Tag: Luisa A. Igloria

Don’t banish it or throw it away—
Patch it with string or floss or twine,

lean it on a trellis made from cast-off
wire hangers or a weathered fence;

feed it the anyway red of new tomatoes
that have straggled up on the vine, the snap

of peas, the sugar hardened into burnt
caramel on the sides of a pan—

And after all it has been through,
poor and tired, crushed by all the beauty,

all that’s terrible, unslakeable love,
you’ll want to take it in your arms

anyway— Lie with it, give yourself
to it, let it sob against your ear

until the hours of grief
and sleeplessness have passed

and morning’s loud clapper
sounds the call, again, to rise—

In response to thus: consubstantiation.

And after the yield of honey,
who’ll build up the hive that’s rent?

Each of its chambers has borne
the imprint of our loving.

Pale yellow, soft amber, darker gold—
Sweet that is each mouthful’s brief coloring.

In response to Via Negativa: The Kiss.

On the insides of the wrist, nape, the elbow’s
hollow: run a thin trickle of cooling water—

I think of myself in that bed: flushed with heat
and delirium, wrapped in nightgowns of rushing water.

What was it the gods claimed was stolen from them?
Some elixir of life, ambrosia, nectar, sugar water?

Flesh sweetens, ripens, pulsed with kisses;
anoint its stations with cologne water.

Above the reflecting pool, trees grows heavy
with fruit. Thirst seems a mere sip away from water.

If I drank straight from your mouth, I might revive
or I might wither. How far from reach is the water?

In response to Via Negativa: Lost.

Were it not for the mind
that always wants to calculate the cost,
the heart and mouth that always want
to cram one more pleasure in,

there might be no call to separate
flesh from its limits, no need to make
apology for the noisy clapper sounds
made by attachment

after attachment— Is there hope?
I want to ask— Or, how long is this work
of endless cleaning, trimming,
pruning? In heat-hazed streets,

beggar children knock on car windows
opening their palms, offering grain-
sized buds they’ve threaded
into garlands. Help me, see

me, give me, say the ones who need
the most— How is it not possible to give
when even these blossoms, already dead,
cannot hold in their scent?

In response to Via Negativa: Dogged.

I could barely keep
my eyes open after digging
in the dirt, out in full sun,

hands mint-wreathed as though
tomorrow might never come—
The soil warm

as affection, clouds
banked somewhere else; rain held
temporarily in abeyance— How easy

to forget how the end of a breath
has the same sound as a sigh;
how the scent, the music,

become richer and more clear
as the body leans deeper
toward its fall—

In response to thus: small stone (242).

Boatman who will take me
through the mist and rain, I have ready
a piece of bread, a little copper

coin for the meter
of your time, for passage through
those treacherous channels—

And I know today
could be the day, but my heart’s in shreds
from the brightness of yellow umbrellas

on the sidewalk, from Louie’s
Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off
brassy on the radio And oh! If we

ever part, Then that might break my heart!
And my heart’s a knob of sugared ginger
warm in my mouth, my heart’s

the room I’ve yet to dust, polish,
put in order, for all my loves who are coming
any minute now to while away the hours—

In response to Via Negativa: Feast.

the press of dark upon the eyelids—
and in the moment just after they open, the film
that shimmers, faint, around each thing.

In response to Via Negativa: Ad Man.