Author: Luisa A. Igloria

I have no sons; I've only birthed 
daughters, each given a distinct name. 
Sons can be named after their fathers, 
and their fathers' fathers before them. 
A Junior; the second, third, fourth.
Perhaps a remnant of kingly practice? 
Keep it all in the family— the name, 
the wealth; power, property, influence. 
Such inbreeding among royals was once 
thought to be the cause of haemophilia, 
though really the disorder is due to 
a mutation in the genes. Rare clot, 
flower blooming beneath the skin:
whose eulogy do you serve? Which
rebel thread pulls away, thickening 
to scroll its own emphatic calligraphy? 

"Are you – Nobody – too?"
            ~ Emily Dickinson


A man falls asleep in the deep 
folds of a department store massage chair, 
and no one notices. It's dark when he wakes,
still inside the store now empty and shuttered
for the night. It's not something he intended
to do, and is mildly embarrassed at the attention
it generates. Whereas, there are apparently
people who choose to disappear from their lives,
even hiring "night movers" to spirit them away
without a trace to a different and undisclosed
location. In Japan, they're called jouhatsu,
which means evaporation. They let go of their 
names, every material possession they ever 
owned; their jobs, their network of friends. 
They even let go of their families. Some 
disappear to save face, because they can't 
live down the shame of a terrible mistake. 
Some have become disenchanted with their old 
lives, others because the weight of existence 
is too much though death isn't an appealing 
option. Their sudden disappearance makes it seem 
as if they simply evaporated into the atmosphere. 
But they still have bodies; many of them may be 
floating around in big cities, in plain sight— 
pale and anonymous as sadness that can't be 
tied to any particular thing, with no need 
to answer to the call of anything other 
than the overwhelming desire to withdraw.
   

When is it a metaphor, and when is the blue
curtain just a blue curtain, a car stalled
on the road just the result of a bad battery and
not a cosmic memo about never getting to where 
you want to go in life? There are three days 
this summer when the moon's orbit will once more 
place it at its farthest point from the equator; 
this causes the earth to spin much faster, resulting 
in shorter days. But what astrophysicists mean is 
shorter by milliseconds— the loss of time may not 
even be immediately noticeable, until a half 
century from now when perhaps we'll no longer 
have 24-hour days or 7-day workweeks. Other kinds 
of losses might only seem inconsequential—the hairs 
on your head, the thinning of sparrow populations. 
The decline of honeybees and wildflowers from habitat 
loss. Do you wonder why it's so difficult now 
to hear the whippoorwill sing its name, signalling 
the end of the season of loneliness or frost?

When I no longer care 
about the world, let me 
sit on a rock perch where 
my hair can be  
                         combed by the wind.

When I no longer want to bind 
my breasts with cotton and drink 
from an orchard well, let me sleep 
in a room without clocks 
                         in the middle of a monsoon.

The days are full 
of horrors and lamentations,
nights with visions 
of banishment and exile with
                         no hope of return.

Yet deeper blue than the sky,
hydrangeas keep rewriting
a narrative of ordinary survival.
Their dry, petaled heads persist,
                         even in the absence of water.

Articles on home maintenance warn about breaks
in the plaster: how they may be a sign of something
more serious in the foundation, or that the soil 
underneath has shifted and softened through the years, 
or both. But it's simply the way things go as they 
get older and more worn. Chips in the stucco, 
scratches on once smooth sanded floors. When  
we moved in, this house was also already old. 
Having been vacant for some time, it was as if 
the pipes sighed awake from a long drought 
the first time we ran the showers and flushed 
the toilets. The realtor found a small nest 
of rodents in the crawl space, and called 
extermination services. We learned new words 
like soffit, fascia, and transom window; and also 
that the modest, side-gabled Cape Cod style dates 
back to the 1800s. From the floor outline in the apron-
sized dining room and a full window set into the wall 
behind the hutch, we can see some of the original 
bones of this house: how and where more rooms 
were added, even as closet space remained the same 
for times when people may have had a need for much 
less in their lives. In summertime, men in shorts 
and baseball caps knock on doors in the neighborhood, 
asking Do you have spiders, mosquitoes, ants, and 
are they a problem for you? We always turn them 
away. Sometimes, a tiny green grasshopper comes in. 
Sometimes, a cricket trills unseen in a corner. 
Moths are our favorite— we like to think they're 
visitations from our dead, gone so many years but there,
like a glimmer of something precious in the cracks. 
 

Where the cannula eased out of the vein,
         an oxblood bloom against pale skin. 

As above, so below; and so between. 
         In the garden, everything seems poised 

to ripen; but that means there is still 
         also waiting. If you walk around a tree 

whose foliage is so thick all its lower arms 
         are bending, you just might find 

a hidden opening. And yes there is war, there has 
         always been war; it is impossible to turn 

away. Yet amid the unpruned rosemary, new shoots 
         of pine and even elm. This is just the earth's

habit: not invasion but proliferation. A plume of heat
         and its tendrils shooting up above the atmosphere. 
          
  

      Once, a fish slid its sinuous body 
into the sea's cloud cover; 
                              it was taken to task  
      for not appearing before the gods. For keeping 
its own counsel, 
                 it received a lashing of bones. 
      I feel a natural kinship with it, but also  
with the lizard 
                 skittering through a labyrinth 
      of landmines and guillotines. Kinship with 
the orange-blushed 
                    mountain shrike and its constant 
      alarm of krr-krr-krr, and with ghosts 
of innumerable histories thickening 
                                    the air 
      that we breathe— Lock eyes with any creature 
you meet: the current  
                      you feel is felt by them, 
      too. Some are more expert at shedding 
their skin when it no longer 
                             serves them.

~ after Remedios Varo (1955)


        Within each time, the contemplation 
             of time. Devices for its calibration 
and measure, the recognition of how 
       it holds up the sky in whatever quadrant 
             we might reside. See how many points of 
existence want to push through the membrane 
       of this life. All the actors gathered here, 
             garbed in their own choice of armor, 
must hear that electric humming in 
             the atmosphere. Strings of tin-can stars 
       waterfall in the room. How thin the border 
between states: outside and in, love and labor, 
             quiet and clamor. The world is no longer 
       beginning to change. It has changed. 

     is what they call the energy 
that will sunder the plates 
     which have more or less kept  
us in place in the only lifetime 
     we know; is the massive swell, 
tsunami that will rear its head 
     above cities and towns then 
make the noise of a million rushing 
     bees. Plumed emerald basilisks 
freefall from their perches to kiss 
     the ground before it disappears.
Then they'll skitter across water,
     runners looking for the finish line.