Tag: Luisa A. Igloria

which could mean commit
to memory; or take seriously,
no laughing matter, for real.
or the common tendency
nowadays to noun the verb,
as in i heart you! or make
of subject-verb-adverb
a complete statement about
one’s inability to perform
even the simplest actions
for whatever has overpowered
one in the moment— as in
i can’t even! and if
the feeling continues
to escalate, then one
could beg of the other
to stahp it! but in all
these, it’s the same
heart which aches or
breaks or asks to be
picked up, carried,
taken to heart.

Mostly I feel uncomfortable explaining
what I’ve done with this thing they call
my life: the choices I’ve made, when
at the same time I wonder how much
real capacity anyone ever has
to choose. This morning I pull
a haphazard rake through stiff grass,
collecting dry pine needles in a heap
then stuffing them into a plastic lawn bag.
They fall at random, not choosing.
The theme is always, always existential.
So eventually I give up.
You can tell from the abrupt
meeting of clean and unkempt
edges marking property lines
which homeowner seems to believe
it’s possible to assert control
within what’s called the domicile:
from the Latin domicilium,
from domus, “house;” in law
“that residence from which
there is no intention to remove,
or a general intention to return.”
I make a game of tossing fallen
pine cones in a heap at the base
of the crepe myrtle. Like everything
else, in time, won’t they also
disintegrate, matter illustrating
that impulse to go back to some
previous state? I don’t feel
criminal for not owning a leaf-
blower, for sometimes choosing
not to choose too hard.

They should be gone by now, it’s so late
in the season: November. But the quick
ragged bursts of cold get interrupted
by rain, which means a warming.
Which means some fruit on the tree
still cling, no longer glossy with summer
purpling. Instead, grim from weathering—
shriveled, the way fingers too long exposed
begin to shade to darker indigo and then
to ash. The few I’ve saved are almost
too soft for handling. And yet, they’re
stubborn— cut into, you can see
their deep faith in sweetness.
And that too, they give up.

If you are not who you say you are
in Sierra Leone, who are you in Brussels?
If the first part of a prompt keeps giving you
the number of the beast, what should you offer
or trade? Every word-number problem begins
with the hypothesis that facts can exist in a dream
universe. But if the facts are not acceptable
to the health of the general public by which
I mean the people who keep working in the fields
to gather your lettuce and garlic and chard,
your turnips and radishes and kale under
a sky of billowing smoke and flame, what sound
should you plant to seal the cracks in the earth’s
core? How likely is it that I have the solution
to the problem if I’m seen as the problem?
On the Nth try, I/you/we will be revoked.

There are insects
ground up to give us
the red we call carmine,
the crimson of a lake
on fire at sunset. Touch
a tube of lipstick
to your mouth and know
that color is the color
of thousands of pulverized
bodies— scraped off
broad pans of cacti,
dried in the sun, nested
in tubes of paint: every-
where the eye might not
even detect a pulse.

25 years ago I sought legal counsel
and attempted to file for annulment—

the difference from divorce being that if
proven meritorious, the court renders

the marriage null and void, as if it never
happened. My lawyer had a habit of picking

at his teeth while taking calls during
my appointments; according to him,

among the conditions listed as grounds
for annulment, the only one I could pursue

was “Mental or Psychological Incapacity”—
meaning I was to present myself to a court

psychologist, write an autobiographical
essay whose theme would be my innate

deranged or unbalanced nature. Because I had
no words back then for describing my ex’s

anger management issues, like a fool I took
the printed form and tried to put my life

as I knew it under the awful, recommended
spotlight. Meanwhile, men blithely led

two or more secret lives, or openly flaunted
mistresses. An action star sired more than

eighty children by sixteen different
women, and even got elected senator.

Look at what money can buy, father
quipped, as I shrugged my shoulders

into my good suit jacket, slid
my feet into pumps, and got ready

to go to work. The two older children
were in school, the baby was with

her nanny. I made a mental note to stop
at the store for diapers before returning

home at five. Father was retired nearly
a decade then; and of poor health. He stayed

at home reading the paper in the corner
armchair, taking out his Novena to Saint

Pancratius and murmuring prayers with eyes
half-closed to this patron of children, jobs,

health, cramps, perjury, and headaches—
though you could say Pancras himself never

recovered from the last big headache
of his young life, having been beheaded

around 303 AD during the reign of the Emperor
Diocletian. As for diapers, I never made it

to the store that afternoon— An earthquake
rocked the city and it felt like any moment

the skies might part and we’d see the Four
Horsemen, lances drawn, come down into our

hills on vivid clouds of fire. In mere minutes,
buildings turned to rubble, walls into piles

of kindling. If anyone had known to pray
to Saint Emydius or Saint Gregory

the Wonderworker, patrons for protection
against earthquakes and floods, could that

day’s catastrophe have been averted? Two
weeks later, father passed away on a makeshift

pallet in the local hospital. Stories have it
that Emydius, though he was a bishop, was also

beheaded in that same period of persecution
that ended 14-year-old Pancratius’s life.

We are building a box. A shed. A thing in which we might keep garden tools, and bags of soil or mulch, or sacks of grass seed, or boxes of old Christmas ornaments. To build a box we have to go down to the city hall to secure a permit to build a box. The permit is called a certificate. To be certified we have to hire the services of a surveyor. They have to come and eyeball your property then measure. I did the same thing beforehand with an extra ball of blue acrylic yarn from my stash. It measured up, except I wasn’t an official surveyor. The survey cost three hundred fifty dollars. I could have certified myself but I am not allowed. Once I gave my husband a haircut and his boss told him maybe his wife should stick to the things she knows best. Why does someone always know best? Good, better, best. In my book, you either know or you don’t know. But if you don’t, you can go looking for the answer. I don’t mean Google or Wikipedia: I mean go out and stand in the yard and look around, figure out things in relation to the pitch of the roof to the swoop of a bird, the angle of your shadow and how a person at the far end of the driveway can look like he’s standing on the palm of your open hand. Squint and move to the right or left until you get it right. Paint the roof that color.

How much truth in a joke, in any making-
light-of? The day before the midterms

we laughed and said heck why not eat
the chocolate, buy the expensive coat,

let the cutie kiss you. Maybe we’ll all
be dead after tomorrow. Or want to die.

If not this apocalypse, the one that’s sure
to come after. Only a matter of time. Fire

raging through the hills one day, a spray
of ammunition aimed at any gathering of soft

bodies. One of my students says she takes
dictation from angels: they watch her,

tell her what she should or shouldn’t
do (like, yes go to this party, not

to that one). I wonder what they look like—
I’d be disconcerted hearing only voices,

trying to sift them from my own, looping
through my brain especially at two

in the morning. I’d want to know what
the future holds even if I already know.

I’d ask for a few detail changes, better
scenery. In the yard I squint upward

through the branches of the tree— finally
it’s acknowledged the season is turning,

is letting handful after handful of leaves
furl to the ground. Letting anything go

is possible only with the acknowledgment
nothing’s truly lost: the way you hold

your breath then exhale, if only to see what
shape it makes in the cold air, leaving you.

Today I heard a story about the gut— that basement
factory into which we toss everything: stomach full
of meal, cheese curls, neon-colored maraschino cherries,
sliders topped with fontina cheese and pearl onions;
coffee, vodka, beer— how all of that ferment topped
up with spore-forming bacteria can make up to 80%
of the serotonin in the human body. The key to
happiness, therefore, seems to be finding the right
combinations of food that will elicit the highest
reactions from gut bacteria. Imagine that petri dish
quietly bubbling, its secret mission to modulate
and carry over; to keep the body somehow going
instead of stopping and giving up, the mind
mouthing a little cheer just for you at the end
of a complex of neurotransmitter highways.