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Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

These are the leaves we are hearing now

The kitchen boy comes out of the restaurant door, swinging a bag of trash. On the way to the dumpster he pauses under the crepe myrtles in full and premature flower, under the magnolias and their profusion of heavy blooms. It’s nearly midnight but the heat is thick as a double velvet drape in an old-time movie theatre, and the sounds of rasping in the trees are like instruments being tuned in the orchestra pit. The cooks have gone home, and the sushi chef. Only the waitresses are still inside. The security guard with the name of a crone comes out of his car and walks around the parking lot, peers into the lit windows of the sports store. The Pho restaurant’s been closed since nine; the sign in neon-colored chalk advertising their new bubble tea has muted to one shade: that of a rusty hinge. Hidden from view, a hundred forewings translating texture; tymbals rasping along the insect’s abdomen, to make the sound of the leaves we are hearing now.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Leaf wings.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Leaf wings

katydid wing
Pterophylla camellifolia

These are the leaves we are hearing now: a kind of dry crepitation. Shall we believe the old folk wisdom, that this means it’s only six weeks now until the first frost? The real leaves are already yellowing, some of them, but from drought rather than from any intimation of an early fall. The katydids stay green as April right up until they die sometime in November.

This “testy little dogmatist,” rendered familiar by the verses of Holmes, is one of the loudest and most persevering of our native musicians; silent and concealed among the leaves during the day, at night it mounts to the highest branches of the trees, where the male commences his sonorous call to the noiseless females. The sound is produced by the friction of the taborets in the triangular overlapping portion of each wing cover against each other, and is strengthened by the escape of air from the sacs of the body, reverberating so loudly as to be heard a quarter of a mile in a still night.

Thus the venerable American Cyclopedia from 1879. The referenced poem is Oliver Wendell Holmes’ “To an Insect,” which is fairly dreadful, managing to be sexist and factually incorrect at the same time:

Thou art a female, Katydid!
I know it by the trill
That quivers through thy piercing notes,
So petulant and shrill;
I think there is a knot of you
Beneath the hollow tree,—
A knot of spinster Katydids,—
Do Katydids drink tea?

Meanwhile, something with enormous, filmy wings has somehow made it through the screen and launches periodic assaults on my reading light, flopping awkwardly about and startling me each time. I think it might be a species of lacewing. It rests now on the yellow wall, and I notice that its wings, too, somewhat resemble leaves — the kind that have been eaten away by leaf miners until only the veins remain.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Annual

“Live, said the liver.
Hear, said the heart.”

 

Open wide, place your feet
in the stirrups

Say aaahh and nothing more
as your pockets are swabbed

for bits of loose change
Make a fist to prime the vein

Blow a little air through closed
lids and watch the needle skitter

Afterwards fold the robe into a paper
shade to hang above the table

 

In response to Via Negativa: Self-destruction.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Self-Destruction

What shall I make of myself?
A bell, said the belly.
A nave, said the navel.
A temple, said the temples.
A bra, said the brain.
Art, said the arteries.
A kid, said the kidney.
A fin, said the fingers.
A ski, said the skin.
A fee, said the feet.
A pen, said the penis.
A test, said the testicles.
A tong, said the tongue.
A cart, said the cartilage.
Are you kidding me?
No, said the nose.
Spin, said the spine.
Live, said the liver.
Hear, said the heart.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Amarillo

This entry is part 17 of 47 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Summer 2012

Overheard lunchtime conversation: Longing is a color, just as much as a state.
And as I turn to the window, goldfinches pass through the trees like a yellow wind.

Along the boardwalk, shops sell puka shell bracelets, batik sarongs, T-shirts silkscreened
Virginia is for Lovers. Skateboarders on the street, zipping by like day-glo wind.

See the parasailers aloft in their tethered vests. Waves roll in and crash, then roll out
again. The beach is dotted with collapsible tents, ochre-striped flaps open to the wind.

From someone’s radio, the dance theme from Slumdog Millionaire. I’m seized by
a craving for lemon rice, mango chutney, some hint of chillies and saffron in the wind.

Some days are impermeable, asbestos. Other days spontaneously combust. The thing is,
there’s no warning panel with lights flashing yellow, no siren blaring into the wind.

Amarillo‘s another name for the blossom of the Caraiba, Tabebuia, or Araguaney:
long-throated flowers emerge after leaves have shed, rustling like gold foil in the wind.

Dear sunflower, you are too faithful, following that scorcher all day— Has he ever
bent to kiss your hot golden head? No? But rain’s been kind; and the cool wind.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

What to Call It

To the thrush singing at the woods’ edge
it must look as if I’m hitting myself

but that’s only incidental.
I’m swatting mosquitoes.

*

To the cops at the stadium
it might appear that she’s praying

when she closes her eyes
to see the afterimages on her eyelids.

*

To friends & admirers of the legendary coach
it must’ve seemed so generous,

all the things he gave those boys,
all the places he took them.

*

To us it’s a mournful song
but to the wood thrush itself?

Perhaps just the sound of dusk
passing through its windpipe.


Inspired in part by the currently serializing Fragments issue at qarrtsiluni.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Life imitates Munch

tasting rhubarb:

After a while, the shapes and colours that spring so strongly from the work seem to invade the spaces in between. The people looking at the paintings, their shapes and angles and outlines, appear more and more as if they’d stepped out of them. A painted shock of red hair, a purple dress, a pale, drooping, interesting face, take the eye straight to another that is not painted.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

What We’ll Remember

This entry is part 16 of 47 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Summer 2012

We’ll remember this as the summer when hail rained down as large as peaches, when whips of lightning tore through the humid air. We’ll remember this as the summer when we woke and looked up to see a sky filled with clouds in the shape of women’s pendulous breasts; when every day as we walked from one end of the field to the other, it seemed the cicadas’ agitated chirping might rival the noise of oncoming trains. And we’ll remember this as the summer of startling sightings: wild birds far from home, a man-of-war sailing into the harbor, cannons firing in salute; and a body washed up on the river’s edge. A cerulean warbler sang incessantly in the yard, and doctor’s reports recommended the cutting away of some parts. We’ll remember this as the summer of swiftest change: how we walked, mornings and evenings, past fences overgrown with wisteria— their opulent scent already balanced on the rim of decay.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.