Tag: Luisa A. Igloria

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

My mother turns 78 and texts

This entry is part 12 of 73 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Winter 2011-12

her first cellphone chain letter: This
January is very special! There are 5
Sundays and 5 Mondays in 1 single

month— this happens every 823 years!
According to Chinese feng shui, you must
send this message to 9 good women you love,

and money will appear! Those who stop
won’t get anything. Good luck, now
you’re on the list and something

will make u happy. I got her multi-
part text shortly before New Year’s eve,
along with a p.s. about remembering

to eat tomatoes and broccoli and not
stress out too much, to help my liver
heal— And now I realize I’ve let 3

full days pass without doing anything
about these instructions. On one hand,
she’s always been the optimistic

though slightly superstitious sort;
and on the other, she’s never been
one to shy away from buckle-down-

hard-work. She had carpenters tear up
the floorboards in our living room,
because the grain of the wood flowed

in a vertical direction, certainly
taking all good fortune out the door.
More than a couple of times, when I

was a child, I watched from bed
as she sat night after night with pins
in her mouth and a tangle of stitches

before her, seed pearls, satin, and rick-
rack, sewing a trousseau and outfits
for an entire bridal entourage.

She texts me often nowadays, saying she
goes to church and prays she’ll find a buyer
for our old home, so she can come and live

with me. She remembers her grand-
daughter here, from the last time she
came for a visit and my child was still

in pre-school; how she arrived at the tail
end of summer and marveled as leaves changed
to rich bronze colors of ball gowns

in fall; how disappointed she was her visa
extension request was denied before there
was even enough snow to cover the grass.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

New

This entry is part 11 of 73 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Winter 2011-12

Everything gets scrubbed with an old towel
torn in two, then soaked in water and soap
and bleach: baseboards, the kitchen walls,

the stone tile backsplash behind the stove.
Then bulbs are replaced in light fixtures,
the closets emptied of clothes that have

outgrown their use or usefulness.
Someone mentions that this furious
cleaning at the start of the year

has reference in the Bible, but I have
no memory of what chapter or verse. All
I know is the old soul wants to slip

away from its old moorings and into
a clean new outfit that smells of laundry
on the line. Thinned of last year’s flaking

whitewash and scoured of any traces of mold,
it wants to travel abroad and check itself
into a little hotel in a country it’s never

been to, slide the key card in the door
of a room where the sheets have been
turned down just so, and fluffy towels

wait on the rack. There are two perfect
chocolate bonbons laid out in welcome on
the pillow; and outside, the whole city waits

to be explored by morning’s first light.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Improvisation

This entry is part 10 of 73 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Winter 2011-12

From branch to branch, past the old garden, a bird drums high then low.

Translation: Compact and green, unripe
like plum before the idea of plum.
Deceptively quiet, the trellis
alive with energy. First day
of the year: did you feel
the switch? Something sings,
reaching through each
register. The aperture
never closed.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Cleared

Five erasure poems using the text of Luisa’s Morning Porch poem for today, “Clearing.”

1.
And the sugar is more than bones
or skin, the hunger has not made
new music. Let me drown reaching
for a cardinal, for a thimbleful
of flight: bright like you, when
flies give thanks.

2.
Carry cinders for others.
Give a table your boredom or misery,
all cheap china or shiny fire.
The rose, children, is a branch away.

3.
Unscathed, you kept
your new electronics.
The witch in the belly
rose to the breast.
Under the hammer, a firecracker,
urgent You.

4.
A smell like a cheap rose.
Banks drown everyone for ten red flies.

5.
Afterwards, the air came cheap,
new wants sleeping at the breast.
Grandmothers in the bush for a good time,
the post-it note read.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Clearing

This entry is part 8 of 73 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Winter 2011-12

And afterwards? Didn’t the air carry a burnt sugar and cinnamon smell, even as the cinders stopped falling? You came out relatively unscathed, dammit. Which is more than can be said for others like you. Did you stop to give a thought about whose bones lay about in the cage or under the table where you crouched, where they thought you could be kept until you burst out of your skin from boredom or angst or misery, or all of the above? The hunger hasn’t gone away, has it? I’m not talking about cheap fashion made in China or Bangladesh, or shiny new electronics. The witch always wants what makes the music. Not the heart but the fire in the belly. Let me tell you about the rivers that rose beyond their jelly-colored banks to drown everyone in the sleeping town. Sweet children at the breast. Grandmothers in their hammocks. Under the sheets, fathers’ gnarly hands reaching for something softer than the handle of a hammer or the back of a plane. Watch that cardinal in the bush, sitting nearly motionless for a good ten minutes now. Even in that thimbleful of time, the instinct to take panicked flight is stilled: bright firecracker, urgent red of its triangle cap like a post-it note on a branch— You could read it from a mile away. And when it flies off, give thanks because you can.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Luces

This entry is part 7 of 73 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Winter 2011-12

“The quality of mercy is not strain’d…”
— “The Merchant of Venice”,  Shakespeare

Before snow blew sideways, scattering
crystalline fragments, we held up metal

wires dipped in magnesium, ferrotitanium.
Held to a match, rich white and golden yellow

sparks branched off into the dark. Don’t lend
out any money today, the feast of Niños

Inocentes. Or if you do, don’t count
on getting any of it back. For a second,

think back to the story of soldiers scouring
the countryside for infant boys to slaughter

in their sleep. There is a difference between
naivete and the purely diabolical. Insist

on the former as an undeveloped state
that might yet lead to grace. The deer

might come to lick at lumps of packed
salt you’ve placed at the far end of

the garden. When they do, sit still, just
watch them. I know it’s hard, but hold

your face up to the fading light, mouth
rehearsing the ancient shapes of wonder.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

En Crépinette

This entry is part 6 of 73 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Winter 2011-12

What’s that burning smell, that rattling like sleet on the roof of the garden shed? Or is it the woman tumbled into the oven, flailing her arms against sleeves of darkening crust? Why is it her and not the woodcutter, the paterfamilias whose task it is, supposedly, to raise healthy children as future citizens, maintain the moral propriety and well-being of his household, honor his clan and ancestral gods? Pass the salt, skip the pepper. There’s nothing but sausage casing in the house to eat. It’s the membrane that wraps the minced ground pork or veal, that makes a farce, a shape that holds in the fire though all are torn from their origins. Pass the paprika, pass the pickling lime. What do they know? Who do you really think tried to hold it together, made paste out of boiled rice and water? Who read to them of stone soup and fed them stories to make the scraps seem sweeter? The law can punish for even the intent to abandon. But whose is the burden of proof? The bony finger that swims in the poorest gruel is the same one that polishes the moon, that hangs its dollar store corpse from the trees. Someone has confused the spelling of “desert” for a house of confectionery located in the woods. This is where they left us, or left us for dead. This is where they wanted us fed, then eaten alive. Well, I’ve got news for you, daddy-o. It’s your days that are numbered. I’ve found a bitch’s stash of balisongs and Ka-Bars that cut through both the softest bread and the hardest glass. Eat your last sweetmeat, kiss your dumpling wife and child. Not bothering with the cork, I’ll lop off the top of a bottle of champagne. It’s customary to offer a toast, a roast, on the eve of the new year.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Landscape, with Remnants of a Tale

This entry is part 5 of 73 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Winter 2011-12

Like them, we were young once at the bend of the road where the trail enters the woods. No one who goes in emerges unchanged. Watch the way the colors shift on the bark of trees, from russet to carbon, to old serpentine. We turned the stones over, lay our bodies across their moss. Who cared what the sunlight touched? The littlest stones looked glazed with sugar. Feathers flashed in our hair— stippled, brilliant with color, purple and green. Egged on by hunger and need, our tongues were quicker than quick. It was always now or never; always fire, fucking, curses. Our hearts never stopped banging at the door. And then, the tollways reached, the fumbling for ivory card stock embossed with names. Under the moon, on the winding trail, our pockets rich with crumbs.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.