Tag: Luisa A. Igloria

“But jealousy what might befall your travel,
Being skilless in these parts, which to a stranger,
Unguided and unfriended, often prove
Rough and unhospitable.”

~ “Twelfth Night,” William Shakespeare

The next door neighbor complains
about a motion sensor light
she claims is too bright
& in violation of a city
ordinance, that its pearl-
white glow spills over her side
of the fence & into their stairwell
even when the blinds are drawn, into
an upstairs toilet window (as proven
by pictures she’s taken by cell
phone). Even after I’ve conceded
& turned the always on setting
to only motion triggered, texts
continue with their hint of under-
lying hostility, the threat
we will be reported to some
branch of the authorities
apparently with jurisdiction
over the manner in which this
uncontainable element is dispersed
through store-bought conveyances
of molded plastic & simple
wiring— additionally because
I’ve pressed my right to determine
for my own level of comfort
that it’s the longer, ten-
minute duration I’d prefer
rather than five, for the light
to remain on if triggered.
In these times of nervous
uncertainty, it’s more
than the fear of squirrels
accidentally setting off
the sensors than it is
of active prowlers skulking
about, trying doors & windows,
breaking into homes & garages.
It’s hinted that we’d be
better off with firearms,
but we don’t own any. Were I
the trigger-happy sort, I’d
have unfriended her on social
media by now— this nonce verb,
actually first used in 1659
by a British clergyman,
but not then meaning
the removal of someone from
a list of friends & contacts.
Who could find fault with
light itself, girdling & making
friendly the dark passages?

The laws of physics say that two
objects cannot occupy the same

space at the same time, but there are
forces that continue to pull at you,

asking you to prove the principle wrong,
asking you to abandon your place on this

continent, buy a plane ticket, rearrange
your life and whoosh over to the other

side of the world where there are
others waiting for you to fix

their lives, their fortunes, their
crumbling houses. And you’ve come

to the conclusion that the laws
of physics are indifferent or they

don’t really understand the ways
other parts of the material

universe work, especially those
occupied by immigrants, all of you

in the diaspora, everyone who still
somehow calls somewhere else home

and is reluctant to give oneself
completely to the present, even past

the hour of raising one’s hand
in allegiance to a new flag.

And isn’t it something to realize
as well that in this day and age,

fewer schoolchildren know about
Geography than you did growing up,

memorizing the capitals of states
and countries as though your lives

depended on it, reciting in a class-
room through frigid northern winters

the names of sunny climes, their
agricultural products, landmarks,

population; the seasons, wet and dry,
that did or didn’t correspond to your own.

She was born in the year of the Ox

when the ground was hard and nothing

grew except for vines and bittermelon

From a yellowing photograph a child

stared back clutching a false bouquet

lifted from an empty can of milk powder

She was born in a year when photographs

were no longer taken from behind a velvet drape

Instead a man held a flash above his head

and counted or counted over

When called upon in school she hung her head

or looked at her shoes while reciting the times table

One could stretch the coils of telephone wire

just like the tendrils of certain green vegetables

In the ground there are still so many

homely but unkillable things

Coal and potatoes quartz and raw ore

“If we can’t have everything what is the closest amount to everything we can have?”
~ Emily Berry, “The End”

We can have salt, perhaps. Trace
of linden flower in coil of slow
wind. Or is that the scent of some
new petroleum byproduct? We can have
torched cowhide. We can have dissolution
of karst, lime-colored scales, chalk
marks left by the last surge of tides.
As for lovers— we can say their names,
one for every bit of glass found, discarded,
underfoot: the amber-colored ones, so
difficult to forget. The end of a trail,
gloss of a milky sky divided by power
lines. Which tower can we climb tonight?
Don’t say anything that will give it
away. As for grief and death— we
can scratch the sign for door on sheets
of gypsum. We can trail our hands along
the ghost of a shore where whole
countries of whales once sang before
arriving on the beach then expiring.

Say spill: and think
of what you can offer
with both hands, pour
into dry well, wind
warm around throat
and shoulders
as you lean against
an open doorway. Say
circlet and bar;
edge of small halo
night won’t leave
alone, wants
to take every small
particle in its
mouth; smoke from
a row of citronella
candles. Say hand-
clap and key, say
borrowed flare
swinging its arc
over the gate and back
alley. Say welcome. Say
nothing of ordinance
or contain, diminish.
What is so bitter
that it can’t abide
your visible water-
fall, your simplest
device? So generous:
abundance that fills
every shape and strikes
the oldest bells into
a chorus. Pity the one
that struggles inside
the cloth-draped cage,
the stairwell in which
specks of dust float,
robbed of any chance
to stipple with gold.

so much from day to day and
what do you do when you need

to put it down to hold
your head in your hands or
make dinner or rake leaves

or pick up the children
from school; how do you keep
from breaking or just

breaking into tears
or throwing balled-up socks
against a wall instead of

clearing and putting away; how
do you live with yourself when you
don’t know how to take care

of ailing family overseas
that you haven’t seen in years;
how do you weigh the cost of

a plane ticket versus
the rate of currency exchange
in a third world country and

how much of other things that
same amount might buy; how
do you keep the body’s

reflexes from dulling, you
from wanting to curl into a ball;
but then the alarm won’t stop

ringing in your ears until
the covers come off and you rise
again into another day of carrying

and holding, lifting and bearing,
resting and putting down when
your arms and heart are tired.

Are there days when you wonder
if you are almost empty, if
the pitcher can hold any more,
if the sky is done dumping
its load of bad news, if
the laundry will ever dry?
Are there fences of wire
and beds cut from tinfoil,
are there feet that have walked
for days and days in the desert?
Sometimes it is hard to tell
if the wound is closed
or if it has opened again,
if the line nicked with barbs
is trimmed with salt or snow.

Some people believe the average
person swallows at least eight
spiders a year— or is it
a lifetime— while they

are sleeping. I wonder
what hour of the night, what
month of the year the eight-
legged visitor chooses;

and what kind of quest it’s bent
on completing that ends in gaining
entrance to the cave of the mouth,
scampering down the narrow

tunnel of the throat to finally
arrive at the wet, humid bog
that is the average person’s
stomach. Scientific

American says A sleeping
person isn’t something a spider
would willingly approach—
Still, who are we to think

we’re the only creatures
capable of turning our faces
toward a Mecca or oasis, leaving
everything we know of our old

existence behind in order
to undertake the journey of
a lifetime? Those are the kinds
of goals that ask for everything

we can give; and isn’t it true?
How often we prayed for something
larger than ourselves to burn us,
take us in, change us completely.

“i don’t trust people unfamiliar
with love.” ~ Jose Olivarez

Fierce eyelash of moon
shining out of the trees,
their branches made silvery

and arterial in the dark;
somewhere a synagogue
of hearts trembling from

the sounds of gunfire.
Every day we hold each other
and it feels like we couldn’t

possibly have any more tears.
But every day, new names enter
the rolls of the dead. Grief

is remade daily; we’re not
even given time to gather
our sorrows for their proper

ritual. Meanwhile, beasts
prowl in the rain. They don’t
bother with umbrellas or

with anything that has ribs.
Meanwhile, we don’t sleep.
We sharpen in moonlight.

Before they make that last
resort move called filing
for chapter 13 bankruptcy,
the debt settlement agent
instructs her on what to say

to the credit collectors: she’s
given a few lines to practice
and they go over the script
as though she’ll be auditioning for
a role in a play though she

doesn’t really want to be in it.
When she feels ready, the agent rings
the 1-800 number and tells her she’ll
be listening; but will jump in only if
she needs additional support. This is

the part where she has to tell
the credit card people that yes
she knows she’s behind in pay-
ments; but see, they’re at a real
difficult time in their lives—

Things got out of hand, but they want
to get back on their feet. Eventually
they’re sure they can do it but only
if they would see how to cut them
some kind of break. They make

this kind of call four, five
times and before it’s over she’s
in tears. From the way it sounds,
the next step is likely
bankruptcy court, a place

that before this time she’s only
ever heard about on shows like Judge
Joe Brown or Judge Judy. It won’t
matter that they’ve come here legal,
it won’t matter that they’ve tried

to do everything by the book. It won’t
matter that they didn’t go on vacations
to save up for that elusive American
Dream whose price tag seems to vary
depending on the kind of immigrant you are.