Tag: Luisa A. Igloria

(Rosa canina assisiensis)

A jute robe is itchy. And so one day, the saint
feels the urge to abandon monastic life. If only
he were a tree, a strip of lettered wood nailed
to a crossroads sign; something else, anything
other than this silence among the doves, duties
beautifully illustrated by the missalette. If only
he were a sailor bound for a year’s ship journey
to the far ends of the earth, or even a scarecrow
flapping its tin-can arms in the middle of a field.
At the height of great feeling or pain, the body
has been known to forget itself. Do his eyes roll back
into his head, does he break into a sweat and twitch
like a lit swath of firecrackers? What are the cries
that escape his mouth? In the humid night, open
your windows after sex to find the air saturated
with the rumor of flowers: the ones with thorns
are said to have the sweetest scent. It’s not hard
to imagine what it’s like to be seized by fragrance,
to give oneself to the darkness; to leap
into the bramble bushes fully clothed.

In response to Via Negativa: In Partibus Infidelium.

Rumors abound as citizens wait for voting results. A metal box meant for a village in the north has found its way to a town in the south; none of these votes will be counted. The new king is naked and mad; or he has ADHD; or he is autistic. Or he is a former actor who cannot distinguish between reality and a B-movie script. The old king has been dead more than two decades; he lies in state, frozen in a crypt, pumped full of formaldehyde and surrounded by satin flowers. The ex-queen squints at him through the glass panels and plants a coral-lipsticked kiss closest to the side of his face. She returns to her walled-in estate and sighs, flexing her size 8 1/2 feet encased in Italian leather. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. Orchids sway in the breeze and the ocean blinks, brighter than cut sapphires. Maids bring her sparkling coconut water and ice. Someone turns on the plasma screen TV but her eyes are not what they used to be. Even in a country where she might run out of tears to cry for the very poor who are so very many, she believes there are still pockets of hope. Her son the senator has promised to join her for dinner. Her daughter the governor no longer hates her as she used to in her teens. See? she wants to say to the voices who come to taunt her in dreams. In the end, all will be well. The ones who have truly suffered will get their just rewards. Heaven after all is a dynasty where only the good can live forever.

In response to Via Negativa: Heaven.

“It’s harder to practice that tender emptiness of forbearance, that aches and yearns and still lets go, and that can recognize and hold the aching of others as well.” ~ seon joon

I think of their assorted quarrels through the years—
mother-sister-aunt-grandmother: the constant drama

of porcelain cracked and strewn on hardwood floor or
kitchen tile; names and insults hurled that sailed

through early mornings like jets of hot water
flung from coffee-pots and always found their mark;

bruise in the joint, their point of tension, their central
subject pain and desire. This grandmother lived with us

shortly after my father— her favorite and only son—
insisted he loved this farmer’s daughter enough

to marry her in church, before a throng of haughty relatives.
There are pictures, yes, of arras, veil, and cord.

And see in the background? The younger sister with the veil?
That is my mother too. We all kept house together, she

most of all, ladle constantly in hand; pot on the boil,
salt in the water. Then me in the oven for everyone

to fawn over and fondle, plot a future for. And this
grandmother is the same I tell those stories of,

that you still can hardly believe: how she slept
between the two of them that first night in their

marriage bed, how she parted the curtains of her room
to glare at mother’s lady friends when they might come

to call. God rest the souls of those who’ve gone ahead:
their hot angers finally assuaged, all their poor or lavish,

restless or unrequited loves absolved of any imperfection;
their cries and voices stilled in soft pillows of earth.

In response to thus: such tender emptiness.

bright and hot like molten silver, splashed citrus
on tiles of the Turkish café where women in black
aprons bear trays with samovars and cups of tea

and coffee under the trees, glasses of clinking ice—
And though I might have said so a few anguished times
in the past, I do not want to die tomorrow: I know
I have to sometime, but hold on, not just yet:

for there is a sliver of fragrance
I cannot place— or are those ripe mangos
on the counter? But really, I cannot die today
or tomorrow unless I know what it is exactly,

if not approximately; what has turned my head
just now, away from any of the mercurial
self-absorptions of the moment, away
from minor aches and pains and worries

that must pale when reckoned against the vast,
incomprehensible mystery of the universe—
This light alone, this sky, almost enough
by itself, as if bombs did not explode

in cities daily, turning what they touch
to fire, to ashes, skin grafts and phantom
limbs— What’s death if all is change?
What’s life if not mercurial change?

In response to Via Negativa: Shore Leave.

On every street, news of a death: often a child, often a girl, but even the old; even animals, stray or feathered or penned. It was the middle of the war; or several wars. No one can really remember now. All we know is that the angel of dark omens, whose name is interchangeable with others we can’t even speak, returns in the night to mark each door of the unfaithful with a sign. What sign? Some say the blood of an animal, some say a crescent nicked sharp into posts with the point of a curved fingernail. Plague and boils. Golf ball-sized hail that bends the good wheat and the crops of yellow corn. Waves of ice the winds push ashore, splintering with the sound of onrushing trains. But what does it mean to be unfaithful? The children go out to hunt for frogs or locusts in irrigation ditches. If their hunger is wrong, then are the well-fed merchants saints? Who are those men who fold their gold-ringed fingers and watch from their offices in the sky as buildings collapse? The waters turn red with blood or oil, the fish are dying or have died. Smoke and rubble from the factory, bones and garments of the dead. The flash of a hummingbird’s wings in a patch of herbed green is rare as the miracle of the Dark Madonna; she used to visit the poor in their hovels, bring her cool touch to their fevered aid. Night cloaks what comes, or returns. Who can explain the mud-smeared grass on the carved hems of the statue, buckled to its plinth? But we’ve lost count of the plagues. Remind me of stars. Every day, the cities shimmer with dust and heat. What falls, falls to the earth. Birds tumble out of the sky, still vaguely warm— as if they’d flown through a torch, as if a red welt flared out of their throats at the moment they perished.

In response to Morning Porch and Via Negativa: In the Hague (tanka).

Oh first hour of the work-day week after I turn on the office
computer, oh absurd overflow of phone messages and accumulated mail—
Somehow I feel underdressed and unprepared for this combined assault
on my senses, not quite awake, not having quite recovered
from the exquisite joys of weekend laundry (three loads),
mesh baskets flocked with lint in shapes resembling miniature maps
of lost worlds— Oh joy of a thousand and one deadlines, of papers
that need to be labeled and filed, and texts that must be read
and underlined: my mother always told me, at the first sign
of despair, Chin up, chin up; bend your head to the winds,
plod along, plod along as best as you can. Was that ever set
to music, sung like a round? Row the boat, row the boat round
and round, till the lake has rippled with the radiance
of repeating shapes. The sun dapples to a lovely color there—
you can see the choir of leaves, blowing kisses
or waving like a throng of miniature hands.

In response to thus: Rhapsodically.