Tag: Luisa A. Igloria

Zest of lemons fills the air, and on the radio,
yearning notes from the throat of a cello.

Exactly how much salt or spice to throw in?
Without measurement, the senses tend to open wider.

Viola, violin, strings from the orchestra fill out
undertones in the andante part of the Rococo Variations:

this is Tchaikovsky in the arms of Rostropovich, or
so my daughter tells me. Slow as a waltz— and suddenly I

realize this might be the music I’d like played at my funeral.
Quelle alternative? I don’t know, as I wasn’t really

pondering the matter. Just something in the phrasing,
or the way the quietly contemplative cadenzas make me feel

none of the sorrowful hysteria sometimes induced by
music that lobs the racquetball of the soul around in its cage,

little bird reminded of the wilderness that bred it.
Kindness after long difficulty is what I hear, perhaps. Or

just a simple turn, a few steps around the room, notes that burgeon
into the fullness of their theme. I don’t know much more.

How have I started with lemons and garlic—
grease quietly sputtering under the layer of

fricasseed chicken breasts in a pan on the stove— then
ended up thinking of music by which to exit?

Don’t read more into this than there is.
Clouds look lovely outside the prismatic window,

bunched and fleecy as pulled wool. I’m here and not
about to go anywhere just yet; I love the color yellow.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Confused by warmth followed
by plummeting cold, buds
on the pink magnolia

begin to fruit. In this case,
as in many others, I know
the outcomes of nostalgia.

Don’t look back, I want to say
to the not yet fully formed
corona of petals—

though the sun’s warmth
is barely a husk on this
day with no brim or trestle.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

There are mockups of mermaids every few
blocks in this town— plaster and paint
over wire, arms stretched fore and aft. All
in the same frozen pose, they look like
synchronized swimmers yanked out of the pool
before their final choreographed curtsy.
Pale, flat-chested, not the least bit
sinuous, each sports a different garb:
one’s in a sailor suit, another’s covered
in fake barnacles; and the one in the bay
of the Chinese pagoda close to where
we live has a painted-on cheongsam
of red and gold. Rooted under the half-
moon and the scattering of pixelated stars,
each looks across the pavements and parking
lots, out to the dark water— where all day,
restless waves come in and out with the tide.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

The wind drives us forward.
A little spin and we’re pulled
as thread into a skein, the skein
into cotton, the cotton into a scarf,
the scarf into a cowl. Gandhi once sat,
not speaking, only spinning. One thread
unbroken for nine hours. How long
would I have lasted? Here, it’s almost
half past three. Children spill
out of school doors, pulling peacoats
on top of cardigans. Are those leaves
poking through the brown fretwork?
The clock’s hands never run the other way.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

False apple, pale vegetable— green lightbulbs swinging like unripe hearts in the trellis among curled leaves: unchoked among the rampant honeysuckle, sayote that we ate the week after a hurricane and its deadly mudslides locked the city in. Only Sunshine grocery was open; but no bread, only de lata: sardinas, canned mackerel, corned beef, beans (one square of fat the size of a postage stamp, hidden somewhere in a swamp of legumes). No onions, no frying, no lard. But plenty of rice, sayote boiled on the kerosene stove, a squeeze of wild lime. Choppers overhead, long lines at the water main where someone had pried a valve open and everyone came with plastic pails, gallon bottles. Children washed their faces and made newspaper boats in the rain. In the evenings, we piled mattresses in the center of the living room floor and watched our shadows lengthen by candlelight, ash-brown, dark-tinted like a ring we’d drawn, thin membrane between us and the cold.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

The hour will come, oblivious to your noticing,
when you’ll look back and see that the shore
is truly far away and the boat you’re in,

bobbing miles from any clear destination.
From that distance it will be hard to tell
what the sunlight strikes hard and

fractures: the chrome edge of a pair of
sunglasses, the unibrow of the man
wearing it, the neon stripes of the beach

umbrellas that now look ridiculously small
and crowded around the rim of a dirty
yellow margarita glass. And you will ask,

stranded in the middle of it all, whether you
really still need sunblock or if the little
stencils of color floating before your eyes

are a sign— everything that once
pinned you to the business of diminishing
returns, has called it quits. Now only this

expanse, its lesson unrolling like a sutra:
unfurnished, unambiguous, pithy,
comprehensive; continuous, without flaw.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

“Who trammels whom?” ~ Dave Bonta

Look at the screen: do you see
the bird in the handle of a cup?
do you see the snail curled in

the floral organs of a cornice? and
that one, all shy and shifting, that
is a human in the shape of a tree.

Wings collapse and flutter open amid
the branches. Sweet orange blossoms turn
into paper fans. Their scent is best

in the morning. When nights are hot,
sometimes they bring to mind the corpse
flower and its perfumes of rotting flesh.

Too sweet, it putrefies the faster. Pour
something cool down the throat’s sticky lining.
The leaf tends to pull away, startled by a touch.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

This verb cannot be reflexive.

But there on the springhouse roof is a thing
fluffing out its feathers, probing under its wings.

Little promise of flight,
ascending and leaving behind—

The verb is not reflexive.
In many languages, the reflexive is rendered
by the transitive verb followed by a reflexive
pronoun +self e.g. “She threw herself
on the bed.” or “Weeping, she threw
herself on the ground.”

This verb is not reflexive.
It prays to be spared, but if that is not to be,
then it prays to be taken quickly.

I’m moved to get down on my knees.
I’m not even sure what is there.

But if you are, you know the heart
does not exist solely for the purpose
of pumping blood.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

The woman in the cafe wearing red lipstick that matches her red boatneck sweater under a grey raincoat says, The poet is someone who is more a voice overheard, not speaking directly. Not spoken to, of, for. If I hold my head like this, if I hold my head perfectly still, if I hold my head aslant. There is a whiff of a voice that curls from the next table like a wisp of cigarette smoke, though smoking has been banned from restaurants and other such public places. Slide a white porcelain cup filled with hot coffee across the oily film of the counter. Run a fingernail across the velvet-covered upholstery and everything is still there: summer’s burnt caramel and diesel, morning’s toast; sriracha, lemon drop, partly sucked licorice whip. Above the curtains I can watch the sun move through a sky shorn of wildness, which is what some might mean when they say untrammeled. She is right, then. About lyric being a form of lilting paraphrase. Shorthand written in pencil, never ink. Code produced by the faithful stenographer. Careful. A stroke in the wrong place makes unintended meaning. But more, also. If it is spare, it prepares for tenderness. At least, the promise of a listening.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.