Tag: Luisa A. Igloria

 

In response to Via Negativa: Gifts.

Summer in the desert, among remnants
of what used to be internment camps—

Most of the soil is level now. But read with me in novels
of how they slept in horse stalls, in the heat and damp.

And here are poems scratched on the walls of cells, secrets in
the bedrolls. At dusk, moths flutter toward the street lamps.

Along the interstate, dried bouquets tied to trees;
stuffed toys, letters, candles that were lit like lamps.

In the hallways where children huddled, a gunman opened fire.
Where are the patron saints with their haloes and spirit lamps?

And who were the six that sat like judges in robes? Their faces
are masked; but we want to know how their jaws were clamped.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Patronage.

*offering to the spirits

Adtoy kami a makidaya
kadakayo nga simmina

kadakami ditoy nalidaay a daga—
Umali kayon, makiinom,

makipangan. Saan kuma
nga agbalbaliw

iti pannakapateg yo—
Kasla tagtagitnep

dagitoy aldaw ken rabii
no saan a naulesan

ti arakopyo.

*

Here we are to supplicate
you who’ve left us

in this desolate world—
Come and drink, come

share our food. May
your faithfulness

remain unchanged—
For the days and nights

are merely dreams
stripped of the blanket

of your embrace.

the bird a white, wounded thing
weaving its way through the rushes,

nothing but the shadow of its heart
beating a faint pulse on the water,
in what we assume can only be

desolation. It bends
its neck again and again
in the shape of a question

against the blue slate of a day
that might otherwise be called
perfect. And yes we know better:

nothing so deeply immersed
in time and chance can be perfect.
But nothing can be so finished, meaning

that though the hour is either too late
or too early, place is immaterial only if
the body has given up its claim on the soul.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Engrossed.

What hectare, what crop, what
packet of seed and parcel of land?

Nothing I have bequeaths itself
so fully, involuntarily.

Devoted to the hours, milk
drips from dusky teats

into each sick and reddened eye.
My jewel, my luminous one: I wrote

to you until the candles blinked
into a helix of flame that turned

in the cold, in the heat.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Foolscap.

Let me be
that lean-lined,

silver-tipped, quiet-
gleaned, clear-belled

retinue, flotilla
of fragile bark

proceeding
bravely on a sea

so wide,
uncompromising.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Fir Tree.

Pigeons and gulls
reel in the eye
of the sun—

sand fiddlers,
mudskippers,
not a palm-

tree in sight:
only a stretch
of shimmer

waving just
ahead, just out
of reach.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Palm Tree.

but you wouldn’t have listened anyway
and some things have to be experienced
in order for the lessons to leave
their mark… Go ahead then, speak
to the sun as if it could not scorch
those wings patched together
with honey and wax and twine.

 

In response to Via Negativa: In Seething Lane.

wearer of gravity’s ponderous necklace—

I find my sign in the zodiac,
under the moon’s dry-erase board

and its palimpsest of calendar dates
going all the way back to the time

the great mathematician leaped
out of his bath and ran naked

into the streets, struck
by the epiphany of his own

inherent buoyancy— And I wonder
what volumes of gold or silver

or ink I have displaced,
what weights and currencies

attach to every pull and turn
on the yoke or rudder. Hold

back your hand from the mill,
you grinding girls, wrote Antipater

of Thessalonica; sleep on—
for the river has coaxed the water

over the toothed wheel so it churns
like a team of oxen; and your labors,

though long, are somewhat eased.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Scrivener.

sepia is the new white;

patches of the summer garden
rehearsing their going-under,

sachets of tea ambering
in mason jars on the sill—

Patience sits and steeps,
embryo in an overlay of oil:

thick sludge of brine marbling
its ivory face, perfecting

the beautiful, golden heart
that was always there.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Hope and Doubt.