a charge of electricity as it ran 
across a length of wire? Whatever it was
charred off all its fur and left only skin, 
taut and dry like jerky. Whatever it was 
must have been quick: no time for heart,
nerves or brain to signal distress. 
Shock and stun, instant paralysis. 
 

Neruda wrote about salt
and soap, tomatoes and tuna;
the lemon's round cathedral windows,
pairs of socks. To think about how 
salt sings from the depths of the sea 
and the holds of ships, how a sliver 
of lye and citrus oil can melt the day's
aches away in water— who wouldn't miss
what gives these small, ordinary joys 
the chance to graft themselves onto
our days? If the things we love are also 
the things we'll miss the most when 
they're gone, isn't all language
and every kind of poem, at heart,
an elegy? Hello, sun rising in 
the east. Goodbye as the light
changes from blue to gold and gone.

It's as if no one 
      is supposed to change
    in any way, as if 
the self in the moment
       it meets another 
    becomes fixed in
that knowledge of
       the other. Remember 
    that day, salt 
in your hair, sunburn
       peeling off  
my shoulders? The shore,
    receding then 
as it does now. 

Every day she walked in and out of that green garden gate
from the world inside and its little rooms. The world outside,
the sky's ceiling, criss-crossed with stars and constellates, 

held out a promise of myriad destinations. Not late
at all, not yet. To bloom has no fixed season, no guide. 
Every day she walked in and out of that green garden gate.

With time, distances gradually increased. The hand of fate
waved, conjuring one mirage after another. She was its bride.  
The sky was dark, the star-crossed ceiling its vast estate. 

Things had not happened yet. Pages unwritten said Just wait.        
But she learned— she too could choose a move, even a joyride.
Every day she walked in and out of that green garden gate,

straightening her spine and collar. How many steps to checkmate?
Water doesn't disappear, only shifts with riptides, moon-tides. 
The sky's broad ceiling, criss-crossed with stars— calculate

how long it took them to find their place, the space
for measuring the length and depth of their existence.
Every day she walked in and out of that green garden gate.
The sky's vast ceiling ticked with stars and constellates.

~ after Joy Harjo


Remember your last name,
where that thread came from,
connecting you to the one who came
before, and the one even farther back.
Remember your middle name,
the one that tied you to the womb
before the cord was clamped at two
ends and cut, then the flash of light
and your mouth opening into its first
cry. And remember your first name,
how someone plucked it out of a page
perhaps, or a list, or a story with
a face a mouth a nose upturned 
like yours, eyebrows whose crests 
touched a universe of hopes. 
Remember all your names now, 
for the moment you'll stand 
in a window well trying to remember 
how you're called, how to call.