Author: Luisa A. Igloria

the gate was green.
The houses on our street
had fences made of rusted

chicken wire.
The chickens themselves
reigned over each backyard.

Bullies, they trumpeted
each day into beginning.
The baker at the end

of the lane rose
to double a fist
into the dough.

His daughters did not
often smile, on their way
to school or church,

identical braids
swinging. Our kitchen
window overlooked

a lot where trucks
came and went, hauling
sand and gravel.

Sometimes they carried
a load of river stones,
resinous timber

poached from forests
under cover of night—
On the one-lane road,

chevron of tires
inked with soil
from somewhere else.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Green house.

Were you that way too? Did they tell you to tuck a book under your arm, then deposit you in a corner armchair, promising to bring a treat soon: something cool in a glass, a piece of cake on a flowered saucer, a sparkler, a bonbon? Didn’t they then wave in that singular way, with the tips of their fingers, as they traipsed out of the room in the direction of the party? When they were gone, did you hear the faraway music their voices made, the sounds of ecstatic cutlery, knives plunged into the warm breasts of meat or fowl? You tilted your head back against the furniture, pretending the overhead light was a goblet spilling its contents down your enraptured throat. The book was a prop, a foil, a digression. Surely you were brought there to hone your senses. Surely your mission was to become one with the drapery, the mute arrangement of succulents on a celadon tray, the curling banister connecting the upper and lower levels; to pass soundlessly through the great room, where islands of people pressed toward each other as though afraid to be left by themselves or in silence; to find your way to the door that led back out into the green and cloudy evening.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Congregation.

We wanted so much to see your light, your milk that would not spill again like this in such copiousness for at least a hundred years. But the sky was overcast, was lit by flares and thunder; and only your wraith roiled in clutches of cloud. We wanted to eat your golden comb and smear our mouths and faces with your largesse. But such are the appetites of the starving, the unseemly desires of those who live on scaffolds of precariousness. Rich wafer, cheeks bitten to glow beneath stations of dimmed street lights— we’ll count the days, the hours, until our hearts can fill like purses again.

To have risen early in the morning
when the dark was still the color

of unpeeled eggplant, before the sky’s
lining of fleece thinned to rice paper,

allowing shoals of tiny fish to make
their way into nets fine as gauze

slung over the boats of fisherfolk—
My mother knew the time of year,

calculating by the moon’s appearance,
by the chill or portent of wind, when we

should bring the broad banana leaves
indoors to clean and oil for wrapping

and preserving what we could not merely
hold in our hands of summer’s gifts.

Salt and fat, ferment of acids
conjured in baskets and jars—

Dutiful daughter, I indexed
their bite and taste, kept

their methods fluid for the library
of my tongue. In famine or in plenty,

my punishment’s knowing their names
and disguises, even in the dark.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Aphorism.

In the night, plaintive bassoon
of calling frogs; and just before

first light, an owl’s insistent
questions— And I know

all threads will lead, as they must,
to the place where they first started:

to the one our steps retrace
a labyrinth of paths to find.

Behind the grille
of the confessional,
who listened to our
reconstructions of sin
and shortcoming? Who
took it upon himself
to say what merited
a decade, two decades,
three, four, five
of murmured prayer
in punishment?

 

In response to Via Negativa: Listen.

They say the present is now.
Do the roots of the plant
distinguish air from ether,
ether from tubes
of succulent green?

 

In response to Via Negativa: The art of parting.

How long does the heart hold in its knotted-up angers? Five bitter knobs of green plum on a plate, to dip in salt.

*

The taste of glutamates and nucleotides. In other words, what’s savory stands out from a background— gash of seawater in a runnel of sand.

*

Chilled water in a metal cup. The white flesh of a coconut, young flag swirling to the bottom.

*

What is the condition of wanting something you have no name for yet? I scanned the grocery store shelves, the produce bins— and registered only the color green.

*

My love dropped a rind, a disc of volatile oils, into the broth. Far away, a hundred mouths opened in an orchard awash with amber.

*

Some days, I feel as though I skim only the surface. There are so many things to mend, to read, to wash, to pay.

*

I stacked loose granite slates against the rotted wood of the shed. Before they took them away, the animals had made a bed in one corner, and left their droppings in another.

*

Is it my imagination when I say I remember the way water, soup, cold milk coursed down my throat— to flood the ducts ending at my nipples, positioned in my nursing daughter’s mouth?

*

We did not see how the moon hung larger than a hive, a paper lantern, a parchment dish. And yet we ate from it nightly.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Missing.