Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
In order to avert a crisis,
the family comes as one
to plead their case: no one
bothers to verify if it is true
a child is on the way—
how could it not be so?
Quick to the church,
and quickly exit with streams
of jaunty orange and gold;
and all that rice, rained on
the heads of all who’ve
gathered at the door:
and all that fractures
and multiplies in little
bits of rattling white.
—Luisa A Igloria
11 07 2011
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch
Eschatology: a branch of theology concerned with the final events
in the history of the world or of humankind.
What else are they waiting for, those ten
watchful virgins? The bridegroom’s been
promised, the nuptials and the feast
arranged. And the ones they send away
to buy oil from merchants in the town?
What becomes of them? Night has fallen,
the year bent hard toward solstice.
In the overhead branches, wind moves
like knives, scoring each surface met.
In the distance, those windows hung
with curtains and ablaze with light—
Why can’t I believe all that were
turned away have been unfaithful,
or merely unprepared? Of them, who
sleeps in abandoned sheds or among
unpolished stones in the field,
gathering scraps and twigs for
kindling? I’ve seen their limbs
offered up to the cold in sleep,
as the bus hurtled along the edge
of highway. At daybreak, a bird
dares to disrupt the silence.
Only the sun warming the peaked roofs
knows how one side begins to steam
while the other remains in shadow.
—Luisa A. Igloria
11 06 2011
In response to an entry from The Morning Porch.
The shadow of a doubt returns from exile to find another in its place, a shadow of suspicion swollen almost into a shadow of unrest. Where once an Air Force pilot passed out leaflets claiming the Holocaust was an accounting error, now there’s a new shrine to old money. Security cameras bristle around the base of a drilling rig crowned with lights. A bicycle chained to a rack begs mutely for release. The doubt is reasonable now, a respected member of the community, & no one seems to mind that he hasn’t cast a shadow in years. He’s careful around mirrors. On the cover of his authorized biography, he stretches one powerful arm, a cross stripped of the usual ambiguity. The shadow of a smile hangs over him like a broken moon.
*
Prompted by this.
Like a restless spirit, the wind
has thrashed through the branches
all night, and is still not done
in the morning— upending some
deck chairs, the small newspaper
dispensers on the corner, signs
on campus that were up yesterday,
announcing the football game. Hard
frost at dawn— thin blossoms
feather with ice crystals and then
lie limp, uncurled by the warming thaw
at noon. I, too, have been confused
by so much weather— burrowing under
a summer-thin quilt and craving warmth,
waiting for the heat to kick in.
More blankets, wool socks. But cold,
anyway, in the bones. Whatever you do,
a teacher said to me once, stay
grounded in the center; don’t let
the fire in your gut go out.
—Luisa A. Igloria
11 04 2011
In response to an entry from The Morning Porch.
The hunters wrapped their treestand in camouflaged cloth. When it came time to paint the roof, they chose blue. That way, they thought, it might blend into the sky, forgetting that the deer see in black-and-white. Or maybe they remembered, and painted it to please themselves. But now their sky has fallen in, a lid on a sagging box nailed to the twin trunks of a rock oak that pull it back and forth between them in the ridgetop winds, like a prized toy.
Continue reading “In plain sight”
1.
To hold the attention of a Sunday
school class, my brother said
he once had to eat a piece of chalk.
He never said what the lesson was about,
just that the chalk was tasteless
& thoroughly indigestible.
2.
When Borges came to speak
at Penn State, he sat folded
into an easy chair on stage,
still as a lizard on a heat rock.
He quoted Basho to show
that metaphor isn’t essential—
the “ancient pond” haiku.
But as he delivered his pronouncements,
he kept smiling at something
three feet above our heads.
And seeing the smiles pass
across his blind face, we all
began to smile too,
pleased at our proximity
to such a famous solitude,
which we were sure
must’ve been flooded with light.
3.
I’ve kept all the glass ashtrays
from when I used to smoke, lovely
as the windows of a church
in which I can no longer kneel.
Has it really been 12 years?
Borges said: Life is a dream,
to which someone in the audience objected:
That’s a metaphor!
No, he intoned, it’s the truth.
And for some reason
everyone broke out laughing.
Based on this post from August 2009.
Imagine how long it took to form each
solid face of rock, those shoulders
hunched in grey-cloaked silhouette
against the coast— how long
wind and weather chipped away
(to flake, to rubble, and to grit)
what yet withstands the elements
and lodges in the flesh of the unshod
foot. Updrafts of air that wide-
winged birds will ride, alone
in so much space; cathedrals of fog,
buttressed above all that unrelenting
flint. And yet each loosened orb,
each pock-marked surface, moon-like,
gouged by water, wrapped in yellow strands
of kelp, scribes me with grainy hope.
—Luisa A. Igloria
11 03 2011
In response to an entry from The Morning Porch.
Thanks also to Beth Adams for the inspiration from some of her recent work.
On a windy day in March,
we stop at a Chevy dealership
near Orbisonia, Pennsylvania,
for a closer look at an enormous American flag
on a too-short pole. It seems intent
on demonstrating some elemental
principle of travel.
As we watch, completely straight & sober
but feeling more stoned by the minute,
it becomes a country unto itself,
complete with its own square of sky.
Slow waves of wind beginning
out among the stars find endless,
inventive ways to pass through the striped field,
the alternating strips of crop and fallow
following the contours of a land
continually in flux, like a farmer’s dream
of swimming deep into the soil.
The medium becomes the only message.
And anti-nationalist that I am, I find
I would almost pledge allegiance
to this well-made thing
& the wind that gives it another, freer kind of life.
Where were we going, again?
We both agree we could sit here all day,
if it weren’t for the likelihood that sooner
or later someone would report us
to the police for suspicious activity.
We pull gingerly back
onto the old blue road.
*
I’m mining the Via Negativa archive for poetic material. This derives from a 2005 post, Stars and stripes.
Some days joy is only the size
of a dinner plate, cracked porcelain
bowl, water glass still warm, clean,
gleaming from the dryer; some days
it is the oily tail of the undefinable, swept
along their rims: appetite’s ukiyo-e—
—Luisa A. Igloria
11 03 2011
In response to an entry from The Morning Porch.
The egg was breathing
so quietly you wouldn’t
have known it was alive.
No clouds appeared in
its immaculate atmosphere.
It was a belly in search of a buddha,
a featureless head, a round number.
It balanced on a single point
with far less effort than
a ballerina. After a while,
it got the idea that it was a bean,
& one day would open green wings
& lead the way to the sun, which
didn’t look entirely unattainable.
The strongest hand
couldn’t crush it.
Who’d have thought that warm center
it had always taken for a heart
had other plans?