Month: June 2012

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Landscape, with Summer Bonfires

This entry is part 52 of 55 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Spring 2012

 

In the foyer, rippled leaves like giant seaweeds droop. Who remembers to water the plants when everyone is gone? The air-conditioning sends chilled drafts down, but the heat of high summer is yet to come. Overhead, the skylight’s a square of marbled white, like some trapdoor in the basement of the gods. The first fire-stealer broke off a branch of glowing coal, embers hidden in a fennel stalk, falling headlong with it back into the world. Take that, he spat to the vengeful ones. At the edge of the park, eagles circle overhead and return to the same tree. If you raise your binoculars, you can see them bring back things in their beaks, shred pieces of meat for their hungry young. And the liver, oh the liver: peck it out to nearly nothing and still it grows back. See if you can stop the history— Trains and ironworks rushing forward, sparks’ hot striving from struck metal. Hibachis firing up, backyards soaked in the smoke of summer barbecues and shishkebobs, scritch of a match on the sole of a shoe; bonfires staining the woods defiant red, even as the sun goes down.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Brood

 

“I have lived on the lip of insanity, wanting to know reasons, knocking on a door. It opens. I’ve been knocking from the inside!” ~ Rumi (trans. Coleman Barks)

 

Didn’t I feel like this at least a few other times before,
didn’t I roam the streets crazed with grief and worry

when you disappeared, taking your off-the-shoulder tops
and halter dresses, your makeup bag, your winter coat,

your paperbacks, leaving only a note taped to the door? Didn’t I
drive looking for any trace of you, whip around at every wisp

of hair disappearing around the corner at the mall? And you,
and you, didn’t my heart lurch through the clattering elevator

of my throat, and plummet down again into my gut with every
phone call that came or didn’t come in the dead of winter,

in the middle of the night, with sobbing at the other end?
Didn’t I press my face against the white sheets newly

laundered, smelling of newborn skin; and scour the tubs
with chlorine bleach, all the while making fevered

supplication to a litany of gods? Yesterday I trimmed back
the roses, watered the mint, poked at the gravelly soil

with the tip of a garden spade and my inadequate knowledge
for growing things. On faith, I try to take what the Sufi poet

says: don’t think the garden loses its ecstasy in winter. It’s quiet,
but the roots are down there riotous. Yes, yes, I see how they

come back, even thrive, though they might nest now in some other
form. But tell me what happens, after the snake has made its way

up the trunk of the dead elm into a den of flickers, emerging later
with a new bulge sleek in its black belly— Except for the wind,

and cries of birds that haven’t learned anything but account
for duty, nothing troubles the branches of the lilac trees.

 

 

In response to Black Snake Moan.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Black snake moan

If you’re a regular reader of The Morning Porch on Twitter or elsewhere, you know I’ve been following the progress of a northern flicker nest in the dead elm tree on the other side of the yard. I first noticed the presence of a pair of flickers around the house back on April 30:

Continue reading “Black snake moan”

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Another Letter to Persephone

Growing up, I did not know the mythical
pomegranate, its leathery hull hiding
sacs of ruby-colored beads— the ones
you slid under your hungry tongue

to suck, forgetting your captor’s warning.
I did not know the stains that reddened
fingers shucking them in the bowl, how
each, merely the size of a broken-off

tooth, gravely bore a full raft
of consequences, unreeling through
the seasons— I did not know that smell
from the underworld of festering

desire, dank and sour-sweet like a dog’s
wet fur or an old wool robe, and how
it could follow you aboveground. Girl
that I was too, what did I know?

Between my teeth I cracked salted
watermelon seeds and blistered
the papery shells of passion fruit,
desperate to quit the ennui

of my listless existence, eager
to dive into the fire of real life,
whatever that might be. Lickety
split, here I am: shored up past

the middle course, the frost
beginning to thicken the hair-roots
at my temples. I have daughters too,
for whom I’ve paid ransoms now

beyond calculating. Does the story
ever finish? or does it merely go on—
summer a flash, then that consuming,
unmapped winter? The eldest daughter

consoles me through a window crackling
to life, holding a dumpling that she
has made, up to the screen: almost close
enough to touch and taste. Another says

she wants to return to a simpler place,
a country where there’s only one example
of everything. A third dreams of birds
in trees and the music she wants to make

from the wood in her arms. And this
morning, my husband, making scrambled eggs
in the kitchen, rushed upstairs bowl in hand,
to show our youngest girl the amazement

of a double yolk. And I, I look on, still
fumbling with charts and keys: daughter-
mother, mother-daughter, swallowing mouthful
after mouthful of glittering seeds.

 

In response to small stone (93).

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Arbor

This entry is part 51 of 55 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Spring 2012

 

You never know what kind of light will do that to you—
break your heart, seize you with inexplicable longing:

you walk into the empty kitchen where all the dishes lie, stacked
on the drain board, dry; where one chipped cup spells longing.

The light is newly rinsed, newly risen, or just fading, but
it doesn’t matter: every hour hides a secret longing.

The colors of fruit are warm and full of life: citrus yellow, apple
green, cherry red. The blue-veined bowl opens its mouth in longing.

Who was it that was supposed to come today? No shadow crossed the walk,
or rang the bell; no face peered in the window to meet you and your longing.

You sit writing lists, checking papers, figuring costs—
By the door, lavender in a pot sends up tiny spears of longing.

At night when everyone has gone into their rooms, the ceilings
hush, the shutters turn, as though against a long-held longing.

What’s on the other side of so much longing? Surely the bird
that lined the nest has found some arbor devoid of longing.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Please

This entry is part 50 of 55 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Spring 2012

 

Do you believe in ghosts?
Before the rain, I snipped the heads
of brittle roses off their stalks,
then dug a hole in the earth for a handful
of herbs. A white moth clung to a trellis
and trembled the grid of wires. When the rain
began to fall in earnest, the wraiths of all
my loves and unresolved afflictions pursued me
indoors, then lay down with me upon the pillows.
They fingered my wrists and called me Darling,
Sweetheart. They told me of green ribbons
of snakes that flattened their ribcages to sail
through endless miles beneath the canopy.
They said, The body is a rivet. I stroked
their napes and whispered into their
orphaned ears, praying they would be kind.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Amphibious

Narceus millipede
Narceus millipede
Something in the toe of my shoe this morning when I put it on. A pebble, I think, but when I turn the shoe upside-down, a Narceus millipede falls out — the kind that lives under leaf duff and curls into tight spirals when disturbed. After a minute, it cautiously uncurls, rights itself and heads for a dark corner, gliding on a magic carpet of pseudopods.

Yes, it’s been damp. But so far only the north-facing roof of my house has moss on it. This is useful to know in case I ever get lost.

For weeks, thunderstorms in the late afternoon or early evening have been an almost daily occurence. This has meant not only lots of rainbows but some interesting lighting conditions as well. As I type this at 7:58 p.m., the sky is suffused with an amber glow even as rain continues to fall. I feel almost as if I’m trapped inside a glass of the ale I had before supper.

Due to all the rain, the big vernal pool at the top of the watershed is lasting much longer than usual this year — good news for the wood frog tadpoles, which have now become frogs with tails and are graduating at a steady rate. Every morning, my mom reports, there are fewer of them than there had been the day before, which presumably means they’re leaving the water under cover of darkness. It’s a relief to know that after so many springs when the pool dried up too soon, our aging population of wood frogs will finally get some new blood.

The young frogs will spread out, travelling up to several hundred meters in all directions, and make new homes in the leaf litter, preying on various arthropods, including millipedes. I wonder whether any of them will make it as far as the house.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

How to exist

This entry is part 32 of 39 in the series Manual

 

Assemble yourself from molecules, cells, electric currents, phases of the moon, words and worms.

Individuate. Break off from the bedrock.

Particle or wave? Better try both to play it safe.

If you happen to possess mass, you can experience gravity. Find something to orbit.

Only 4% of the observable universe consists of ordinary, luminous or nonluminous matter — and who wants to be ordinary? Dark matter, being at this point a complete mystery, is much more attractive to the ladies.

Elude precise definition. The wholly understood thing is a mere fantasy.

Consciousness is a popular option, but if you choose it, be sure to revisit unconsciousness on a regular basis in order to stay grounded.

If you must be a being for whom Being (Dasein) is a question, do not join the Nazi party.

Love. Or failing that, harmonize.

Make a name for yourself using phonemes, morphemes and — optionally — graphemes.

Whether or not the soul exists has no bearing on the problem of existence itself. So can I have your soul?

When life gives you asymptotically free quarks and gluons, make quark-gluon plasma.

Dwell.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Here I am, small as ever:

smaller than the smallest

blade of emerald or deep pine

or thinnest fringe of blue-

grey foliage edging the park—

A planet climbs the skies

to intercept the larger arc

of sun as though a hand pulled

back the string and tensed the bow:

so small though visible to the naked

eye, its progress through the ether.

And when it’s passed, at head

and nock of the arrow my small

heart trembles still: which is

kindness, which suffering?

The hand that tries to learn

is gesturing still: how all

things, restless, scintillate

—as in a dream.

 

In response to small stones NYC (101) (102).