Via Negativa

The gate— green and rusting in patches;
gravel along the walk. The heads of orchids
nodding over the neighbor’s fence. Not far
from there, the road that descends into the park.
Memory from childhood of looming pines,
scuffle of loose stones underfoot; fretwork
of darkening blue, burst corollas of Queen
Anne’s Lace. Returning in the evening,
listen closely, listen closely—
in the wood the sparrow calls, and you stop
what you are doing; and you turn your head
toward the mountains though there’s nothing
in the window but the hoarfrost and the moon.

—Luisa A. Igloria
11 02 2011

In response to an entry from The Morning Porch.

Les étagères de la nuit: “Reliquaries [in Saint-Pol-de-Léon Cathedral, Brittany] containing the skulls…of people disinterred from under the church floor, and later from the cemetery.”

Further up in the highlands where I am from,
it was customary to strap the dead in full regalia
to a ceremonial chair, in view of all who came

to pay their respects. In time— a month,
perhaps more— smoke from fragrant leaves
and twigs rendered the body leathered,

leached of weight and fluid, light enough
to fold then carry into a limestone niche,
up in the hills where only the wind,

amorous to the last, has permission
to thread its voice through desiccated
flesh. And even then it is not the end—

Rocks and trees house spirits, parts
of souls that traffic through the gaps
between worlds: spasm of powdery moth

wings on the window screen, faint whiff
of jasmine at dusk in a garden worn
nearly to ruin; the sudden blur

by the abandoned hummingbird feeder.
Even in another part of the world, in that
church crammed with relics —a thorn from

the crown of Christ, a bell, 32 miniature
boxes the size of birdhouses— the bones
of the severed body defy all final exiling.

Why else would the little chapels holding skulls
buffed to ivory, bear the lettered names of the dead?
Why shape their apertures like hearts and sweet clover?

—Luisa A. Igloria
11 01 2011

In response to an entry from The Morning Porch.

As if the world had traced an outline
around itself, in order to remember—

Hoarfrost on every blade of grass,
stippling every twig and leaf—

Distant call of creatures winging
south, lines that veer into the wind—

—Luisa A. Igloria
10 31 2011

In response to an entry from The Morning Porch.

In the morning, I looked for
the comfort of hymns and came back
unrequited.

At noon, I sought just enough clear
water to fill a bud vase, and found
blush scattered on the walk.

Evening now, and the sun crowns leaves
unearthly orange and red: as if a net
caught all I could not hope

to gather, in this world and the next.

—Luisa A. Igloria
10 30 2011

In response to an entry from The Morning Porch.

by sheer and boring repetition—
this is the way we learned our numbers,
letters: morning drills, multiplication

tables; and in the afternoons the parsing
of sentences and their parts. Long, chalked-out
trees of subjects, verbs, and their modifiers

growing sideways, across the blue-green
blackboard. Before the last bell rang
our release, a half hour of cursive

writing: a series of tight loops and coils
leaning right then left; then spelling
and vocabulary practice. And finally,

reading Mercator maps pulled down like color-
blocked shades across the board. I liked
how the teacher let us come close to inspect

the shapes of continents and islands
marked with latitudes and meridians;
how we measured the width of Greenland

or the Indian Ocean with our hands,
before returning to our seats to correct
our pencil drawings— How wonderful

to know that even as sun or rain beat on
the classroom windows, as surely as our erasers
rubbed spots on the paper thin, a gold-flecked

sandstorm whirled in the desert; and somewhere,
the first snow of the season had already
stencilled the landscape in white.

—Luisa A. Igloria
10 29 2011

In response to an entry from The Morning Porch.

Once, the kitchen was big enough for only one
table. Swollen hearts of the banana swung
their weight over the window; and in November,
first frost left prints or curled upon the breath,
then faded into white-tinted sky. Do you remember

the year they put the black pig in the untiled
downstairs bathroom? How it grunted through
the night, surely knowing its fate next day
beneath the avocado trees. The ones who come
to have a look, have only one requirement

in mind: turn-key. The wood is rich
and dark but the rooms old-fashioned, the windows
framed in splinters. Here are the beautiful lathe-
turned balusters leading up into unfinished space,
the light softened there by rough-hitched rafters,

leaking through in places with the rain. Every post
set into the foundation rests beside buried coin,
singed feather, spatter of blood. Nothing new smells
like woven cane, inlaid shell— history the taste
of an iron grille, the inside of a padlocked chest.

—Luisa A. Igloria
10 28 2011

In response to an entry from The Morning Porch.

In response to an entry from The Morning Porch.