Tag: Luisa A. Igloria

Look at us, she said. We are all of us in this room
still waiting to be transformed.

Is
the lake a lake, the bird a bird, or but a fake
shadow, a half-thing?

face stamped
into a coin, what’s left of the body
in the belly of a bird

We lay on rugs on spongy moss
huddled for warmth

Soil
blooded to rustfruit, eyebright

I have a poem in which the universe is like a vocal cord

There was
no deeper meaning.

*

Source Texts:
Louise Gluck, “An Endless Story”
Michael Farrell, “Verlaine in the Lake”
Sam Sax, “Bury”
James Harpur, “The Perseids”
Nam Le, “Aubade”
Alice Notley, “Why Are You Writing These”
Sandra Lim, “Chanson Douce”

Who cleans the windowpane with her breath and stirs
the fire of the afternoon

scented with gardenias?
I’ve walked carefully through the colors of copper.

No possession accompanies us
when night drifts along streets of the city.
Not all windows open: that is the truth.

Now each of us is
a witness stand:

You should know that human limbs burn
like branches and branches like human limbs.

Who said that my country was green?
It took a long time to cover my body —

little boats grab onto them and row and row

*

Source texts:
Olga Orozco, “Ballad of Forgotten Places”
Jaime Manrique, “The Sky Over My Mother’s House”
Oscar Gonzalez, “Central America in My Heart”
Francisca Aguirre, “Penelope Unravels”
Amy Lowell, “Solitare”
Sara Borjas, “Lies I Tell”
Ilya Kaminsky, “Town Watches Them Take Alfonso”
Nicole Sealey, “In Defense of ‘Candelabra with Heads’”
Claribel Alegria, “Flowers from the Volcano”
Hafizah Geter, “Testimony”
Victoria Chang, “Dear P.”

~ after Albrecht Dürer, 1502

In the backyard, where workmen have left
two-by-fours and panels of exterior plywood

next to the HVAC unit, a young hare twitches
in the damp grass. The shed we’re trying

to put up is only a shell— frame made of
eight beams on a small cement square, nothing

yet resembling a roof. The carpenter we hired
didn’t say we needed to get a permit. When we

pointed to the existing shed leaning against
the far end of the fence, its hems rotted

through from standing in water with every
hard rain, he merely said, I can build you

one’a those for cheap. He comes and goes
every couple of weeks, putting in a few

hours at the end of the day; it’s been two
months since we started. Then, a week ago

we get a notice from the city, with the words
stop, and fine, and permit. I kind of feel

like you, I say to the hare, stooping down
to eye level and wondering why it doesn’t

bolt though I can tell its heart rate
has increased in the last three minutes

since I came upon it, on my way to throw
the trash into the bin. Perhaps it’s trying

to gauge the nature of the threat, or if I am
one. I watch the soft brown hairs on its chest

ripple, its haunches tamp down into a spring.
One move— and one of us will break the spell.

Sweep and arc of yellow light
from passing jeepneys: sieved through

crocheted curtains at the window.
And the rain is always another curtain.

Even the poorest house is draped in it.
Cerveza Negra frosting a glass. Pulutan

on plates. Or someone might order “service
tea” and bowls of chicken mami. In the back,

old-timers hunched over games of chess;
the busboy pausing on his way to the kitchen.

Next door, small glass counter in a corner
of the lobby of Pines Theatre. A child

points to boxes of Milk Duds and Whoppers.
In a styrofoam cooler behind the cash register,

soft drink bottles packed in ice. You remember
a line from this movie, but not its title:

someone singing “Sweet, sweet potato pie.”
There has to be another word besides nostalgia

for what we do when we build whole scenes
and times as we write them. Notice: you don’t

talk about feelings here. Crinkled foil as bags
of chips are torn open. Fingers dipping into these

meagre salt wells. Only a small wooden barrier
sets off the Loge from the general Balcony section.

Walking outside you blink, adjusting to the light;
and signs lighting up Assandas and Bheroomull’s.

September, oncoming chill of October
under the last wet fingers of rain.

A writing spider spreads its texts
between the shed and the fig tree.

I don’t know how to make a promise
that I also don’t know how to keep.

So much is expected— and before any
of it is done, a slackline of errors.

Still, something wants to push
the envelope back under the grating

to the indifferent clerk. That
can’t be just a game of empty

repetition: that wanting to be
more than a column in a ledger;

or the next notch; or a blank,
bristling with unnamed potential.

To open one’s mouth
to dispute a thing
is risky enough

To do so
as a woman
as a brown woman

as a woman of no
acknowledged consequence
is to open oneself again

to a history of wounding
& reprimand Of being told
it’s wrong of you

to point out
you’ve been wronged
It’s being told you

shouldn’t be so
childish You should know
and stay in your place

When it is too quiet at night
I wonder what is troubling the waters;

whether the banked clouds we saw
at sundown, their colors rich but muted

like a medieval tapestry, are merely
a screen that hasn’t risen yet

on the next act. Will there be
columns of smoke, towns going

under water, colonies of dead
bees scattered like gold beads

on the grass? When they announce
the evacuation order, you look

around and can’t decide which
of the things that could fit

into one backpack could answer to
the description of essential.

Weren’t you taught all, all
is important to the living body,

everything that could be grafted to it
as well as shorn away? And everything

is also already in your heart— Memory
of feasts made by hand that now

your same hand empties the icebox of,
for fear of the power going out,

the meat and butter going bad, the wilt
and ruin of even the thinnest stalk

of green. Regret: the wrapper around
a gift that hasn’t been torn open,

that hasn’t opened in you some stay
on time. And at night, it’s all you can do

to not give in to the dark immediately.
To count slowly even as you enter it.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Difficult sleeper.

I read there is a small
silver spoon whose sole
purpose is to plunge

into the depths of a bone
that’s been boiled for supper
and thereby extricate for you

the wobbly column of marrow—
It looks something of a cross
between a miniature spade and

half of a bird’s long beak,
and guarantees that every part
of the animal can be consumed.

How thoughtful of the silver-
smith to add such an implement
to the set: to have prescience

of things we’ll need even before
they become needs, to be so sure
desire will want to go that

far. Does anyone still sell
hooks and eyes, those tiny
pairs of shaped wire pulled

into assistance when buttons
and snaps and zippers aren’t
enough? When I was eight,

a doctor declared one of my
legs shorter than the other,
insisting my parents take me

for a fitting, for a pair
of ugly orthopedic shoes.
At the shoemaker’s, we looked

around at all the prosthetic
legs with leather platforms;
their metal braces, the smell

of something sad limping around
the room. My father turned on
his heel and we followed.

An inch, a half an inch: nothing,
he believed, that a regular diet
of bone broth couldn’t fix.

It comes to her as a sudden flash
in the final hours of vigil: a blur

of wings attaching themselves
improbably, like some kind of vintage

brooch, to the pleated underside
of a casket lid. Even then she’d learned

to cultivate a skepticism for things
that appeared too sweet, too sure, too

magical— so where did the hummingbird
come from, and what could it mean if there

were room to entertain the possibility
that the soul doesn’t only divide from out

of its own reservoirs of desire? The hardest
part is that both the seen and unseen are also

aspects of language. Does she speak of it,
or does she fold the bird back into

the silence enclosing both of them like
an envelope? And the body, too, of

the beloved. The one that flew away
and left this shape cooling in its box.

“…imagine the prizes we desire
in the present” ~ D. Bonta

It begins to drizzle when we’re walking
to the car carrying bags of takeout food,

when on the sidewalk a woman in a dark,
full-length beaded dress lighting

what appears to be a blunt sings out Perfect
family! laughing as she and her companion

weave across the street. Even as we pull
away her voice echoes in my ear; I think

of a mythical bird who waited in the high
branches of a tree— it drops a well-timed

load of shit on the head of some unsuspecting
prince passing through the woodland. In

the story, such targets turn to stone and stay
that way; the forest begins to resemble a park

populated with various ruined statues
slippered in moss. It’ll take someone else’s

courage to gather birdsong without becoming
petrified: to find the spell for restoration.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Practice makes perfect.