Tag: Luisa A. Igloria

A smaller version of Juan Luna’s Spoliarium
has just come to light— quick preliminary
sketch, acquired by commissioner Matías Lopez

and passed down to his heirs, after the Exposition
Universelle where the mural went on view in 1889.
Who could have imagined that this depiction

of two fallen gladiators— bloodied, dragged
from the arena— would become one of the symbols
of the revolution? As for its authenticity,

in one corner, beside the artist’s name,
two additional symbols in baybayin script:
lu na, which in Iloko means moon.

That first fall here, arriving on the heels
of hurricane Earl: dorms vacated, the semester’s

start postponed, students moved to local hotels;
storefront windows boarded up along the coast—

I had little to feed to any flood should it ask
for some gift or trade for passage. I remembered

one of the scholars in my Fulbright orientation
confessing to her own naivete: arriving late

and navigating the subway, pushing with two
hands against a turnstile that would not budge.

The train station attendant informing her
Miss, you need to have a token; her panicked

reply, I don’t have any souvenirs. Back
in my hometown, every year, a neighborhood

went underwater with each storm. But always,
the residents returned to dig through silt

for furniture, pianos, gas stoves,
hot water bottles. Even the mangy dogs

limped back, sniffing for the posts
which they’d been tethered to. All

the lost boys and girls in the world are still
rowing the air above our heads, looking for

that shimmering window obscured under a net-
work of maps. And finally I understand

the meaning of that lost shadow: how
having one is proof of your ability

to affix yourself to place, to let the sun
impale your body upon the cork board of time.

Unbearable heat all day, then rain
sometimes near midnight. I should be

sleeping, but as soon as I hear
the boom of thunder, all my old

restlessness returns, translated
by my hands into gestures that at least

help fold the laundry when they can’t
bear to turn the pages of books anymore.

I don’t know what it is I’m always
bracing for: news from that other

home I left years ago— news of a fall,
news of a death. Not that anyone wishes for

such things to take place, but rather,
almost as though they’ve already happened

and it’s just taken the announcement
a longer time to arrive. I saw a satellite

animation track a column of dust blown
by a wind storm from the Sahara clear

across the Caribbean and into the skies
of Texas, where it lingered and spread

as a fine haze for weeks, even months.
What does it matter what form we might

survive in, if there is no one to keep us?
I don’t mean as a different kind of body,

or as fragments sifted into a glass.
When I’ve waited up to the point

of exhaustion, sleep comes. Even this
is labor: the lungs working their

quiet bellows, the small muscles’ spasm
as the body descends deeper into itself.

What star fixed you, whose fingernail
nicked the skin on your thigh so that

even clothed, you’d always feel
the scar burning? After the opening

prayers, the translator spoke
into the microphone: of the prophets

who themselves met their end,
though they’d hummed the name of Allah

every day of their lives. Marked
or unmarked, we don’t know how long

it will take before the vault
of heaven opens; if only

it were as easy as closing one’s eyes
and going to sleep. One day, the air

serifed with dragonfly wings; the next,
an unmarked page ready for scribing.

~ in memoriam, Imtiaz Habib

“Even now, I don’t know much/ about happiness.” ~ Ada Limón

Numbness in the toe persisted; so, having terrified
myself by looking online at all the worst case
scenarios, I gave in and visited the doctor. She
activated a button on a stainless steel wand and set it
atop my foot, and asked if I could feel the vibration.
Next she asked me to close my eyes as she grasped
my big toe and bent it this way and that: up or down?
down or up? down or sideways? I think I did well,
or she didn’t really say— but sent the tech with vials
and syringes for drawing blood. Make a fist, he said;
and after: relax. I thought, isn’t it always like that,
swinging from one constriction to another? Suspension
in that time of balling up before release. Everything
burrowing into itself until the sense of danger passes.

The last time you weren’t here, no one
turned on the TV for a week or used
the drip coffeemaker. A roll of paper
towel lasted a week. In the quiet
of evenings after supper, I put
the kettle on to boil for tea
and tried to read my book, or wrote
things on the computer while laundry
tumbled in the background. The same
is true tonight. Though I still hear
the chirr of cicadas in the trees
that ring the neighborhood, they seem
quieter now too than at the beginning
of summer. A man can be himself
only so long as he is alone, wrote
Schopenhauer. How often was he
truly by himself, without having
meals brought up to him or laundry
taken away discreetly in the morning?
The truth is, we all crave that sort
of solitude that isn’t merely loneliness
tinged with exhaustion or some kind
of worry. In other words, a woman is
never really alone, even when she’s alone.

In the early hours, it comes to me
there’s a numbness in my big toe at the tip
and along one side, as if on that peninsula
some kind of drift has taken place overnight,
spreading sediment to build a barrier
against feeling. If this is some kind

of warning sent up by the body,
I can’t decode its telegram, can’t
figure out how long it’s taken to arrive;
or why something in that not so distant out-
post should be walling itself off, going
quiet, preparing for undetermined siege.

Three summers ago, my youngest
daughter and I toured the streets of the old
Walled City in Manila. On foot, in the heat,
the same cobblestone streets Indios— brown,
like us— walked to do the bidding of
their masters: from the 16th century until

the hero turned to face the firing squad
before he fell on the dirt in the field
of Bagumbayan; until peasant armies rose up
waving flags, brandishing their muskets,
their balisongs, their iták… We crossed
the courtyard with a fountain, looked up

at ramparts lined with ancient brick and terra
cotta. From the Baluarte de San Diego, sentinels
on patrol might get a clearer southwest facing view
for artillery defense against pirates and foreign
invaders. How many versions of this are there
in myth and history? Before the maps themselves

are inked, the eye calculates space against
only two basic measures: here, and there.
Or, what falls outside the boundaries drawn
thick on parchment, and where tribes cluster
around fires that mark where they believe
they’ve managed to command the dark to fall

away in retreat. With my hands, I chafe my feet
to goad the blood’s circulation, to work up heat.
It’s impossible to intuit all the pulses ticking
on the blurry edges. History tells of sudden
movement— of one shot fired in darkness
across a bridge, and the long war that ensued.

To not have been the homely sister, good
only for sweeping dust from under the stairs

To have the courage to say here
kiss me here and here and here

To drink the silence of afternoons
gratefully in long cold gulps

To surrender the plate, the spoon,
the knife, the fork, after I am done

To keep back one kernel of sweet, one
serif, several bedsprings of light

To carve the likeness of a saint’s hand
after it has been severed from the wrist

A woman winds silk scarves through
the arms of trees by the river. She drapes
brocade over stones as if competing with moss.
At the parish hall, the emcee holds up a taped
box, urging people to place their bids. The child
sitting on a stool in the middle of the stage
is tired and drowsy; with the heels of her patent
leather shoes she kicks at the rungs. Now
the woman wants to weave a garland for the child:
what flowers? She bends toward the rushes
and pulls. She will make her wear it
at the May festival, standing atop a float.
Wave, she commands; smile. Don’t squint.
The sun presses against the hinges of bivalves
as if that way, a process might be hastened;
as if that way they could give up a pearl.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Missing.

Do you remember the exact words in a proverb
about wisdom and all things coming together
miraculously with age? Me neither. But I’m
always overhearing other peoples’ conversations
about this topic: in a pho restaurant,
pinching off purple-veined basil and squeezing
lime into my bowl, I overhear a conversation
about ageism in the next booth— how,
according to the fiftyish woman in a smart
blazer with matching statement necklace,
it’s terrible that nowadays, only the young
and beautiful with perfectly groomed brows,
luminous cheeks and highly developed
social networks get attention. They get
the jobs, promotions, prizes— so unfair
to people in her age demographic who aren’t
valued for the decades of experience they
can bring to the table. I was reminded
of a board meeting of the poetry society,
at which someone said rather bluntly
that it was a very bad idea to throw
early honors at the young, because
they would get a big head before they
even learned to reflect on what wisdom
or the world were really about. I tried
to think of what I was like at sixteen
or eighteen: definitely not sage-like,
definitely still green; married with kids
by twenty-one. Tsk. Still, had anyone
told me I didn’t know anything, I’d
have risen to the occasion, that kind
of reverse ageism. You don’t get to reflect
on what’s thrust upon you: violence and war,
and the closer hurt when you’re defiled,
then disbelieved. The mind shrinks even as
it expands to admit the knowledges visited
on the body. I see it in my young students
too: the beautiful, hurt stories they write.