Postcard from Tea Creek Mountain
Landscape, with a Glimpse of the Soul as it Leaves the Body
My girlfriend, telling of her mother’s
last moments, describes the gaunt
frame they prop on pillows in the living
room, windows they slide open to a view
of mountains behind a curtain of gold leaves.
The cancer has chiseled her features close
to bone, but still she struggles to listen.
Hearing is one of the last senses to go;
and so they shush the relatives
that have come to start chants of ritual
mourning at her side. A son-in-law
slides a bow across a halting serenade
of viola strings. Grandchildren whisper
in her ear, urging her to the crossing.
And at the end, my friend swears
there is a split-second glimpse of wisping
breath— leaving the white-throated body
behind, slight tear like a wing in the air.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Postcard from Blackwater Canyon
Blue Stone Blues
Here we are again, the eye skimming along the grid
of what it’s given, then doing its calculus—
this overcast morning, lingering over
the lightfast, loving what’s stable;
but also what shimmers into a range
of forms. Though damp and rain
have drained the green out of the trees,
a scrape of bark yields copper undertones,
or ultramarine— extracted from stones once
more expensive than vermilion or even gold,
the blue of lapis lazuli’s a sheen
that royals what it’s smeared upon.
Sometimes I want to hold even a fleck of it
in the back of my throat: oh little pebble I
might lick for luck, tasting of sulphates or
blood, tumbled smooth by rough-toothed days.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Postcard from Blackwater Falls
“Just Trying to Get Better Cellphone Reception”
Dear ineffectually disguised intruder, dear
close call way out of turn, could you not have
thought of a better excuse when the police
doing Segway rounds caught you— having just
cleared the jutting-out branch of the maple,
having just jimmied the second floor front
windows of the neighbor, the ones that open
into atrium space clear from the balcony above
to the floor below? You didn’t know about
the thirteen foot drop, the jumble of plants
in pots by the door, the sharp cacophony
of broken terra cotta. Obviously you
had other things in mind— art work
in expensive frames on the wall;
a bedroom safe, shiny jewelry, small
appliances, cash found in a drawer:
anything, anything else but that.
—Luisa A. Igloria
10 10 2011
Shadow Play
A year ago I could have loved you. ~ Frank Graziano
I could have been the silhouette lifted from
parchment; or the tight little whorl of a bell
pepper nested inside its body like a heart.
—Luisa A. Igloria
10 09 2011
Simple
Not one or two but several layers
of complicated tastes and fragrances—
cassia and anise, coriander, fennel,
fenugreek: why can’t sugar be sweet
and salt be itself, even bitterness
be green distilled from herbs
grown hardscrabble in the soil?
Sometimes, I want the straight-
forward thing, no break hinged
between skin and seam.
Sometimes I want the flat side
of paper, not anymore its curl.
—Luisa A. Igloria
10 08 2011
Landscape, with Notes of Red
Bright red enamel of a teapot through the window,
brick red of a roof. Ask the weather vane twisted
in the shape of a whale which red it was that drew
fire from the earth’s belly, which red planted
seeds that burned in the mouth of the girl—
she held out for half a year without seeing
the black-throated blue warbler, without hearing
yellow-throated vireos speckling the air with
their song. So stark, these trellises of bark and steel-
cut grays. Whose white scarf has caught in the trees?
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.