Tag: Luisa A. Igloria

When did the top buttons of my blouse become undone?
When did the rain come almost to my rescue, washing
the pebbles away from under my head? Don’t tell me you
don’t know what we came here for, he said. The downpour
drenched me to the skin. What should I have answered?
Later, I washed my hair in his mother’s sink
while he rummaged in the kitchen, asking Isn’t there anything
good to eat? over and over again. I haven’t thought
of these things in years— Mottled mark banding my
forearm, the place where a fist met the wall.
And that sweater, marled yarn the green
of olives, that I pulled over my head and taut
over my swollen belly when I went out searching
in the moonlight. I walked until I arrived, unannounced,
at a house where friends were just sitting down to dinner.
They took me in, asked no questions, set a bowl
in front of me, a glass of water. No, it wasn’t that I
barely felt a thing: in fact, everything hurt too much,
was too bright, too dark, too fast, too thick, too—
The years to come were a tempering. That must have been
what the moon was trying to say, moving ahead of my
faltering steps: its face of beaten metal, uneven;
its surface pitted yet flooded with light.

In response to Via Negativa: The Prophet Jeremiah.

“I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing.
Words are the source of misunderstandings.”
– the Fox, in Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s “The Little Prince”

And now that the stone
has been rolled away
from the mouth of the cave,
and the women with their oils
and unguents have come and gone?
There is no longer a body
suspended in the cleft of rock.
It’s quiet, but not melancholy.
The sea is far away. I am not sure
what day of the week it is,
but in every backyard, laundry
drips on the line: rags, pantaloons,
blouses, sheets. Muslin cases
for pillows called abrazador—
the length of a man, the width
of a pair of circling arms.

In response to Via Negativa: Household.

Keep talking. That way I might figure out how to cross the room. I’m barefoot, the wood is cool, I’m trusting: I don’t believe this is a labyrinth, or that there is a pit crawling with spiders somewhere in the darkness. In every silence is a hidden delirium; in every well, the imprint of a disappeared moon. I know there are trees because their branches crackle; and how else could the scent of jasmine climb the walls if not for their help? An ember has been known to come to life in the grate, even if the stones have learned to be sufficient. From there, I promise to write you letters: every day, something new, like an instrument or a piece of fruit.

In response to Via Negativa: Off/Spring and thus: small stone (235) .

arms full, masts spread, creamy as sails
preparing to catch a good wind—

I walk under them and I want to be here,
now; I want it to be like this always,
for the light to be gentle

like the skin of an almond or the flesh
of paper or a puddle of milk; but also
I want to be there

on the other side, wherever it is still
night, wherever the moon is still
touching the roofs with the tip

of its measuring chalk, and fingers
interlace beneath the sheet whose woven
patterns remind me of the sea.

In response to Via Negativa: Under Sail.

Preserve a body in brine
and dry it in the sun.
Lay it alongside others
in a shallow basket
on a hot roof, or strung
like laundry on a line.
Keep an eye on the cat.
I am talking about fish,
of course. Be patient:
this may take a few
days; this too
involves transformation
—from scale and fin
in flashing water,
to leathery skin
crisped on a heated
pan. Afterwards,
avid again for what
it spurned, the mouth
turns to any source
of water.

In response to Via Negativa: Medicine.

“…I cannot tell

if I hunger, or am hungered for.” – seon joon

How can I take this light in both
my hands this morning, this skein
of cool air that doesn’t sting;

how can I fill this mouth
that stumbled, parched,
from seeming oasis

to oasis through the years?
The canopy beads with heathered
sound: small, tufted bodies

call to each other through the trees.
And I imagine they are sure the notes
will fall on their intended ear,

certain the vines that screen
the other from view will lift
with the next wind. And so I face

the window where the light looks
kind: is there to be an accounting?
There are so many more questions

I have not found answers for—
But what could it do with me now,
that it hasn’t done before?

In response to Morning Porch and thus: Devour.

In those days we left doors open
with no thought to danger. Anyone
could wander in— the neighbors,

their children, chickens in the yard,
the woman who came by once a month
to ask if we had old newspapers

to sell. The boy who walked past
with tin pails of duck eggs or bean curd;
the man who repaired umbrellas and offered

to sharpen garden shears and kitchen knives.
When did we learn to let them in, answer
the door, but keep an eye open? I have

a drawer full of blades, gleaming,
not yet dulled from daily use— I cleave
the onion from its stalk, fillet gristle

from bone, gut gills from limp fish bodies.
Here are points that could whistle past your ear,
thread a swift line thin as a hair to the opposite wall.

In response to small stone (232).