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Posted on by Dave Bonta

Reading the Icelandic Sagas

This entry is part 21 of 29 in the series Conversari

 

The difficult syllables clash
in my mouth. Your knitting
needles make short
work of the yarn,
like the dream-woman
who gave An Twig-Belly
his nickname, filling
his disemboweled gut
with a tangle of twigs
until his intestines could
be put back where
they belonged, in all
their tortuous windings.
We puzzle through
the genealogies, struggle
to picture the raw land
rising behind the words,
yet somehow these grim stories
bring us closer together.
Young men described
as promising will end up
wallowing in each other’s gore—
we know this.
Beautiful women will goad
their thin-skinned mates
into horrific acts.
A shepherd boy is smashed
against the ground so hard
his spine snaps, & two years
after his miraculous rescue
An Twig-Belly dies
a quick & needless death,
split by an unheroic sword.
You frown at your knitting
& decide it too needs
to be unraveled. I watch
the dark garment which was
to have been mine dissolve
in your expert fingers.
You smile.
I feel light as air.


See Rachel’s photographic response: “Seed.”

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

You will have to do things you have never done before

Recalculate the seasons. Rewrite The Farmer’s Almanac. Research new forms of lightning vanes for multi-forked strikes. High, thin and cold cover of cirrus clouds: find out how to thin them more. Falling sunlight, melting ice. The pull of gravity reaching deep into the bones. And yes, there are days when nothing seems to work, and I don’t know how to comfort you. I try to remember what my grandmother said about herbs and hallucinogenics: which leaves, when chewed, bring on a clammy sweat and which, when pounded into paste, lead one briefly to clear water in the middle of a lake. Lying beneath a black sky you might feel the tremors beginning again under the earth. It is a hundred degrees, close to midnight. A fig tree at the edge of the field has put forth a few small knobs of fruit. Swelling out like hips, not quite ripe yet; but how sadly erotic they are. Winds like knives slash at the topmost parts of trees. Months ago, most of the water found exit hatches. Silvery rivulets drained into the ground, leaving their dry calligraphy behind.

 

In response to small stone (110) and What the Night Horse Said.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Throttle Ghazal

This entry is part 19 of 47 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Summer 2012

 

In the heart of the downtown section, a stretch of cobblestone streets:
they stop motorists from gunning through them at full throttle.

Don’t put the cart before the horse, don’t jump from the frying
pan into the fire: in other words, don’t go at full throttle.

Who finds caution in the wind? Who gleans the stitches
from the timid rhyme? Not the young, going at full throttle.

In the school parking lot, I skirt the second speed bump when I can. They’re there
for a reason, says the youngest daughter: to keep you from going full throttle.

On my bookshelf is a History of Doubt, filled with stories of ancient thinkers and
medieval cynics: anyone who might have said Not so fast, not at full throttle.

Who pays heed anymore? Three birds in succession thunk against the glass. Which
one is pursuer, which pursued? Danger and excitement. Dance at full throttle.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Pandora

This entry is part 20 of 29 in the series Conversari

 

for RR

Pandora was a doll with a plastic head
& a boneless fabric body full of give.
Her eyes were a smiling blue
you scraped with a thumbnail one day
to see what lay beneath: blank plastic.
Pandora was a doll with plastic arms
that could be bent into the semblance
of a hug. From a high perch
she watched the bears multiply
on the bed, expert listeners,
burly avatars of comfort. When
the circus master’s mad wife
came to give them all away
to charity, Pandora alone
with her hopeless eye was spared.
You wept until you couldn’t see
& wailed until your voice turned
to a whisper; the bears stayed gone.
Your sad box of a room
held only Pandora.


See Rachel’s response: “Eye (seeing, being)“

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.