Author: Luisa A. Igloria

What has happened to the soil, we ask,
that leather boots are melting; that wood

palings look passed through mouths toothed 
with blades. And what has happened to passages 

inland that used to shelter instead of shatter,
hillsides where we buried our dead, entrusting 

them to the good, slow patience of years? 
I cannot blame those who say they can't 

bear to bring another life into this world, 
raise a flag to some other idea of endurance. 

These days even the sun seems to wear 
a lighter coat of radiance, though a second 

moon has quietly slipped into our orbit
as if in sympathy, for a little while.

In E-Mart we find a box of brownskinned 
Chico or Sapodilla beside green bayabas

in plastic sleeves. The old Star
Margarine from your childhood  

is in its familiar yellow plastic yellow tub, but now 
goes under the label Star Classique. You still wonder 

how tins of liver spread came to be named Reno; 
how many times you ate breakfasts of fried egg 

and Vienna sausages; if calavaza is the same as kabocha, 
moringga the same as malunggay. The shelves 

in every aisle are packed with jars and containers 
inviting you to look, to listen for the crackle of crisps 

through foil, to what bids you enter that space, trust you'll 
recognize it if not by touch then by sight, smell, taste. 

Here are the first three ways 
to say this in Ilocano when 
referring to a visible object:

Daytoy—

                        This is a picture of us
taken over thirty years ago at a small 
photo studio owned by a friend, right 
across from the gate of a university 
(nice location, I told her). She had us 
pose with various accessories from 
her studio stash: purple scarves, 
purple drape; royal purple, the color 
of a bruise partway healed.

Dagitoy—

             These are among
the only articles that remain
from that time. I wrap them
in plastic and lay them in boxes.
I keep them though I know 
they would probably not 
survive a fire or a flood 
or our common, 
certain end.

Dayta—

           In the credenza 
is a box of smoky jade  
tea mugs: an artist mixed 
clay with ashes she gathered 
in the aftermath of Mount
Pinatubo's explosion.  
 
There is a fourth 
form, referring to something 
not in view or off at some distance:

Daydiay—

                    Those are the same  
ashes into which whole towns 
and churches sank. You could tell 
which ones by their belfries, by
the halos still on the sculpted
heads of saints. In the distance,
scudding clouds.

The fifth refers to something
or to one that no longer exists: 

Daydi—

                  (The absent, gone) —

The last car my father bought was the last car he ever owned, 
we ever owned—a burgundy Mitsubishi Galant, bought 
at great cost and enterprise from an auto supplier in Manila, 
delivered at equally great enterprise to our house because
my father did not drive. It sat in a makeshift garage that consisted 
of beams erected on the right side of the house, over which
a corrugated iron roof was erected, until he found a driver 
willing to work part-time, as needed. The first car 
I remember him buying was a used car—dirty white, 
sharpfinned Impala, the kind with the tiny triangular windows 
on the side of each front window you could crank open and close 
with a small winding knob. The second car my father owned 
was a green Mercedes Benz, a hand-me-down from one 
of his rich Ilocano politician cousins. There were 
pictures of me entering that car with its cracked 
leather upholstery, holding up the skirt of my wedding 
dress in one hand and clutching a spray of white cattleyas 
in the other. What each cost, I don't exactly know—the cars, 
my father's standing in the eyes of colleagues, friends, 
clients. The orchids were free, a gift from a neighbor; 
that first marriage, fifteen difficult years of always 
being told you could only resign yourself to it, couldn't 
trade it in, resell, or simply leave in the yard 
to rust and choke among the bindweed.  
 

It walks the shore, if walking can describe 
what the wind does to a body made of poly-
vinyl parts. It is intricate as a fossil assembly

holding court in the atrium of a museum 
of natural history. Yet there are beings 
whose forms we can't articulate, 

because their bones washed away
or were entombed in glacial mud.  
The wind is a bellows, the wind is a sail.

It fills the hollows of a body and spreads
an energy like life along each tensile node.
I know at least three people who have had

either hip or knee replacement surgery.
They talk about taking walks through 
the neighborhood again, or even dancing. 

"...being alive, isn’t that the hardest joy?"
                                        - Chen Chen


A poet wrote of the noose of catastrophe
looping and lowering around each brush
fire, each flood; each site of shooting,
mauling, erasure, loss. I do not think 
she meant ropes fashioned of stars, or stars
festooned across a summer lawn, edging 
our fences. This is not the noose a farmer 
might drape around the neck of a cow, bell 
tinkling as he leads it  away from the pasture,
back into the barn. I know it seems hard to find
a noose of light that needs no other reason, really, 
to fall around you, other than that's what it's meant 
to do.  But I have to imagine  such light exists, 
to which I'd willingly give myself; surrender.

It is a day that glimmers like the inside 
of a fairy tale, one whose sky 
is the color of a dented cauldron that won't 
stop boiling and boiling so every 
street in every town floods with oatmeal 
or molasses dark as mud. You promised 
to remember.  It has been a day, no, several 
days now. The animals have fled through 
the torn brambles. People watch as houses 
topple: their chicken legs bow in the swell 
of water, and windows fold like postcards 
on a revolving rack. A voice the size of an acorn 
comes out of the dark. What will you surrender—
your comb, your pillow, your blue thread and needle?  

I get them every so often. Sometimes I make 
similar requests—for a letter of reference, 

with reference coming from the Latin referentia— 
the act of referring to some matter or to someone 

for consideration. The equivalent, perhaps, 
of a neighbor saying Yes I know that family,

they've lived on this block since the '80s; 
and  wasn't it that child who knocked over 

my flowerpots, practicing skateboard flips?  
I recall advice handed out by other letter-

writers: if you can neither damn nor praise, 
offer something ambiguous like I can't 

recommend this person highly enough, or No
person would be better for the job. 

When I think about
the loneliness we carry in our arms,
that soft body as if without bones,
there will always be 

someone reminding me 
it's time to pull the trash 
bins to the curb or check
the bread in the bin for mold,

or that it is past midnight
and morning is only a few
hours away. In our hearts,
we want to tend 

every hurt like it is
our own child, not because we
birthed them, but because we don't know
how long before we all turn to stone.

You asked me if I had been to the island
of witches, of shamans, of shapeshifters—

and I had, but only once, but for less than
a day. We rode a tricycle along the dusty

seawall to a waiting motorboat. The waves
were brisk and choppy, but we saw flying fish 

as the municipality came into view. I remembered 
reading about firefly colonies in the molave

trees, and how Spanish explorers thought they 
were on fire. The locals said, be careful. There are

those who can cast their eyes in a long view;
who can send a shiver down your nape and arm

without touching. The sun at the horizon 
sometimes looks as though it refuses

to set. A hand could slip into yours, a shadow
into your faltering steps as you walk.