Author: Luisa A. Igloria

~ after Katrina Bello


First country, last sea— How light 
knits a borderless shawl to throw 

on the backs of hills, across sheaths 
of grain, across cities recovering from

fire or flood or some recent disaster. We too 
are sown and re-sown in the world, as seeds 

pushing through soil,  as water traveling through 
veins, unfazed by mineral shadows. At daybreak, 

fishermen shake scales of silver from their nets. 
At dusk, furtive light burnishes the soles of their feet.  

I want to believe we are cupped like this—held 
like warm knobs of bread cradled in brown paper

and borne through the still sleeping streets, held 
like a quiet clapper inside the cast iron mouth 

of a great bell. What fell out of the skies, 
and from such a great distance? When islands 

quake and leaves shrivel, it is from the hands 
of the Mother. Peel the dry papyrus husk 

of a garlic clove, salt a plate of java plums. Sit 
at the edge of the harbor watching ships

haul their mixed inventory of treasure and waste. 
In time, we will die where we are. First sea, last country. 







  

~ after “It is Rumored: Bloody Point,” Jessica Damen


There is more water now, not less,
from climate change and subsidence.

Ghost-glints on the surface, bright
as bayonets on the ends of muskets.

The past may be rumor,
though much of it is true.

The past roils with the tides, crashing
on rocks at the point of Kent island.

Saltgrass and seagrass still line
the estuaries where ships passed,

bearing their cargo of bodies. Glimpsed through
paper the color of tea, bodies chained

in pairs tumble backward into the depths.
Their bones land on liquid beds, notes

of a dirge that lingers. History is a haunting that winds
through fret-boards of coral and crab pots.

You have to press it onto a scroll and hold it up
to the light, to see what soaks through;

how the colors of blood mute with salt
into indigo and siena but never fade.

~ Lu-pa-ÍN; land, lands (Tagalog/Filipino);
after Katrina Bello

Mud and mangroves, canvases of green.

Paths of dust kicked up by the feet of running 
children. O lumbering water buffalo in the field, 

steered by egrets' white flags. Under the sun, we

all yield to the present. What is it to survive
one season, when the next is uncertain? 

On the city's margins, what we reclaimed 

from the sea eats away at the edges. 
Storms churn their sickles, bent on conquest. 

We gather wet earth to shape into forms.

This is how we are told islands are born. This
is how our bodies learned their color, having been

made porous by the memory of what returns.

~ after “Leaping Into Eel’s Death Colors,” Jessica Damen


From the underworld of dreams and origins,

it cleaves the darkness with its amber breath,
scattering roots, ground beetles, sand, silt.

It only needs an opening. A fissure in the earth,

a wound, a well choked with the residue
of time. We say depth, but we can hardly imagine

the measure of what can’t be fathomed.

Scientists call soil layers horizons—topsoil,
subsoil, and between these, clay, metal, rock.

The sun, rising and setting in caverns.

Whoever drinks the water in these pools,
talks to the dead and the drowned.

The eel hoists its silver spine and gleaming

banners up, and you know you’ll run to meet it
where the currents of life and death dissolve

the salt of all our longings, and the self

can no longer tell green from grave or garden,
and whether it is ending or just beginning.

Nights when a hurricane bore down,
          we pulled a mattress into the living room.
We stuck candles into the tops of empty
          Coke bottles, caught the wax drippings
and formed them into balls. We were still
         all together then. No one had yet passed 
away, no one had left or shaken the dust 
         off their feet at the threshold. We were 
happy, or I think we were happy, knowing nothing
        about the world except that we believed 
one day, as long as we were good, we'd make
        our fortunes and live out our days eating
apples and grapes or smoking cirarettes 
         like thin people did in the movies. Waiting 
for the endless rain to stop, we ate tinned 
         mackerel poured on mounds of hot white 
rice, then lay back on the pillows as the aunts 
         clicked their way down one wooden 
rosary bead to the next, intoning prayers. None 
         of us had yet left for another country, nor 
written letters about our loneliness on thin 
         blue air mail paper that would arrive with less 
and less frequency. Our houses, which were more 
         than a hundred years old, shivered with every 
blow of wind. Our mothers searched our heads
         for lice before tightly braiding our hair— so
tightly it brought tears to our eyes, but the kind that
         did not yet feel like we'd lost a whole world.

         

A swallowtail waits out a hard rain
on the sill. The neighbor’s dog barks
three times then stops. We pray for signs,
as if gathering them might make it possible
to walk an outcome back from the edge
of imminence or fulfillment. A doctor calls
with news. A child breaks a long silence
so we can finally exhale a long-held breath.
Mostly, we endure from one turning to another—
fire to flood, ripening to rot. Wind pushes heavy
clouds from west to east. How does one influence
a mind that no one can fully enter? How long
have I waited like this for the one on the other
side to open the door and walk through it? Lights
are on in the all-night convenience store and gas
station on the corner. The stars, too, remain lit. As if,
seen or unseen, being there is a kind of intervention.

One corner of the lattice is chewed 
through. Some nocturnal animal, trying 
to force its way beneath the deck where 
it's cooler than anywhere on the surface. 
I call our handyman to measure the lengths
between the wooden supports, so he 
can repair the broken slats and add a gate. 
In the afternoon, we find the deck umbrella 
fallen on its side. No one heard the wind 
making any kind of incursion. And yet.
Rilke said, What fights with us is so great. 
I think he meant overwhelming, more than 
wonderful. Is anything difficult in life, then,
an Angel? Are we supposed to give ourselves up
just like that, to the more powerful force
instead of working in opposition to it?
I want to win, even sometimes, 
over some greater being. To bring all
my fight into that arena which is always
sold to me as worthy. To feel extraordinary
even if not eternal, in that one moment 
deemed most likely impossible, glimpse
a tiny door that opens to the other side. 
 

Beneath the leather 
covering, layers of yarn.
Double braids in red,
a hundred and eight stitches.
Aimed at the catcher and pitched.
 

On Tuesday, there was an extraordinary number
of lightning strikes. 24,453, according to our local
meteorologist. That’s a whole lot of flash-to-bang
calculations. Approximately 16.98 strikes per minute
over the course of the day. A manual count is considered
inaccurate and prone to error, but there are radiowave
and satellite sensors. I saw the maps they produced:
the carpet of stylized zap lines, like the chest emblems of
Shazam and Captain Marvel. All the way from Tappahannock
and Chincoteague down to Williamsburg, Hampton, Norfolk,
Franklin, Ahoskie, and Elizabeth City— Bolts as tightly
overlapping as the keratin scales of the pangolin, one of
the world’s most heavily trafficked wild mammals, thought
to be the source of the coronavirus. And yet, for all
the tightness of this armor, the sense that the smallest
gap is all it takes to electrify the entire field.