Author: Luisa A. Igloria

“A candle-flame is mystery domesticated, the profound made accessible.”

The attitude of bodies in sleep, tender and unguarded, sometimes
makes me want to weep. A fist uncurled: almost a prayer.

Ancient epics begin with invocation— The solitary voice, or one joined by a chorus,
calls others to bear witness to the human scene. Thus histories become prayer.

Most days I have no time to sit in quiet contemplation. Ora et labora,
the monastics say: that motto scrolled in gold leaf, itself a prayer.

In Greece, the orologion referred to various instruments by which
the ancients measured time. Night and day, the ticking hands of prayer.

The Horae are the Hours, goddesses of time and the seasons. They stand around
the throne of Zeus waiting to open or shut the gates of heaven: faithful as prayer.

In other legends, they harness the chariots of the Sun before it speeds
on its way; and take the halter from chafed mouths at end of day.

And every morning the wheel begins again: each bead dividing mystery
and work into their portions— barely a pause between one and the next prayer.

For our First Communion, we made white veils with scalloped edges from tulle,
while catechism teachers told us to listen for an inner voice in prayer.

I’ve listened hard, I’ve turned my ear as faithfully as my hands moving to pick up
the yoke. And still I flicker, and still my life is small and fitful as a votive’s prayer.

Or it feels my life’s a candle burning at both ends: fingers try to tamp the flame,
but the wick’s course is anchored at the core. At least let me burn slower, I pray.

They are not always gentle, those Hours that Janus praised. A breeze could fan a small
flare into conflagration— And fire rages with its own fierce intention, like prayer.

In response to cold mountain (53).

What do I wish? For now, enough time
to see the long grass bending under day-
long rain and decide it is time to go

into the kitchen where I can knead
something with my hands: flour and some
water; salt, oil, a handful of rosemary—

Enough time put the kettle on to boil,
to plant one dried tooth of anise
in the stew to help me remember

to dream; to lay one extra plate
for the one who isn’t here.
And even then night falls,

day slips away, restless as this
body craving respite: languid
thoughts, elusive sleep.

In response to Morning Porch and small stone (91).

“Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air –
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings…?” ~ “The Swan,” Mary Oliver

Most days I don’t know rightly what I see, or what I feel. Sometimes the river lightens, sometimes it turns its back and climbs back into its dark bed. Whatever floats on its surface then is heavy as a portent though it makes no sound. There is just breathing, the slightest pulse made by flowers and leaves, brown twigs that have fallen on its skin and are whisked away. But in my class tonight the students are watching a film about the Chilean writer. And when they come to the part where he speaks to the postman of the miner who comes up from underground and commands the poet to write of them, write of their struggle— soot flocked on his face like a mask— I think I sense more than see the slightest ripple, an adjustment of some of the bodies pressed to the seats. What will it take, what rearrangement of atoms in the air? A passing thunderstorm pelts at the windows. And afterward someone gets up to crack the window open, to release the humidity in the room. The evening is so cool, so layered with sound and a thumbnail of fragrance from magnolia trees in bloom outside the building. If you spoke to me of wings I would tilt my head, scan the sky from habit. This is not the wonder, but that it takes courage to remind of how those lifting, beating arms are yoked to a machine, how they are stitched, flag-like, to an architecture of overlapping bones: complex shell encasing the heart, cobbled of honey and wax, of twine and feathers.

In that other world, it’s the first thing that signals dawn before it’s even dawn:
shrill piercing cries of Tik-tilaooook! in the dark, a chorus of caged roosters.

I always wondered why the middleman who calls the bets at cockfights is called the Kristo—
and how sharp the flashing spurs, how vivid the blood-jet feathers of some roosters.

Our first grade teacher lectured us on piety, simplicity, and appetite— admonishing:
You’re not going to be those kinds of kids who demand, every day, a dish of chicken.

My father’s favorite dish was a clear broth with ginger and malunggay or sili leaves;
bobbing in the soup, perfectly boiled, salted, and peppered pieces of chicken.

My husband and one of my daughters were born in the Year of the Dragon; one daughter was born
in the Year of the Snake, another in the Year of the Pig. I am an Ox. My eldest is the Rooster.

Once I went to a sleepy town far south, where writers sat along the seawall all summer. A witch-
island was visible in the distance. Hot off sidewalk grills, we ate skewered parts of chicken.

The sauces drip from your fingers, down your palms. There is a different kind of joy in eating with
your hands. Give me a little salt with my rice, or shrimp sauce. Sometimes it’s better than chicken.

In the far north, past my own hometown, the locals have a dish called pinikpikan. I can’t tell you
more than that it involves the slow, induced coagulation of blood beneath the skin. And a chicken.

One day I wanted to tell you my biggest secret. You stood in the hallway, smiling. There was
no one else around: the perfect opportunity. But my nerves were snarled copper— I was too chicken.

“For the wind blows wherever it pleases… You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going.” (John 3:8)

1. The photographs she took reminded her with a start: there was a house below the gate to the army base. There was a discotheque in the basement, back in the day when the word was a kind of novelty.

2. One day, they took a walk to the co-op store to buy bread; someone had written on the chalkboard that skinned rabbits were available. On the way back, she picked dry pine needles from the road. She did not ask what was in the dinner stew.

3. When the wind blows sometimes, it brings the insides to the surface— carries the stench of open sewers. You take a breath, you clench, unclench.

4. Our neighbor’s daughter thrilled to see the chef toss cleavers, eggs, whole shrimp at the hibachi grill. Metal struck against metal and the heated surfaces of the stove. All show, all show. No real danger in the onion ring volcano, lit to miniature flared explosions.

5. The brass bell swings: small rings of sound under the dogwood.

6. She misses nights sleeping under white mosquito netting, the edges tucked around the mattress; the smell of starched, woven cotton.

7. Dreams and portents: a hand coming out of the dark, searching for another to clasp.

8. Warmer nights now, warmer mornings. Humidity you can smell, rising around the flagstones.

In response to small stone (87).

Sometimes when someone speaks, another takes up the sentence.

It is the same, though not so obvious, when one is reading: the words on the page might be a cipher, or they might slip into a fissure and wake something under the skin.

And yet I know that I have also said: I do not speak for anyone else but myself.

Hands grown old, brushing against verbena and mint for even a sliver of passing fragrance. Late spring chill like a tongue on the skin.

There is a Japanese dessert made of kanten and azuki bean paste: it is meant to evoke winter’s snow and ice melting, the earth becoming soft and sweet again.

Like beaten gold, scales flashing in the resinous waters.

The years might polish anguish to such a sheen.

What I will want to take with me: rich swirl and eddy, the sky’s impartial crease.

Everything’s mostly borrowed, but give me something to tell me it was not all for naught.

In response to small stone (90).

Not a fugitive, not a mole that has burrowed away from the light, into the soil— no wraith in a cave, I’ve chosen to live above ground. What are my truths? Don’t look for platitudes hanging cheap as baubles on any shrub. I’ve had to strike out farther, deeper; carve paths not favorable to the flesh of my hands. What was it for? Only to live a life under the aegis of other terms. No wealth to report, only weary. Neither bluster nor bravura: I still flinch like never before. Perhaps you would have done differently? perhaps you would have obeyed? perhaps you would have thought it unnecessary to keep in sight, that porthole of changing light? Over and over, I’ve tried to outline: so many mouths that murmur in the dark, so many things to disclose. Hands groping little girls’ breasts. Fathers who’ve abandoned their daughters. The real calculus isn’t even configured; and there are also names for these. Who is it you were looking for, again?

In response to cold mountain (54).