Author: Luisa A. Igloria

We get up to rain and fog; or rather,
smoke— the swamp still burning

in the month-long aftermath of
lightning strike. Not even a hurricane

could put it out. Whatever else one
might say, it is a form of dedication.

Name your materials, then: peat and fossils;
ethyl alcohol, grains soaked and swirled

in a silo of glass. Little clutch of wood
shavings; cone of paper, puff of breath.

Coals in a tempered dish. Some light
to take you past the midnight hour.

At a conference many years ago,
a Persian poet I didn’t even know

looked at me and said, Your stomach
is tight; don’t try too hard.

And it’s true. Don’t we want,
so many times every day, to unclench?

The world looms close. Only look up
at the brilliant fall sky

and the silver gleam of a plane
glancing off the buildings.

Somewhere in the woods, a bright
clearing where a tree came down.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Glyko Karythi: Green Walnut Spoon Sweet [Greek]

What falls, will fall of its own accord
because the season dictates it— acorns
and chestnuts on the ground, leaves now
beginning their russet plunge. No sword

needs to sever the filaments, no word
except what blows, mostly unseen, through
the late hours. Sometimes the light thud
of a globed body: hard green pear, gourd

bitter with unripe longings. Fall’s rewards,
we think, are tinted scarlet: apples, late-
blushed nectarines we gather, moving from tree
to tree. But also the rough, raw, blurred.

A stinkbug on the railing drops, not quite unheard,
to the porch floor. The seed’s housed in a shell
that cracks to metaphor. I marvel at how walnuts
packed whole in honey were once hard, uncured;

but yield all, steeped long in sweetness, complex art—skin,
flesh, bone you could cut, clear to the wrinkled heart.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Shh. Say nothing of the racket of jays
in the crown of an oak, commotion

of feathers every which way—
I don’t know either how to find

the way back to the garden; only
now there is everything to say.

Moths lie still on the mesh
of the window, light

being the project
never quite done.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Where is your silver tea set, that gown of fine
embroidered silk, its train of gauze?

Ropes of pearl wound at your neck,
your tiara’s ruby diadem offset by the dark

waterfall of your hair— so self-
possessed, your bearing wrought by mountain

life, cold air, knowledge of the vengeful gods
whose hungers root, white and deep, hard

within the writhing animal’s entrails.
Askance, you look upon the roaring crowd

at carnival, eight thousand strong who’ve come
to gape at such uncommon beauty. You know the fog

will sift and bloom through centuries,
lay cloudy vermeil upon dissolving bones.

And we wonder if, beneath the city streets
breast-plated with garbage, the blood of some

old sacrifice still smolders, slow
flame the rain can’t quench.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

The beginning, or the end
of an affair? Water obeys

the tidal surge. Last night’s moon,
liquid wafer. Coin that pays

for air so clear today, sunlit
leaves green as June again.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

A restless wind turns over leaves
and enters, searching through the house
when we unlatch the windows.

*

Cobblestones emerge from under
veils of water and moss to turn
their eyes toward the sun.

*

What star is crossing rapidly toward another
in the heavens now? So glad for them, I turn
my face toward the light of their passing.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Note: This poem has been temporarily hidden by the author.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

What did we hear that morning?
The sound of deer running through the woods;
and from over the ridge, that highway whine.

You said, The left hand is for warding off,
the right for receiving. I tried to remember
the sequence of gemstones looped around the wrist—

peridot, bauxite, rose quartz, crystal, amethyst:
each one strung and tuned to the heart-strings.
So we reverberate to each other’s calling:

silence is a desert hung with midnight stars,
the thrum of quiet waking. Somewhere a wing,
rippling air that the other breathes.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.