Author: Luisa A. Igloria

both beguiling and horrifying to think 
of the possibility of a second world. Blank 
as a new page or a fresh pour of plaster, 
but one  in which you could remember 
everything  about this one—and in so doing
refuse the romantic illusion of beginning 
all over again. You've made so many terrible 
choices in life, then made yourself sick in pursuit 
of pure absolution. Of course  it's the ones 
without conscience or compunction who'll say 
none of it means anything anyway. But what 
do you need another world for? Not ever after. 
Only, perhaps, what breaks in this one 
does so to help you survive every after.   

the unsaid that did us all in. A slight rain misted 
the roof and the air looked curtained in gauze. 
Was this, too, just window dressing? In every 
contract there's always some kind of fine print. 
Something to remember, next time you're invited 
to a breakfast meeting because your feedback
is important to us, and you'll have some opportunity 
for negotiation. Do you play to win, or do you win
at whatever expense? Because this could change
the likelihood you get reassigned to the smallest 
office with no window, next to the restroom. Take 
careful and complete notes. Remember what Sun 
Tzu said—subdue the enemy without fighting. Be
night and thunderbolt, wood, fire, and mountain. 

 

bright, though the moon showed only half
her face. The motion sensor lights did not
need to turn themselves on when I walked
to the bin to throw out the trash. Back inside,
I took up a pair of silver scissors and trimmed 
my husband's hair. I am capable of combing
through a thinning forest and gauging how much
to cut back. Not precision, but a steady eye and
hands that don't yet tremble. The moon loves
a landscape it can stamp with its emblems.
It must have pressed its fingers on my brow,
long ago when I was sleeping. When I woke,
my soul was steeped in the tea of its sadness.
I carry this radiance through the murky world.

a jewel of an egg, thieved by a crow out of the maple.
Small and blue, likely speckled. Tempting to say history 
is like that, gone in a flash.  Except there's no augury here, 
only inventory. There can be comfort from skipping myth 
and squarely facing the ordinary. Rilke said love the questions. 
Wait. Was't that live the questions? By which he meant come out 
sometimes from those rooms where you've locked yourself away 
like a book or a hermit or someone who merely trades their labor 
for pay. Drudge, nine-to-fiver, yes-man, hireling, hand. A friend 
told me she has a simple prayer for everything: Really, God? 
I laugh, like someone in the green shallows of a fishbowl, 
circling the cloverleaf for the hundredth time. A skylight
gleams overhead, wreathed in brambles. From endless 
listening, I think I have some knowledge of translation. 
 

 
Thumbing through a book from 1915, I marvel 
at the nearly floor-length hair of girls and women.

They sit on the stairs, one in front of the other,
plying tortoise shell combs. 

I can almost smell the fragrance of coconut oil
worked through their blue-black tresses.
 
Their fingers are cool and delicate, intimacies
keyed into each wrist.

Summer isn't upon them yet, but is approaching.

They haven't shed their elaborate layers of clothing—
shawls on top of heavy blouses, voluminous skirts.

Today I heard someone wish for rain. 

I admit, when the air is humid, it's like a hand
pressing down on my brain to see how soon I'll yield.

I long for cool, still nights, talking crickets.

It feels nice to run my hands over yellowed keys,
though the piano is severely out of tune.

At the heart hospital, I lie on the imaging
      table, looking up at the bland ceiling 
while the technician gets ready to slick
      gel on one end of the transducer. In this
soundproofed room, we don't hear the traffic
      thickening on Brambleton. But when she engages
the Doppler, waves of gray appear on the bottom
      of the screen and a whooshing sound pulses near
my ear— like wind across a beach, waves coming in
      and eddying around the twin islands of
my kidneys. The vascular ultrasound machine
      has opened this window into my own interior
and suddenly I'm reminded of how my body can feel 
      spacious or cluttered in ways I forget 
on a daily basis— like when I struggle with 
      the waistband of a pair of old jeans, or feel 
the hot burn of spice travel from my mouth, down 
      through my esophagus. The technician tells me 
to hold my breath and I do, while on the screen, 
      something flickers and pulses, still keeping time 
in spite of me. Blue, she tells me, is the track of
      blood flowing away; and red, toward the organ. 
I am traveler and terrain, vessel and cargo, 
      the untranslatable rendered legible.

The thin veined leaves— I see 
their undersides as they turn 

toward window light. You know you're in 
the presence of language that speaks 

from the depths when you feel the skin 
trying to keep it all in. As soon as my head 

touches the pillow, the ghosts of my dead 
crowd around me like petals. If they wanted it, 

I'd offer my heart to them like a sweet. 
But they say they don't. Their fingers comb 

through my hair the way wind moves down 
the limbs of the crepe myrtle. After a good 

shaking, the earth around it is covered 
with drifts of pale purple and pink.

Do they offer instruction, warning, hope? 
They only circle my head like moons 

freed from their usual orbit. I keep trying to break 
language into patterns that will mean something 

beyond myself. I think of the mulberries I picked 
from a friend's garden, how even as half of them 

sank into swift ferment, their skin still gleamed. 
Night, too, presses its blue bruise against 

the house walls. Everything can fold back into itself, 
and my ghosts slip back like leaves into the pages of

a book. After, the air feels like it does after someone 
has said something so real, it becomes unrepeatable

Of course I know it's bait. 
The algorithm seems clairvoyant, 
every ad on my feed picking up 
on that one time I stopped to read
the made-up stories of silver-
haired couples, probate lawyers, 
locked accounts, missing passwords 
and how touch and facial recognition 
no longer work when you're dead. 
It's almost sweet, the way they pitch
the idea of a clean finish. But also
there's threat (think of signatures
aligned like teeth) behind the smooth,
imagined voice that says order now 
what you'll need at the end if you really 
care for those who'll have to clean up 
your mess. I restrain the impulse to buy— 
the plot, the planner, the tidy record 
keeper— not already gone, not quite
leaving nor convinced I'm turning 
into the ghost of me. 

 
takes small steps on the ocean floor,  
     looking overdressed, theatrical, 
awkward— I recognize the feeling:  
              of being visible in ways I can't 
control, but moving forward anyway
     while pretending nothing's wrong. 
But maybe the batfish is a diva. 
              She can walk on the tips 
of her fins and doesn't care 
     if anyone's watching. And maybe 
there's nothing wrong, since shame  
              is an invention that keeps us 
from inhabiting our own joy. 
     What's gravity when you can tiptoe-
float through water, the spots 
              on your front and back 
rippling with reflected light,
     announcing your arrival?  

The average lifespan  
   is four thousand weeks, give or take.

What should we do
       with our allotment?

In this economy of days, 
   a work week is held in contrast

to paid time off or vacations.
        Doing nothing is still 

a form of doing and there are many fine
    forms of doing nothing— sitting

in a cathedral built of slow 
        mornings, sleeping while rain

divides into currencies you'll  
     eventually give up counting. 

The days wrap around you sometimes 
        like a thin clinical gown,

neither cloth nor paper. 
     You can wear it to open in front 

or in the back. Either way, you are 
        easier to access. Forget your bad 

hip, your bum shoulder. They're mere 
     distractions when you want to take 

time peeling an orange, releasing its scent
        as you pull pith away from flesh.