Author: Luisa A. Igloria

6

Sing, mutts and creatures bred by colonizing histories—
Sing, women ravaged on riverbanks, left for dead in alley-ways—
Sing, children scavenging in city sewers amid debris—
Sing, mutts and creatures bred by colonizing histories—
Sing in the open, burn the old signs; reinstate stories
unsung, whitewashed, glossed over, banished by lies or stays.
Sing, mutts and creatures bred by colonizing histories—
Sing, women ravaged on riverbanks, left for dead in alley-ways.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Imperial Official.

5

How long am I supposed to sing in only a minor key?
Not half-, not bi-; not pre-, not post-; not black, not fair—
Though my mind and tongue, my heart can trill as fluently.
How long am I supposed to sing in only a minor key?
When installed to office finally, it’s almost always grudgingly:
always one more checkpoint for those neither here nor there.
How long am I supposed to sing in only a minor key?
Not half-, not bi-; not pre-, not post-; not black, not fair.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Imperial Official.

1

If a lie is half-truth is it easier to forgive?
Those ships never came for just pepper and spice.
In the hold, mapmakers were ready with cubits and cursive.
If a lie is half-truth is it easier to forgive?
In their chronicles, they wrote of the breasts of natives,
of their short stature or propensity to violence or lies.
If a lie is half-truth is it easier to forgive?
Those ships never came for just pepper and spice.

2

Grandmother smoked cigarillos with the lit ends in her mouth.
I wondered why milk came in paper-wrapped cans imprinted with “Marca Oso,”
why cheese was queso, why cloth napkins were servilletas. Even in her youth,
grandmother smoked cigarillos with the lit ends in her mouth.
Cousins twice removed cut sugarcane or harvested fruit down south;
they grew dark in the sun and spoke a kind of creole called Chavacano.
Grandmother smoked cigarillos with the lit ends in her mouth;
not all could afford the milk wrapped in cans with “Marca Oso.”

 

In response to Via Negativa: By Any Other Name.

Give thanks for the wobble of the wheel
and the limp of the pulley, the tiny pop
in the heart of a lightbulb as it goes out—

Give thanks for the pause that loosens the noose
around the rushing hours, for serifs of rain
ticking down the blue gradations of a chain—

And give thanks for the call of a dove
that has lost its mate, and so tinges
your day with the blue of this reminder—

Forgive the stumble of the bow across the strings,
the hair of one note that flies away from the score:
give thanks for our common imperfection.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Poems inscribed on a side of bamboo, passed through villages
from hand to hand. This beautiful, flowing syllabary is precolonial.

Be careful when you use the ancient scripts as tattoo art
around your arms. It might read “liar” instead of precolonial.

The season’s prints are tribal, ethnic: tie-dyed, resembling
knotted bark. This ikat weave, suddenly fashionable: the precolonial—

Petite, Extra Small, Small, Medium, Large, Extra Large, Extra Extra Large:
the pliant leaf in one-size-fits-all. Who wore it best? us precolonials?

One fold of collar, one pass at sleeve. Piece by piece,
the pattern. What version predates all others? The precolonial.

A white man publishes in India, Hong Kong, or Spain; it’s no big deal.
When a writer of color does the same, she’s only as good as precolonial.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Pinnipedestrian.

“…This life/ that hurts like a son of a bitch.” – Paul Guest, “Love in the Singular”

This tree that opens its arms to reveal a pattern of pencilled ribs.
This summer of restarts, of ebbs and flows among detritus of beach umbrellas.
This sky, metallic as a makeshift lantern in which holes have been punched with a nail.
This girl that sings in the yard with a voice to rival the edge of a rusty blade.
This grandmother who implores her to stop in the name of God else the chickens might die.
This mother-in-law who would marry her son if she could.
This man who bows his head and lets himself be led to the kitchen to eat with the slaves.
This mouth that slavers at the smell of cheese and bread despite its nine missing teeth.
This leg that jerks in the night from dreams of desert fires and limbless boys.
This morning full of the relentless whirring of cicadas in the trees.
This cup cracked at the bottom and the rim in which a Maid of Orleans jasmine buds.
This handful of salt at the bottom of the jar which gives itself to the broth.
This leaf which unseen insects chew into lace each night.
This purse that spends and spends itself until there is no more.
This appetite that’s never slaked.
This clean white suit and faded hat, these old but polished shoes.
This billfold with loose change.
This silver ring, this rosary, snapped in the middle to break the chain.