Author: Luisa A. Igloria

We stay up all night, tipping our heads
back to drink the amber liquid in the cups.

Rain falls. Sudden cold speaks of summer’s end.
We sift and dredge for warmth in our cups.

We turn the feverish pages, we read words from each
others’ lips. We drink them up, like sustenance from a cup.

The hourglass keeps time. The second hand on the clock
chimes the hours. Trickle after trickle fills a cup.

The days wear their implacable face: not punishing,
not rewarding, indifferent to offerings in the cup.

Do not always sorrow, do not fear. Go forward into joy.
Everything eventually fades, like foam in the cups.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Apart.

“…one day is like a thousand years” ~ 2 Peter 3:8

Water and its hundred, hundred thousand filaments sieved,
wind and its hundred, hundred thousand braided tongues—

Summer and its hundred, hundred thousand saffron buds,
winter and its hundred, hundred thousand crystal veins—

The goddess’ hundred, hundred thousand sinuous arms,
the golden wheel and its hundred, hundred thousand spokes

that turn a slow hour into an instant, centuries
into sparks dwindling rapidly into the dark—

Impossible to reckon, impossible to count.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Inheritance.

The neighbors want a new fence, but first
they need to take away all the overgrowth of ivy.

No matter how many vines are lopped off, next time
they look beneath the deck, there seems to be more ivy.

And mildew flourishes along the intervals in tile, darkening
the grout: peppery speckles with tiny leaf-shapes resembling ivy.

By the rusted tap and coiled garden hose, I find a clump
of leaves I can’t identify: not herb, not grass, not ivy.

But then again I’m not the type to police the growth in the garden,
preferring the surprise of what blooms; I even admire the green of ivy—

And green is the color of persistence, of what thrives despite the wars
waged on slugs and aphids: they’ll have the last say, sinking back amid the ivy.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Consumer.

Three times a car rolls over the embankment;
but someone walks away before it bursts into flames—

Thieves break in through the dining room window and slit
a chair cover open to carry out what they stole—

The broken clock in the hallway strikes the hour
and so you know it is time to leave—

A letter soft with creases comes to your door
from an address you haven’t lived at in years—

In the interstices of brick, wasps have patiently
hollowed out a nest, both coffin and crib—

 

In response to Via Negativa: Poem for Display in a Public Library.

full of water, my hair full of dreams
that rush away, faster than fish

in the river— My clavicle like a book
some unseen hand holds open at the spine,

my fingers curled around another’s—
My eyes two almond hulls now anchored

in this face— And if we’ve met before
and will meet yet again, I’ll listen

for those currents that sound most
like light careening off an edge—

 

In response to Via Negativa: Carnivore.

“My mother.

The common axe

pierces, singing…”

~ D. Bonta


What’s your lucky number? Let’s play it
at the lottery. It’s Sunday. It’s the day

the boys peddling tickets line up
outside church, vying for the attentions

of the faithful. One ticket? Two?
A whole row, a page, a winning booklet

could get you anywhere on this sweet earth
short of that paradise in the afterlife.

Let me put this ring around your finger.
Don’t balk. Spend it all, spend it now.

Tie your wrist to a balloon and float
above the park’s green periphery,

above the rows of houses in the town,
with their lopsided chimneys, their peeled

fences, their cracked trash bins and
dilapidated windows. The curtains

might be yellowed but look
at all their lace, those looped

edges made somehow more beautiful
by the stains of time. Come back at dusk

and let’s drink from the fountains
which have not yet run dry.

Put your hair up and tell each day
I love you again, no matter what.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Plaint.

emerges from wherever
it was hiding in the night

and this is all that matters:
you do not need to know
how many shifts it took

to move the axle of the world
to grind the axe that whittles
wood to sliver, string to shiver

waking sigh sifted on the wind—

 

In response to Via Negativa: Plaint.

Baguio in the early ’80s: there were no birth preparation classes when I was about
to become a young mother so I bought books— Dr. Spock, Lamaze— feeling out of my water.

This Lamaze “natural” method was the latest thing from abroad, and I read avidly,
but stopped to panic at the parts on episiotomies and the breaking of the water.

At pre-natal checkups, my doctor was maternal, reassuring: The body is more
resilient than you think, she said. They often slide out of you just like water;

some pop out without effort: think of the way you push your head
through a turtleneck sweater. Slide out of me just like water?

What about C-sections, breech births, babies born with cauls wrapped around
their heads? My mothers watched carefully what I ate and drank: water,

lots of water, they encouraged. And soups: clear gingered broth of steamed clams,
mussels. But no eggplant (limp, dull purply-brown), no taro (hairy). Freshwater

fish and rice, dips of vinegar and soy. I craved salty and sweet by turns,
smacked sour mangos dipped in paste of shrimps. When finally the fabled water

broke, I woke from sleep seized with shame I’d lost control of my bladder
(or so I thought). My first and other births through the years were fluid

as water though not without pain. Each dark-haired daughter came in her own way
down that corridor and up into the world, each mouth full of syllables and water.

I try to keep them grounded while pushing them further onto the lip of the world,
with all its cares. I give them stories, gifts of song, of fire and earth and water.

* For Josephine Anne (Ina), on her birthday, 10 August 2013;
but also for Jennifer Patricia, Julia Katrina, and Gabriela Aurora

 

In response to Via Negativa: Taking the Waters.