Author: Luisa A. Igloria

~ after Diane Seuss ("Coda")


The best donut in a box of store-bought donuts
is not glazed but plain, like a plain-spoken poem. 

In the farmer's market, the best donut is the one
which doesn't smell like apple cider or pumpkin 

spice. It's the one that isn't dusted with sanding 
sugar or a cinnamon-cardamom mix. If it's sweet, 

its sweetness lingers like the space where a hole 
has been made in something that used to be 

whole. In other words, whole doesn't always mean 
unbroken, and broken doesn't always mean not good 

anymore or of no further use. Sometimes whole is a body 
that rose and was punched down once, twice, on the counter 

or in a bowl. Whole means strands of gluten broken 
down, souring in fermentation, then knit back together 

to form an elastic structure. Tap it with a knife or your
finger. It's crisp and golden outside, soft on the inside.

~ Doctrina Christiana en lengua española y tagala, 
1593, Manila


What is it to trust something or
       someone? We learned about empirical 
evidence,  about proof provided through logic 
       and materials, and the ways they've been 
documented to behave in experience. Any 
       departure from what we've come to call 
the norm makes us uncomfortable, even 
       suspicious—For doesn't the sun rise 
in the east and set in the west? And yet 
      there are waterfalls which appear to cascade 
upwards, and hills where vehicles in neutral 
      ascend rather than descend. For centuries,
catechism meant suffer your fate in this vale 
      of tears; collect reward in the afterlife. 

~ after Nick Carbó



All I know of Zafra is that it is a small 
town in the province of Badajoz, about two 

hours away from Seville, snuggled deep 
in southern Extremadura. My fierce, paternal 

grandmother Irene, whose maiden name was Zafra, 
liked to boast of how her family's roots go back

to this place. Whether or not that claim was true,
she and my father had the same cool, grey-blue eyes, 

in a country where everyone else had brown skin, 
dark hair, dark eyes. On its tourism pages, scenes

look straight out of history books on the Spanish 
colonial period in the Philippines—balconajes 

overlooking cobblestone squares, churches adorned
with gold and murals; a palace and fortress, a prison, 

a convent, a school. On what street did my grandfather 
and great-grandfather live, and where did they roam 

in this town of olives and cheese, oxtail stew, tinto 
de Verano? If someday I make my way to Zafra, 

maybe I'll comb through yellowed pages of registry 
books and try to search for their names. Maybe I'll let 

the wind tuck me into an envelope of anonymity, 
and remain there for another hundred years.

Sometimes, when you're turning 
coats or pants pockets inside out
before doing the laundry, you find

change—even small wads of bills
creased and folded from whatever
original errand they were used for

at the store. It's like receiving un-
expected windfall, though you might 
also look around furtively to make sure 

no one thinks you're taking what isn't 
yours. See, you're the type who's never 
had the privilege of being able to play 

with the intricacies of this thing 
called investment. How easy some
people make it sound: Oh you just 

put a little extra money away into your 
portfolio, and next time you look, it's 
doubled or tripled. When your insurance 

agent asks if you know how much your
retirement account must be worth today, 
you stammer. Your grandfather, in the last

years of his life, could at least say he owned 
one carabao, a yard full of roosters and hens,  
some mango and coconut trees, a little 

plot of farmland. You wonder what 
he'd say if asked how much his field 
would yield this year, next year, 

the next. What his hand sowed, 
his hand reaped unless the wind 
and rain took more than their share. 

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.

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

Psilocybe cyanescens


Imagine time as a wave.
I don't mean like some illustrations

in our physics books,  
the universe some kind of net,

a grid with a hollow like a hammock 
when someone is lying in it, one

of many in a gym or a stadium
waiting out a storm. 

No, I want to imagine 
time as a wave made of the tiniest particles  

moving both forward and backward—
A train pulling in and out of stations 

from early morning till night, running on
this idea that something carries us

even if we can't always read the signs 
flickering in hallways.

Crepidotus Cinnabarinus


Against a landscape of decay,
any small particle of color 
stands out like a flame.

Isn't that how you arrived
in my life, an unexpected
burgeoning I did not know

how to account for?
The sharp edges of your collar
smelled of soap and the memory

of their last rinsing. 
Long ago, it was possible
to bathe in rain and not burn.

Bolbitius titans


How could you be exhausted
before it is time to go, 
how could you think 
of leaving now? 

But I know what it's like
to stand in the meadow, 
slicked new, uncertain; then 
lit by the sure burn of noon.

Crows in their dinner 
jackets converge on almost 
leafless trees—look at how much
loose change is on the ground.