Tag: Luisa A. Igloria

1

If a lie is half-truth is it easier to forgive?
Those ships never came for just pepper and spice.
In the hold, mapmakers were ready with cubits and cursive.
If a lie is half-truth is it easier to forgive?
In their chronicles, they wrote of the breasts of natives,
of their short stature or propensity to violence or lies.
If a lie is half-truth is it easier to forgive?
Those ships never came for just pepper and spice.

2

Grandmother smoked cigarillos with the lit ends in her mouth.
I wondered why milk came in paper-wrapped cans imprinted with “Marca Oso,”
why cheese was queso, why cloth napkins were servilletas. Even in her youth,
grandmother smoked cigarillos with the lit ends in her mouth.
Cousins twice removed cut sugarcane or harvested fruit down south;
they grew dark in the sun and spoke a kind of creole called Chavacano.
Grandmother smoked cigarillos with the lit ends in her mouth;
not all could afford the milk wrapped in cans with “Marca Oso.”

 

In response to Via Negativa: By Any Other Name.

Give thanks for the wobble of the wheel
and the limp of the pulley, the tiny pop
in the heart of a lightbulb as it goes out—

Give thanks for the pause that loosens the noose
around the rushing hours, for serifs of rain
ticking down the blue gradations of a chain—

And give thanks for the call of a dove
that has lost its mate, and so tinges
your day with the blue of this reminder—

Forgive the stumble of the bow across the strings,
the hair of one note that flies away from the score:
give thanks for our common imperfection.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Poems inscribed on a side of bamboo, passed through villages
from hand to hand. This beautiful, flowing syllabary is precolonial.

Be careful when you use the ancient scripts as tattoo art
around your arms. It might read “liar” instead of precolonial.

The season’s prints are tribal, ethnic: tie-dyed, resembling
knotted bark. This ikat weave, suddenly fashionable: the precolonial—

Petite, Extra Small, Small, Medium, Large, Extra Large, Extra Extra Large:
the pliant leaf in one-size-fits-all. Who wore it best? us precolonials?

One fold of collar, one pass at sleeve. Piece by piece,
the pattern. What version predates all others? The precolonial.

A white man publishes in India, Hong Kong, or Spain; it’s no big deal.
When a writer of color does the same, she’s only as good as precolonial.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Pinnipedestrian.

“…This life/ that hurts like a son of a bitch.” – Paul Guest, “Love in the Singular”

This tree that opens its arms to reveal a pattern of pencilled ribs.
This summer of restarts, of ebbs and flows among detritus of beach umbrellas.
This sky, metallic as a makeshift lantern in which holes have been punched with a nail.
This girl that sings in the yard with a voice to rival the edge of a rusty blade.
This grandmother who implores her to stop in the name of God else the chickens might die.
This mother-in-law who would marry her son if she could.
This man who bows his head and lets himself be led to the kitchen to eat with the slaves.
This mouth that slavers at the smell of cheese and bread despite its nine missing teeth.
This leg that jerks in the night from dreams of desert fires and limbless boys.
This morning full of the relentless whirring of cicadas in the trees.
This cup cracked at the bottom and the rim in which a Maid of Orleans jasmine buds.
This handful of salt at the bottom of the jar which gives itself to the broth.
This leaf which unseen insects chew into lace each night.
This purse that spends and spends itself until there is no more.
This appetite that’s never slaked.
This clean white suit and faded hat, these old but polished shoes.
This billfold with loose change.
This silver ring, this rosary, snapped in the middle to break the chain.

“Joy does all things without concern.” ~ Chuang Tzu

Did you bring me a sweet? Did you bring some bread? Are you here to rub my feet, braid my hair, massage warm oil on my head? It’s been so long since you were here last. You never answered the telephone. You never sent a letter back. The ivy has overgrown the fence and creeps under the deck. In the morning, my heart closes around the first bright thing it sees; at dusk I set the table and lay the silver on folded paper napkins. The little blue flames on the stove form a perfect ring; and how beautiful is the moon when it is nearly full.

to eagle, bell to bell

in the great carillon
where one sound

silvers and multiplies
into a choir of tongues:

at the end, make me tender
from having lived the lessons;

give back the frayed
untangled, return

me to myself
just as the measure

loops firmly back
into itself.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Visitant.

It’s beautiful this way, isn’t it?
Look at how cobalt swirls define

the snapped green outlines of continents,
the red of territories where cities crackle

with intermittent light or gunfire. Line up
the edges of the clear acrylic cage so they

resemble markings on a turtle shell. Set it
on the shelf, or on an antique rolltop desk

inlaid with gold from melted teeth. Ransoms
have been paid for loveliness less than this.

We’ve brought war to countless flea-ridden
villages harboring dark wells of oil, beaches

mottled with the dust of diamonds. In return,
see all the trade that journeys back to us

in ochre and blue container vessels, the bills
of lading penned in more than a dozen foreign

tongues. The diners in the inner room
are cataloguing artifacts before their

disappearance: smoked foam of fungi
gathered in thunderstorms, sleek

bodies of eels entombed in blocks
of marbled tofu, ortolans drowned

in Armagnac… For let it not be said
our love is shabby, or lacking for display.

~ (after Peter Eudenbach)

 

In response to Via Negativa: The Inward Park.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Poem for Display in a Vacant Lot.

after D. Bonta’s “Poem for Display at a Police Checkpoint”

The cashier sporting a nose ring and Kiss Everlasting French Fake Nails cracks her gum every few seconds; her high ponytail bobs as she flips through the a three-ring binder and its plastic-covered product list pages. Finally she asks, What’s that?— pointing to the 4 small purple potatoes I’ve placed on the counter. After I tell her and she rings me up, the young man— most likely a high school or college student working through the summer— bags my purchases. Paper or plastic? he asks, and I say Paper to Jihad, for that is what his name tag says. And I know that his name might mean either a holy war or the struggle of believers in Islam to fulfill their religious duties or to make believers out of their enemies. But I do not think there are any mujahideen here, no children running through the frozen food section with homemade bombs strapped under their vests. A couple of men are buying lottery tickets in the corner, and it’s true, no one ever seems to buy any of the exotic imported fruit marked at ridiculous prices. The deeply sun-tanned man in the aisle next to us hefts two six-packs of Dos Equis into his cart, and whistles as he moves to the exit. When he passes I read Alma y Luz tattooed with roses on his right bicep. Behind me, a couple of local firefighters are waiting their turn with a cart full of pork spareribs, lean ground beef, and barbeque sauce. One of them picks out a foil-covered piece of candy from the rack near the gum and magazines. What? he says to his companion; I love Cadbury Creme Eggs. And his friend says Whatever, man and laughs.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Poem for Display at a Police Checkpoint.

This was the way we wrought
the thing the moment needed:

wood shaved down to level
under a carpenter’s plane,

tallow thickened around
a plumb line; stitches

running a sail, a pair
of sleeves and pantaloons,

a knitted shape
to parry the wind

to hold or hurry
a body out the door.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Sic Transit.