Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
With every pass, the old broom sheds
pieces of straw. Across the porch,
a covering of snow. Chop wood,
carry water, kindle fire.
Remember the charm that pulled
the town back from under
a river of bubbling porridge—
At the edge of the wood the girl
twirls in her skirt of feathers:
ruby-red, pomegranate-red,
calling out danger.
—Luisa A. Igloria
02.03.2011
In response to today’s entry at Moving Poems.
Fallen branches ring
the dead cherry, each bearing
a row of teeth. The air
is soft now that the rain
has stopped: milky gruel,
thin salty broth we drink
and drink from the rim
of the bowl. So many nights
to have gone without sleep.
So many days we have walked,
fingers curled tight into palms.
So much sound in the crackly
air. We are so hungry now.
We are so eager for the dish
of melted ice in which to dunk
the loaves of dreams.
—Luisa A. Igloria
02.02.2011
In response to today’s Morning Porch entry.
Persistent voice, you tug at my ear
in the dark— against a snowy field,
the modulated click and swish
like metal filings finding each
other on a plate, their movements
careening into some coherency
or form. Beneath the sleeves
of trees, wintering arms
are dreaming of all kinds of things—
sleet, raindrops; the blue-green
sheen of eucalyptus leaves.
A silken cord passed through
a needle. The pungent spray
from spiraled rinds I peel
away from blood-oranges.
—Luisa A. Igloria
02.01.2011
In response to today’s Morning Porch entry.
In those days, we too looked to the sky
for omens— away from the burning effigies,
the barricades, the soldiers whose phalanxes
we broke with prayers and sandwiches made
by mothers, teachers and nuns passing rosaries
and flasks of water from hand to hand.
The city was a giant ear, listening for news
of the dictator. Sound travels swift through
a mass of suffering bodies. Snipers perched
like birds on the peripheries of buildings.
Thickening contrails striped the sky.
Two ravens flew side-by-side over the abandoned
palace, trading hoarse commentary. When night came,
the people scaled the gates. What did they see?
Papers of state whirling in the fireplace. Masses
of ball gowns choking the closet, shoes lined with satin
and pearls; gilt-edged murals above the staircase.
Days and nights of upheaval, their new history
alive; the old one writhing on the floor
with a blur around its mouth like hoarfrost.
—Luisa A. Igloria
01.31.2011
In response to today’s Morning Porch entry. (Remembering the Philippine “People Power” Revolution, in the light of current events in Egypt).
“That stick in your hand is tracing mansions
in which we shall always be together.”
—Anna Akhmatova
In the dream I am always on a raft, always
floating downstream, the river a voice just
beneath my ear, the heat and haze a coppery
taste on my tongue. The sky is a scroll
unwinding above, blue film cut through
occasionally by green fronds, vivid drapery
on rock walls. Do you know what it means?
I don’t. I am alone, of course. I have left you
behind, or you have left me. But today is another
morning. Where bodies have lain, the bed
is still warm. Outside, it’s snowing again.
I know why the blue jay keeps returning
to the same high limb to eat snow, as if it can’t
find that exact flavor anywhere else.
—Luisa A. Igloria
01.29.2011
In response to today’s Morning Porch entry.
“Adoro te devote, latens Deitas,
Quae sub his figuris vere latitas…”
[“I adore you devoutly, O hidden God
truly present under these veils…”]
—St. Thomas Aquinas
The silence of falling snow perhaps is like the hush
that lives somewhere in each moment of great
preparation: as for instance in Pieter van der Borcht’s
medieval copperplate engraving, when you would not know,
unless you read the captions, that the fierce and terrible
mangled faces of the lion and the lioness are from
their desperate expenditure of chi so that their stillborn
cub might live— under the gnarled cypress and rock,
see how its body writhes, stretching and coming to at last
under the double blowtorch of breath. And what of the meal
that the pelican gathers for her young from the cabinet
of her own breast, bright speckled clusters of blood from
the vine? Feathers fragranced with cedar, the phoenix
bursts into flame then crests from its ashes on the third
day; the unicorn comes to lay its head on the virgin’s lap,
and the foliage glistens like a page of illuminated
text. Orpheus knew, afterwards, the dangers of looking
too closely at the silence, of doubting what it might bear.
Think of him ascending from the depths, not hearing
her voice or footfall, not seeing her face. This morning,
also by myself, I bend to attend the furnace’s smolder.
Three deer digging under the wild apple tree
in the garden startle and run down the slope.
—Luisa A. Igloria
01.28.2011
In response to today’s Morning Porch entry.
Through air leafed with snow,
a large white bird— albino crow, lost
seagull, emperor crane: emissary
of what secret life or mystery?
Today was promised sun, but nothing
even faintly smolders except the tiniest
crumbs in the toaster tray. Impermanent
visitor, infrequent lodger, you stencil
your mirage on every dissolving thing:
salt, sugar, steam; the spiderweb
of lines upon each palm, the starry
tracks that streak the iron dark.
—Luisa A. Igloria
01.27.2011
In response to today’s Morning Porch entry.
My own, I am I know my hardest
and my most exacting prisoner,
most watchful sentinel braced
against the threshold— And so
in wakefulness sometimes I much prefer
the randomness of sound unpinned
from any explanation— the beeper
of a quarry truck trilling distant
like a digital alarm, the vowels
spelled by dueling chickadees
in the air. Even the ragged fringe
along a line of trees reverses
the abrupt shear where ridge
meets rain-filled sky into
a kind of noise.
—Luisa A. Igloria
01.26.2011
In response to today’s Morning Porch entry.
“Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.”
—W. B. Yeats, “The Wild Swans at Coole”
In today’s paper, an obituary for a scholar
who’d once taught in our midst— he died
Sunday, nearly two weeks to the day his wife
passed, just a few days after the new year. I knew
who they were but didn’t really know them:
might have seen them at the local coffee shop,
reading the news and eating toasted bagels; or
walking past the laundromat, melting into
the crowd of couples out for brunch. I’d never
thought too much about what it might be like to grow
old alone, or lonely; had more than once declared
that travel solo might be the better way to go—
no expectations, no one to have to pick up for
or after, no epics to endure and survive for dubious
reward (roots like mangroves’ anchored
in marshy soil… ) But even when the narrative’s over,
when the loggers have loaded up the rig and rolled
out of town (inaudible hush, low clouds
suspended above the highway), something in the air
will shimmer, something will always catch.
I stick an arm out, and white motes dot my sleeve.
I lean my forehead on the windowpane and feel my
bindings loosen. I want to hear the air puffed out
the sides of a bandoneon, to master the tangled
slide of paired legs across a polished floor.
—Luisa A. Igloria
01.25.2011
In response to today’s Morning Porch entry.
Consider the sun today, which sparkles more
like a wheel of tin instead of burnished bronze—
Consider the burdock which, though squat
and uncomely, casts a thin and graceful shadow—
Consider the brittle branches whose pencilled forms
yet bring to mind the musk of summer magnolias—
One day, syllables snagged so long in the throat
will marry bright crystals of salt—
One day a mouth will press against another like the curve
of the moon on a hillside, like a homecoming—
One day the world will be that room,
and that room only.
—Luisa A. Igloria
01.24.2011
In response to today’s Morning Porch entry.