Tag: Luisa A. Igloria

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Ghazal, Between the Lines

This entry is part 5 of 47 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Summer 2012

The gap, the space, the state of neither here nor there, the hazy interval that
hasn’t quite revealed what it contains: it makes you want to read between the lines.

A bridge suspends across two spans of earth: a flimsy thing, woven of rope and slats
that rattle when we walk. We do not need to peer too closely between these lines.

Space yawns beneath, drops deep from blue into yet more blue. Behind, perhaps
the generosity of sand; ahead, the unparsed trees to read between the lines.

But I grow weary of traveling to and fro, of leveling the way then finding it un-
tenable when I’ve turned around. Hard work: deciphering between the lines.

How hard is it to understand what the heart really wants? The body’s feathered
with nostalgic veins resembling lines. Listen hard, read between each line.

No, the butterfly exploring your palm with its proboscis isn’t necessarily
a symbol for anything else. You cannot read too much between the lines.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Ghazal, with Cow Burial

“There are only 31 horse burials in Britain and they are all with men.”

Out of a pit, they’ve found a woman’s bones— whittled by time,
beaded with dust, clutching the ambered remains of a cow.

Was she matriarch, widow, wife? Did she die struck by illness or blight?
Archeologists say her wealth and status are proven by this cow.

Some days, I quip to friends and family that my name might as well be
Bob (short for Beast of Burden): but, life’s yoke being heavier than a cow,

would I really want to take it with me? In Chinese burials, the dead
(their spirits, that is) are ferried to the afterlife: not on cows

but in paper limousines inked with symbols for wealth; stuffed with coins, bills,
sweets, cigars, what one liked here enough to take to there; but not a cow—

In the winding Cordilleras I call home, the dead are neatly tucked among
the hills, with jars of betel nut and agate beads— never with a cow.

And a friend writes to remind me: in Hindu myth, should the population
be in danger, they’ll save the women, children, and their cows.

The cow that in this life was cow, does it remain the same? Does it dream
of feathered grass in the fields, of gnats, the low symphony of fellow cows

chewing their cud? They poke at beetles the color of jewels
—embellishment on face plates of sleeping mummies. The cow

as sacrifice, as plenty, as months of food and fat and solid warmth.
And the woman: how was she loved, missed, valued more than cow?

 

In response to Cow and woman found ... in Anglo-Saxon Dig.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Names, Words, Names

Some words are only names, but some
are grenades of color— How else to explain
the corrosive red of dragonfruit, tart

and scaly pucker in each syllable of rattan,
pale, warning-light diminutions of the loquat,
lightning fire asleep but rousable in cobalt,

fermenting sweetness in ambrosia (and oh,
Ambrosia, weren’t you the long-legged girl
every boy on the street fell in love with

and could not wait to date)? And some names
are not merely words but decoys popping up
on the shore of bland expectation,

paint a little off, or streaking, or applied
to all the wrong places— For instance,
the students tonight doing freewrites

on language, begin to share: one says,
The guy I work out with at the gym
is Evian; his sister is Dasani, and all

his other siblings are named after
bottled water. And the student
whose mother works as a nurse

at a clinic pipes up, Once there was
a girl who pronounced her name like this:
Shi’thay-ed; Shi’thay-ed, but on the form

it read “Shithead.” And the class by now
has burst into uncontrollable farts
of laughter. And all the rest

of the evening they shake their heads
and ask, Really? Who names their child
Shithead, Shi’thay-ed, Shithead?

 

In response to Via Negativa, Remembering Rio.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Rest Stop

This entry is part 3 of 47 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Summer 2012

Dear one, you in that slouchy, shoulder-baring top and skimpy shorts, me in my work shirt and jeans— here we are at a pause, hitch-hiking through the Pacific coastline of our lives. I glance in your direction every now and then to watch the nonchalant way you hold up a thumb in that universal gesture that says I don’t care, just get me outta here. I can understand that, because even at my age, there are times I don’t know where I want to be either; or anymore. Some dreams still come back from a similar time in my youth: me sweating in sheets and tossing in bed, or wanting to swing an arm out in anger but finding that I can’t move. Or working the throat toward a catapult of sound, only to discover my mouth taped shut. Oh I wanted so bad to get to that cool and clear, that threshold where the woods stopped and the rest of the vibrant world began. To tell you the truth, I can hardly remember how I got here. Only that for every sonofabitch, there have been more that were kind; for every wrong turn, there have been way stations with at least a bench or a working bathroom, a vending machine. And all this walking and wandering has made me tired, but let me not forget to say thank you—even to whatever might have led me here by mistake.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Passing Storm

Courage and fear, those alternating currents. Like whips of lightning that stripe sheets of rain, the boom of close-by thunder. A rattly noise on all the roofs and windows: and we realize it’s hailing— I imagine chunks of ice like dice rolled in a cup, bouncing on the pavement, into the ditch lined with weeds. It’s hard to see on the road, through rain’s white noise and the Friday evening rush: everyone wants to get home, to flee to somewhere dry and dim, backlit by tea lights and amber-colored bottles of beer. Somewhere, a siren. A police car flashes its emergency lights every few seconds, steering motorists away from the flooded underpass. Umbrellas are no match for the wind. Secretaries from the engineering building wade into the flooded street, their high-heeled sandals tucked into their lunch bags. Be careful, someone yells out a window. Are you almost here? texts my friend. It may take a while, I say. We’ll get there when we get there. Nothing to do but ride this out, observe: we’re here, we’re here, still here.

 

In response to small stone (103).

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Preces

This entry is part 2 of 47 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Summer 2012

How do you do it, I want to ask the mothers gathered at the table, nearly identical in silk hose, cool, marbled jewels at their throats— but I would probably be accused of being over-earnest, of making too much out of nothing. The secret’s in the shortening, someone offers. Don’t overwork it, says another; have some more pie, the blueberries are especially sweet this season. Who notices the butterfly that seems to keep changing sizes, that turns out to be two butterflies among the ivy? Someone is delighted. Someone says How lovely, how sort of like a tortoise-shell hair ornament! I need a miracle, or something close to one; if this is a sign, that one wing falling away to unmask the other, I’m willing to grasp at it. I’ll bow my head, stand very still and wait for the slightest dusting of pollen on my lashes. I’ll keep wakeful watch through the night, whisper shreds of prayers I can still remember. You may not hear them, but I want to believe they’re there: imperceptible currents traced by a banded wing, orange and red against a field of dark black.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Yield

This entry is part 53 of 54 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Spring 2012

“…turning course of a river that goes curving,
advances and retreats, goes roundabout,
arriving forever:”

~ Octavio Paz, “Sun Stone”

 

Tear at the wood of the dead cherry
all you want, my little frenzied ones.
Tear at the bark of linden too,
reduce to rot the peeling wood
in the neighbor’s gazebo; flay the ivy
to pieces, sunder the jasmine from
its vine. More things than these
are inexorable, more hungers sharpen
their tongues than the points
of those fledgling spears. What is it
that you want? What are you looking for?
The wind loves all surfaces, not just mine.
But we take down the deck chairs anyway,
we fold the beach umbrellas, we board up
the windows against the coming storm.
How did it come to be that resistance
is in such gestures, and not in the willow
bending its crystal leaflets to the water,
not in the bird that petrifies the forest
with its singing? The wind, yes, the wind:
it is the song in a burning building, the sidle
of a sigh along the throat because I held
the sound of your name too long under
a skim of water. I give it up to the air
again now, I turn my palms upwards as I
should have done. What else is there to do?

~ & with thanks to Lila Shahani for the Octavio Paz reminder

 

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Unseen

There used to be a man: he sat there a few moments on the edge of the deck in a faded brown jacket, taking in the sun.

There used to be a woman: she came in to look over her daughter’s shoulder the day we came to sign the lease.

There used to be plants we called Bandera Española, all along the right side of the fence: ridged stalks almost dark purple, broad leaves, flowers streaked yellow and magenta.

There used to be a girl-not-yet-a-girl, delivered from the airport in a taxi at sundown, the cool, slim points of her fingers emerging as the window rolled quietly down.

There used to be someone peering out of her bedroom door through the gauze of curtains.

There used to be a house for quarantine built on the anchorage between two buoys, a path marked by bleached stones and shells from the beach.

There used to be a man police had beaten up: one eye bashed in its socket, weeks of streets and storefronts burning. Then today, his dark body found at the bottom of the pool.

There used to be a time when I could take it all in, take it quickly, ride the animal of necessity.

There used to be a time when the window didn’t stick, when the screen filtered shadows that came and went among the faded myrtle blossoms.

 

In response to Undone.