Tag: Luisa A. Igloria

Forms and witnesses, an entourage
that clapped their hands when the deed

was signed— A glittering handful
of pillowed coins, an heirloom;

a barn full of animals, their flanks
gleaming with fat, their eyes the eyes

of the newly subdued or led into confinement.
My dear, do you believe when I tell you

the figs were ripe to the touch and burst
out of their skins without anyone’s prodding?

Would I have reconsidered had someone spoken
other words, even given commands? Who knows

what it is we really want— something to own,
a name, a life, a self to suckle then wean?

 

In response to Via Negativa: Owned.

And the high winds bore down, and the sky
built up that grey wall: derecho.

The taverns by the sea closed their shutters,
and the stands selling battered fries, derecho.

On the boardwalk, pieces of salt-water taffy, half-
eaten funnel cakes oozing grease and cream: derecho.

And the people on every highway, panicked, sought
a clear route for their exodus: derecho.

What’s in your emergency backpack? Beef jerky, mineral
water, flashlight, solar cells? Snap in the sound of derecho.

Yesterday, white and blue sails pretty on the water;
sharp glint of skyscraper glass. Then this derecho.

 

In response to Via Negativa: How to Sell Your Soul.

And what of the monk who asked to be buried
in the cedar box where he sat, lotus-legged,

until his body was exhumed, pried
loose from its yellow silk wrappers,

a full 75 years from the event? The five
cavities of the face gently blurred,

the ears that had not lost their
articulation— After all this time

beneath the loam, skin and joints,
unsalted loaf of the body still soft,

surprisingly pliable; though the yeast
had long since dissolved in the ordinary mud.

In the afternoon heat
I stood with clippers, sweat

streaming down my neck. I trimmed
the bushes back, cut the dead

heads of roses, eased the burden
of hydrangeas. Had I helped

stave off one more day
in this eventual hurtling

toward ruin? Had I helped
wage a little war here

against chance, exchanged
their lightening for my own?

 

In response to Via Negativa: Self-reflection.

Not between the proverbial rock
and a hard place, but between
the softer and the harder

impermanence: therefore,
everything’s improvisation,
the voice thrown against

a closet wall, into a room,
into the rifts between rock.
And each time, a slight echo

returns: little eddy
and reminder, little
reverberation—

The train in passing goes.
Light dips beyond the trees.
A hand, lifted in that slow-

motion gesture of waving.

 

In response to Morning Porch and thus: such tender emptiness.

Made heavy by rain,
the heads of hydrangea
droop to the ground.

I do not come
looking for trouble—
Nor do I want to take away

your joy. Leaves
of the dogwood tipped
silver, leaves

of the ginkgo
spliced open
like fans—

At a certain hour,
one by one, each
evening almost

like a birthday:
street lamps
flicker on.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Birthday of Desire.

“…A lost horse
to carry me
to the tomb.”

~ “Hard Ride,” Dave Bonta

The teacher said, Mind the tempo of the beat—
and I started, thinking I’d heard The tempo of the beast,

which made me recall Yeats’ poem with that creature slouching
toward a famous middle eastern city to be born. Man or beast,

outcast in the dead of winter; the world in shambles, the world
a gyre with broken teeth on whose temple steps lie beasts

in their own blood. But if he slunk toward the fabled city,
toward the hour of his birth, that could only mean this beast

was its own ungainly steed, its own doula, primigravida. Who can tell
now womb from maw when terror and all manner of beastly

rapes are foisted off as amusement, cheap thrills, entertainment? The lost
and wounded limp through these deserts filled with dying bees.

Our noses to the ground, we try to keep company, our saddlebags light:
one step in front of the other, sights trained ahead, stumbling after the beat.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Hard Ride.

“Who remembers paradise?” ~ Marne Kilates, from “The Panels of Hieronymus Bosch”

I don’t think there were any sheep—
Or there may have been, but I didn’t see them.
Not fences either, no abacus clicking

bead by bead as each jumped over, fleece
catching in the bramble but more or less
keeping time to the ticking of the clock.

I was sleepless for such an eternity,
the apple had not yet fallen from the tree;
and the mathematician had not yet discovered

that bright chain of numbers spilling
over the narrow edge of the page, proof
of a problem everyone said could not be solved.

At some point the mathematician must have gone
to bed. At some point he must have taken off
his linen collar, his boots, breeches, hose,

exchanging these for a shapeless night-gown.
Infinitesimal, they called it—
that calculus for finding tangent

lines to curves, the canopy space
under curves, the lantern chain
of the day’s domestic worries

gathered in bubbled rows of helium
beneath the ceiling— And me,
as if on the ocean bed, hoping

at some point to fall asleep.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Insomniac.

Father said, sometimes we ate
what moved among

the fallen— small things,
seed, snail, quick green, mottled

brown that swam or burrowed
low. To live is merely one

advantage— but grace,
grace is something else.

It’s what you might find
or leave for someone

at the bottom: one grain,
one mouthful of water.

It fractures, salves,
or multiplies,

depending on the angle
of the day, moonlight

or the bloom pinned
like a corsage on the chest—

 

In response to Via Negativa: Seeker.

Do you ever wonder
about those 29,000 rubber ducks
that spilled into the ocean

out of a ship that left
a Hong Kong harbor
14 years ago?

I want to imagine
the last small band
has found its way

to a shallow inlet
in Alaska or Greenland,
white as bone or ash,

now almost
indistinguishable
from the landscape.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Castaway.