Via Negativa

After his trial, Socrates is condemned to death
for sins of impiety and corrupting the youth. 
Most depictions show him as noble and calm
in this final adversity, befitting a philosopher 
of his stature—In the Phaedo, when he inquires, 
the official poisoner says the only thing he's 
expected to do is drink it, that's all. Carrot 
fern, poison parsley, purple-blotched 
along the stem and bitter when bruised—
Even as Socrates gamely downs 
the hemlock-saturated cup of wine,
he doesn't froth at the mouth, clutch 
at his stomach, or stumble around 
like a common drunk. He simply pulls
his robe over his face. This is the guy
famous for asking What do you know?
How do you know what you know? and 
Why should you care about it? Unsettling,
to anyone uncomfortable with challenging
the status quo or what they've been 
conditioned to believe. And so, at the café 
this morning, when the barista instructs
us to keep anyone from sitting at the corner
table because a repairman's coming to fix
the closed circuit camera above it,
we are at first amused as customer
after customer tries to sit there, 
even when we've turned the chairs
over or pushed them under the window
counter. All they have to do is comply, find
another table; that's all. Aren't they also 
asking How do you know? Why should we
believe you? And it seems there is also 
something in the spirit that makes me want
to cheer, for refusing to accept there can be 
only one outcome, besides or before 
the body's surrender to its most final fate.

Don’t miss this feature on the title poem from Luisa’s new collection Caulbearer at Poetry Daily, as part of their series What Sparks Poetry. Here’s an excerpt:

As an immigrant and a writer in the diaspora, despite the length of time I’ve lived in the U.S. and as a naturalized citizen, I’m still conscious of the feeling of being neither here nor there. There is a fantasy of irrecoverable return, and here is the place to which I’ve carried the ghosts of my own (and perhaps my community’s) nostalgia. Between these two states of being is a veil perishable as a panicle of yucca flowers, sheer as the wings of a yucca moth whose continued existence in an often brutal world depends on mutuality. But it is also a space which I want to imbue with as much tenderness as I can.
Read the rest.

Regular readers might recognize the poem, which first appeared here in January 2019. Read it at Poetry Daily… and order the book from Black Lawrence Press.

The novelist said drop daughter
        into your proposal and the whole
marketing team will be behind you

because daughter is synonymous 
        with love and sorrow, conflict 
and separation, age, impossible

desire. We laughed but I knew 
        it was true—all those stories 
about blood and bone, how we 

felt our way out of blind tunnels
        in the same way our mothers and
their mothers and their mothers before

them did, elbowing into a world we  
        are still demanding make space for us.

I look around and ask each thing 
how many days will you give me

Circles of green leaf at the window
say there is no end, only
circumference

Outside, a chorus
of linked roots