Author: Luisa A. Igloria

"Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion's paws,
And make the earth devour her own sweet brood;
Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger's jaws..."
                             ~ Sonnet 19, William Shakespeare



Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger's jaws
if you can, or the equally fierce teeth from geese.

Perishing at sea, you'd be identified by your teeth
if your bones were gathered. An eyetooth jutting out

reminds you: there's a garden of teeth fixed in statues' 
mouths, in Finland. Each toothy grin is a pearled set

of dentures, molded from human mouths. They gape 
and pose and writhe amid the sawtoothed bramble,
 
or circle under trees hung with tooth-shaped pennants. 
Their teeth shine in the evening light. They're slightly

menacing, but also a bit familiar: toothed expressions
you yourself might make, flossing your teeth in front  

of the bathroom mirror. You used to have a rootless tooth, 
chip of bone above your incisors. Gone, ghost of a tooth now. 
 

I forget to write the letter Y 
in correct sequence to spell "psychology"
so I wind up second in the spelling bee. 

Psychology, the study of the mind and human 
behavior, is related to the word for essence 
and spirit. Say I am beautiful, say I am 

worthy, stop saying I'm sorry. Who made you 
feel less than? In the Greek myth, Psyche 
is another of those beautiful mortals 

for whom a goddess devises punishment, 
envious of her beauty. But Cupid wounds 
himself with his own arrow, and falls 

in love with her. The catch? a marriage 
consummated, but never in full light 
of day. When you look upon the face

of your beloved, are you singed with flame
and oil? For what is loveliness but a state 
of being beheld in the gaze of another.

Some things will easily snap 
in half at the slightest pressure—

toothpicks, dry twigs, pasta, 
crackers. Clumped together, they're

harder to break. Researchers who studied 
social actions over the last hundred years 

saw that nonviolent campaigns are twice 
as likely to achieve their goals. 

They conclude, most movements mobilizing 
3.5% of the population succeed. But civil 

disobedience isn't just a matter of statistics. 
When people come together in great numbers, 

it should be because at last, they're fueled 
by conscience and their great desperation 

for change. What is fidelity to the law, when laws 
have been twisted into funnels whose ends lead 

to the mouths and pockets of dictators and their 
puppets? A great wave begins with small 

particles— the woman who refuses to sit 
at the back of the bus, the man who stands

in front of a column of tanks where a massacre
has just taken place in the square. Students

raising pastel umbrellas against clouds 
of pepper spray. Nuns and ordinary housewives 

before a wall of soldiers. Holding the line. 
Pushing flowers into the barrels of guns. 
 

"He that gathered a Hundred Bushels of Acorns or Apples, 
had thereby a Property in them; they were his Goods 
as soon as gathered. He was only to look that he 
used them before they spoiled; else he took more 
than his share, and robb'd others." 
         ~ John Locke, Second Treatise, Chapter V, 46


Everyone claims the right 
         to happiness; the proverbial 
plot of land to develop, on which
         to build a mansion or luxury 
condo. Panoramic water views, marble 
         tile, juliette balconies, concierge;
small but tasteful servants' quarters.
         Everyone claims the right to go
after pleasure, by which is meant generally 
         things of short duration, acquired
mostly through the use of Money, some lasting 
         thing that Men might keep without 
spoiling. The fly wants its morsel of decay; 
         the spider, cunning exercise of its 
silk. After desire is fed, does happiness
         ensue? Does contentment follow? 
In the dark, it's hard to tell what birds sing
         brightest at dawn's approach. The poor 
also have the right to happiness. But
         is the weight of their hunger 
equal to the weight of what, for others, 
         is merely desire? A whale's heart
is the size of a compact car; its mouth
         could easily hold a hundred humans,
though it prefers to feed on troughs of herring  
         and krill. You might say the earth,
too, desires happiness: the happiness of 
         seasons alternating without conflict, 
the happiness of water flooding only to fill. Two 
         by two, the earth's threatened creatures 
filed into a transport vessel. After forty days and
         nights of rain, a dove returned with an olive
leaf in its beak. You too would be happy to set foot
         again on land, to see an end to rain or
fire, or war and the endless lamenting of the dead.  

Algebra, for starters— whose origins go 
       back to ancient Babylon. It's still used for

calculating basic numbers, management and financial 
       data. Democracy itself— origin, Greek dēmokratia:

exercise of government by the people, of the people,
       for the people. My (always eloquent) sister-in-law 

got placed in ESL class when she got here, not even
       having the benefit of assessment. Fluency 

is the ability to read and speak with accuracy, trade 
       jokes and puns, correctly place an Oxford comma.

Kleptocracy is another word borrowed from not-English:
       literally, it means the rule of thieves. Klepto-

mania bends the laws so the poor are punished, while
       nincompoop billionaires snicker. Oval, from

ovum and ovalis, as in the Oval Office— where much
       posturing happens these days. Fellow peons, let's be

quick to praise the beautiful work of our hands, the
       riches loaned by so many beautiful tongues. Let's 
       
sabotage the spiel that madmen know better
       than scientists and scholars. How did we wind up so   

unbelieving, undone yet on the shores of further undoing?    
       Vaccines, conservation, diversity, inclusion. Who's in your  
       
wallet, that's trying to scrub these or make them go away? 
       Xerox your sensitive information, guard it from the

yes-man, pelotero, ball-kisser, duckmäuser—
      Zasa, said the assassin before he shot the mobster. Zasa. Zasa.   

The world is an over-plundered beehive.
But the queens are starting community 
pantries and clinics. Their hair: electric 
with ruin. Their armor: cobbled of plastic 
straws— but they have smooth stingers. 
They don’t die after stinging. Every morning, 
light flakes from the salt cellar that is the sky. 
In Rome, where the Pope is dying, the swallows 
are weaving a shroud. Midmorning scatters 
a darkness of rubies. By noon, darkness 
might lift, if you say it could lift or 
if stones could unroll like curtains. 
Night is made of the bodies of thousands 
of bees. You hear them, even if you don't 
see them. You can be sure, whoever preens 
for the camera is the head of the evil empire. 
Those made complicit bow their heads: timid 
serfs, servus, scrapers. Who can still recite 
history’s indubitable facts about freedom? 
Flags of countries make T-shirts only 
tourists will buy. I would destroy 
spaceships if I could. Tomorrow, the light 
will be obsidian and have the flavor of smoke. 
You think all seers and prophets are either 
blind or extinct. But you can hear the sure 
tapping of their canes in labyrinthine 
hallways. They're closer than you think. Nothing 
is truly random. The universe doesn't make 
mistakes that can't be corrected. 

Adrift, at sea; in water higher than my chin, I'd
      break down because I never learned to swim.
Call me a wimp, but I get itchy looking at caterpillars; 
      don't think it's OK to be tattooed in hives.
Every time I think about dying, I pray: immediate and
      fast, please— not drawn out over months, years even. 
Get me the equivalent of a Concorde, London to New York; or
      half the time for sound to travel through a medium. 
Incomprehensible, but some have been impaled by falling icicles.  
      Jealousy's pinch, preceding fatal complication.
Lightning victim, hair on fire beside a gutted tree.   
      Midway through a trip, falling off a cliff from 
nonsense ideas for selfies. (Stand in front of a train?
      Or have a freak accident, slipping and falling on
pans of upturned knives in an open dishwasher?) 
      Quietly napping on the couch, then have a meteorite  
slam through the roof and hit you. All manner of
      turbulence breaking open in our lives,
undoing our sense of safety. I'd rather not be choked by
      vines or swallowed whole by a reticulated python,
walloped then skewered by a swordfish. I'd rather not be
      xenophobically targeted, nor sucked into the   
yaw of a meat grinder. I'd rather not choke on a mouthful of 
      zabaglione, its custardy froth laced with Marsala.

The first time I saw it was on the stained 
ivory face of my father's Seamaster De Ville— 

like half a miniature burnished circle 
pressing down into a sumo squat— before 

I learned Omega was the last letter of 
the Greek alphabet; the symbol for the end.

It was a hand-me-down, a gift from a wealthy 
cousin who smoked cigars, drove sports cars 

and sent his children to schools in Europe 
or America. In Revelation, God calls himself 

the Alpha and the Omega. This means, he 
who is and was and who is yet to come; 

in other words, infinity or the eternal.  
My father cherished the watch, perhaps  

among the most expensive personal items he'd ever 
come to own. When it stopped or ran fast or slow, 

he took it to the Indian shopkeeper on Session
Road, who knew about such things. I'm not sure,

but it must have been buried with him when 
he died. My father was not infinite or eternal. 

Clear as a timepiece wrapped around my wrist, only 
his memory ticks in my mind with no beginning or end.   

Everyone has something to say. 
While this is true, not everything said
makes it into the news or the archive. 

All night, the noisy congress of frogs; 
the screeching of possums and owls. Who 
conducts their decorum, who launches 

a 24-hour filibuster? Where does it come from, 
the audacity to address history, to say wait 
a minute, listen to me? I'll say I'm tired 

of endlessly rolling the wheels of commerce,
one of millions of hamsters unfairly predicted
to die before tasting their reward. I'm afraid 

to look too closely at pickup trucks on the road 
flying flags with a giant blue X on a field of red. 
Part of you occasionally doesn't know how to feel 

about never having learned to handle a gun. But you
still believe in the kind of hope that wants to be 
done with war. Our parents wore their shoes until

their soles came undone. They studied books, and also 
believed certain things are more durable than weapons 
or words: what we mean when we say I give you my word. 
  

In Artemisia's painting, completed 
          in 1612 when she was only 20, 
Judith beheads the invader-general, 
          assisted by her maid. Sometimes 
I forget that the artist is not the woman
          she portrays in this scene, face
resolute above the blade that's already severed
          the arteries in his neck. Raped at 17, 
she wouldn't recant her accusations at the trial
          of her rapist, though they tortured her 
with thumbscrews. From whichever angle, the subject
          is who gets to tell the truth, or who 
would be believed. The artist has given it to us—
          her truth. It stains everything in 
proximity: the tufted sheets, the hands that took
          on this work; blood-spatter on her breast.