Morning Porch Poems: Autumn 2014 – Via Negativa

Ablution

Luisa A. Igloria — Tue, 16 Dec 2014 22:02:38 +0000

Like a clay pot parched
for water, I’ll open
myself again to the rain.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Tracks

Luisa A. Igloria — Tue, 16 Dec 2014 04:54:27 +0000

You say you do not remember
the things we used to do
together— We counted the hundred
and some steps that led to the cathedral,
holding our breath from near vertigo
on descent. The boys that sold
lottery tickets loitered along the edge
of the overlook, tempting fate
at the same time that they sold dreams
cheap, if by the dozen. I was ashamed
one summer to wear the shoes
made to correct the uncanny
curvature of my back. And so I believed
you then when you said I should find
the filament in the center
of the spider’s web, roll it
between my thumb and forefinger,
swallow it like a pill. We circled
the neighborhood streets like strays
intent on finding the map to places
where wildness was still spoken,
a language not yet extinct.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

What could we know

Luisa A. Igloria — Thu, 11 Dec 2014 03:03:34 +0000

of the hidden, that gleam
constellations away, without
any known name for it here?
And what could we know
of the answer that arrives
as faint echo, lighthouse
beam cutting through fog
in some millennium where we
might still after all be
mortal, shipwrecked, if not
for what love deposited
in these bones?

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Molest

Luisa A. Igloria — Tue, 09 Dec 2014 01:55:34 +0000

On the sheet, the child renders
a house with crayons: tilted roof,

fence, yard, the figures that make up
the family— The mother and father

are taking a nap. Or they are out.
Then a room— curtained over

with blue or black, disguised
by the steam from the iron

and the starch on the clothes—
where something happens for which

she has no words at the time: the uncle
wants to play doctor, to conduct

an examination— Neither did she
have words for doubt, suspicion,

the tingle in the parts that burned.
There are words whose meanings she’ll

mull over all her life: rupture
in her head, lesion on her tongue,

having come to their true disclosures.
When she says them now, she is like

the meter reader, gauging from month
to month the cost of what was used.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Gilded

Luisa A. Igloria — Sat, 06 Dec 2014 23:14:02 +0000

She rubbed ointment across the darkening patch on her ankle, feeling the itch beneath the burn.

Some miniatures take months, sometimes years, to complete. One must ponder the weight and shape of what is missing, before the outline can be imagined.

She wrote of receiving in the mail pots of aloe, pots of African violets— propagated by friends from original plants once tended by her son before he passed away.

It is astonishing, how anger and hurt behave— leave in them too long the impress of your fingers and they will adorn every space in the room.

Honey on the tongue, bitterness in the heart. Soon the grammar of venomous bees in each ear.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Not Less

Luisa A. Igloria — Fri, 05 Dec 2014 22:37:22 +0000

No one is late: only present
to the need particular
to her own circumstances.

And each in his own time
forages for what is
already here—

hidden in plain view,
without restrictions,
though strewn among

the rocky surfaces.
No one is more worthy,
no one less beautiful.

All hunger
for this world goes
by the same name.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Sisyphean

Luisa A. Igloria — Sat, 29 Nov 2014 02:55:53 +0000

Last week, seven bags that I raked
of what the wind, the dark, the late
hour at this time of year detached
from trees that ring the backyard—

Today our small plot of earth
once more is carpeted end to end:
pine straw and layers of their thick,
wet pelt. It seems impossible

to keep up now with all the ruined
wealth they shed, to put a stop
to this red and gold display of their
indifference, reflected still in every

window— And I know it will not matter,
but anyway I gather my anguish back in, drag
the implement’s teeth across the ground;
blink back my tears in the cold, bright light.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Atang*

Luisa A. Igloria — Thu, 27 Nov 2014 14:04:57 +0000

Here is a fingernail slice of bread, a curl
of butter that none of our lips will touch—

a shot glass of soup, hot spoonful of meat,
and one clementine still glowing in its

bright orange skin. Here on one plate
we arrange morse code of small offerings,

make space in our hearts for an envelope
of silence. This is what we try to send

at the same time each year from this
house where we live on the forest floor,

today carpeted with what leaves have shed—
And every now and then, flashes of light

sear through the canopy, bright distractions
from tracking thread through the labyrinth.

*Atang

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Two

Luisa A. Igloria — Tue, 25 Nov 2014 18:31:20 +0000

Miserable when I do not spend,
miserable when I do—

Worried when I cannot give,
worried when I do—

Anxious when I give my word,
anxious when I can’t—

Surely there are
other countries tucked
between these promontories

of two, where the light need not
go dark when it is dark—

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Practice

Luisa A. Igloria — Mon, 24 Nov 2014 22:01:46 +0000

The first warm day since autumn’s onset—
and sounds of soccer practice drift
across the street: the coach’s whistle,

his animated urging, the familiar
thunk of contact as the ball sails
toward its intended target

to a chorus of cheers. Behind glass
in the building next door, a line of girls,
their supple limbs a sheathed uniform

making a pale pink movement like a wave.
A woman waiting on the bench turns to ask,
And how is your daughter? In this as in all

things, the metronome ticks audibly:
measure against measure, unfaltering,
timed against the pulse that set it there.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.