Author: Luisa A. Igloria

Linings of ice, chokers of hail.
Fleece like pilled blankets.
This is all you see, not
the camisole and sling-
back shoes, the chandelier
earrings strewn at the foot
of the unmade bed.

At the cafe, the waiter takes my order
before I even open my mouth. At a nearby

table, two women are talking, their heads
close together; one of them is weeping

quietly. Are you all right,
her friend says. The other nods.

For a long time I could not tell what
was real and what was a lie: variations.

Once I was afraid of the world and its
long hands, its love of bones. There is

no cure for the oldest of afflictions: burning
in the cold with the desire to be consumed.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Against certainty.

In the mailbox, under its film of sticky
green and yellow pollen, a letter arrives
bearing a postmark: Stettener Str. 7,
Oberstotzingen, Germany. It is a letter
that has found its way after almost decades
of silence and not-knowing, from the Buddha’s
former student 30 years ago— Here is the card
with the same angled handwriting she remembers
from exams he wrote on Kafka and Kant, Chekov,
Rilke; and here is a photo of him now, surgeon,
married, four kids. What joy to hear from you,
he writes— How I have thought of who I am and what
I try to be, of where I am at home; and how that’s made
of friends and colleagues, acquaintances, relations
—circles from which I draw my hope and strength.
And yes, the Buddha agrees: more’s the wonder
one can go years without knowing what has happened
to someone, then close the gap. Once she knew him
as a young man: adrift in a country not his own,
learning a tongue made of sounds he did not fully grasp.
One moment ago there was only a suitcase of years
filled with change after change. Now, there is
a return address, a phone number; stories
of lives lived with and among others.

They took the animals
out with a noose—
a mother and her two
babies. We heard them
first two weeks ago,
scrabbling atop
the shingled roof.
They made their way
through the rotted
floorboards of the shed,
where they made paper
shavings out of old
magazines we’d stacked
in boxes. In the early
hours, from the kitchen
window, I’ve seen crows
come to the branches
of the sycamore.
A mole burrows across
the property line, and
the nearby crop
of dandelions gets
sidewinded. Out
one day plotting
where we might set
a rain-collecting barrel
and a pebble walk, we sense
eyes looking us over
from the leafy underbelly
of the hedges.

When the air, thick
as a towel, wraps around
just-washed hair

When the wind makes
myths you don’t
want to follow

When the days
drop their quota
of dailiness

and you want
every thought
to be a cleaver

 

In response to thus: The wind wraps a thick-corded hand.

at the way the blue chameleon-
woman changes form: one moment
a foreign general at a diplomatic
summit, and then the midget evil
scientist who wants to cleanse the world
of all mutations. Each time she changes,
the camera catches a new corona of colors
framing the irises of her eyes— copper
and metallic grey, hummingbird green,
swift kick of the foot to catch the enemy
in the groin or jaw. He marvels too
at the talons unsheathed from between
the knuckles of the wolf-faced man:
how he winces each time the body’s flesh
is pierced, is bullet-shattered; then heals.
Who is this boy who tried to but could not
save his mother, and so grew up magnetized
by his own story of guilt and loss? Fate
might as well be a train, and our desire
the wish to bend the tracks away from their
set course. And oh, the lonely crippled one
whose gift or curse is to know the pain
and suffering of all— how the myriad sounds
they make are one voice, including his: wanting
to be understood, taken in for what they are.

“Morning is a clear house,
afternoon a wardrobe.” – D. Bonta

With her auburn hair turning to rusted
grey, Mrs. D. did not ever feel she belonged.
No matter what the season, she insisted
on wearing dark brown skirts that billowed
like canvas sails; often, we wondered if
they were repurposed from some pioneer wagon—
It was the first thing we saw of her on the rise
marking the end of the street, when she returned
from market. Don’t be silly, said Martina the maid.
No one can be that old today. At half past seven
every morning, Judge C. walked past. He always
dressed in white; only his hatband gleamed a dull
shade of gold, matching his wedding ring. I didn’t
know the name of the tenants in the apartment
next door: only that the husband had Parkinson’s—
his head rattled like a musical gourd at the end
of a stick. Mrs. S. raised flowers in her back-
yard, white and fuschia phaleonopsis, moth
orchids. Sometimes she came out and absently
touched the cascade of blooms, late at night,
when we rushed to our windows afraid
of the drunken commotion and screams from four
houses down: G.’s husband throwing her against
the furniture, their boarder R., our town’s first
policewoman on the force rushing to intervene,
though hardly anyone respected her badge or uniform.

 

In response to Via Negativa: House of the rising sun .