Author: Luisa A. Igloria

When the dentist’s drill
harrows the soft

mess of gum, it is
to dig for bone—

fractured trident,
three bits of shrapnel

from a forgotten war.
You’d think it easy

to stick an instrument
into the open mouth

and fish out the offending
objects: except the smallest

of the body’s particles
is still part of the whole,

and hurt is the invisible
sinew suturing all

together. It takes an hour
alternating through

extractor tips and sizes,
the needle thrice

replenished with numbing
medicine. It takes

cajoling, talking
to the three dead bones

that hold, as if
in stubborn, final

standoff. When at last
they give, it’s not

surrender: they
want it known

they’ve called
no truce. They

want it known
their substance

is old as dragon seeds
sown in soil to birth

rows of soldiers ready
to go to war.

to endlessness, the unseen rope
braids into each design: that knot

worked into a garment’s collar,
the crack in the pavement’s back.
Each cheek I kissed in turn, now

kissed by other mouths— I flew
as high as I dared toward the sun;
as long as I could, I kept

you in my sight. I fought
the numberless solitude of days
that breathed too close,

too hot against my nape;
but yield to its stern offices,
every now and again.

 

In response to thus: ehi.

All night, the roses drank the rain.
The river dressed in mourning and turned its back.

The roofs rained silver which we could not spend.
The dogs sniffed in the grass for missing shoes.

The boughs of trees withheld all notes
but sidewalks would not erase outstanding debts.

The banked fires in the grate sent stiff reproof.
And only water could rejuvenate the rain.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Rained on.

I could not sleep and so
my fingers sought the secret

of what multiplies: from water
and handfuls of chaff,

a foam of skin rose, stretched
by a sea of spores. The smell

of confessions heated the air:
what rose was proof of miracle.

but my heart said no; my mouth
refused but my hands began
to unbutton, unzip, undo

And I said maybe

but my dreams, emphatic in
their repetition, said we
know more than you

And I said no

but the garden withered, my cup
of soil overfilled with rain; and I,
I dipped my bread in salt

In our language, there is only
a borrowed word for constellation.

Instead of the Bear or the Big
or Little Dipper, there are layers

of terraced clouds from which,
on clear nights, you might see

the great cloud rat leap
in his ascent up the limbs

of the sacred tree, winding from earth
to the gates of heaven. There is

no hunter with a sword and silver belt,
but there are warriors wrapped

in loincloth, their hand-tooled
blades ringing still with the audible

breath of their enemies. Don’t ask me
for the catalog of their other names:

when it rains blood, there is famine;
and when it rains clear and milky,

the merciful goddess has squeezed
drops from her breast to feed us.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Ursa Major.

“Think of the trouble we go through
to see what will remain
of all our expectations.”
~ D. Bonta

Choose one,
said the farmer
and we picked
from among shapes
lying in the dust
of a watermelon field:
it was almost dark
and the penknife
nicked your finger
in severing fruit
from base of stem
and I thought, always
something is asked—
carve a door, find
the key, surrender
a tithe before you
sit to eat sweet
ruined flesh.

 

In response to Via Negativa: News junkie.

In me your branches tingled with electric flames;
in me your roots have almost seeded vineyards—

on each limb your rafts of clustered orange,
bright as pain or epic love. I don’t wonder

anymore why each heart begins to bud
inside its flimsy paper cage: tender red,

berry for which you’ll tear at the garden’s
dark, its shaded network of veins.

~ After Octavio Paz’s “Proema”

Yes it is true, everything is vertigo:
vertigo of bodies so madly, rapidly vibrating.
We think they are merely standing still.
Vertigo of children spinning in the churchyard,
laughing because now the steeple looks
like it is about to fall—
Then there is the vertigo produced
by certain flowers crushed to a pulp—
Sh, I will tell you one more secret:
when mixed with water they release
a flotilla of bubbles into the air
and even the sky is vertigo.
I have no aphorisms or epithets for this,
I have no virtuoso solos. But I agree
wholeheartedly with you when you drag me to the edge
of the cliff and make your anguished pronouncements
about what we don’t know, which is mostly
the future; and the birds reel overhead,
a scattering of wild letters.