you have not swung so far yet under
the heavy sky: even the trees float,
viridian, speckled; seemingly un-
anchored, in my field of vision.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Ark
Who’s to say what you can believe or not? For every animal of affection that walks into your ark, its snarling twin pulls at the chains, trembles the floorboards. You feed them both, you give the same milk and the same bone wrapped in meat, hunks of bread to sop up the oil and broth. In the dark, it’s hard to tell one from the other. Their eyes have the same marble sheen, obsidian or clear grey flecked with green. One will tolerate the length of the journey. The other will pace and pace, howl at the moon, the rain, the sun, its shadow. You know it could tear you to pieces if you gave it more than a chance. But you sing to both, you run your hands through their sorrowful pelt: this one thing they let you do without complaint, knowing that you too must live in your skin.
In response to cold mountain (51).
Perigee
“…Because you will so easily disappear,
I think of you as infinitely near.”
~ Farnoosh Fathi
They threw themselves at porch lights: hundreds of winged bodies swarming each lit window screen. You’d think the frame was covered with cellophane.
Underneath, we lay plastic basins filled with water: rippled mirrors where sheer wings caught, oceans where they drowned.
We looked for her at every bus station in town, my father asking each conductor if he had seen a woman with bobbed hair, narrow waist sheathed in an A-line dress.
Hours later, despondent, we returned home. My father paid the cab driver without saying a word. What did they fight about, I wondered. Inside, the laundrywoman gestured toward the linen closet: Don’t say I told; your mother has been hiding there.
Dense cover of fog tonight. We cannot see the moon as it swings lower toward us. It would have raised its face like a giant taiko drum above the horizon.
Tomorrow it will be close, but not this close. The night is busy with activity. When was the last time you were held or kissed? We don’t see the insects excavating holes in trees, in the soil around our feet.
He saw her not too long ago in the lobby of a public space. Strains of music poured through some open door. She was with some other people he knew but didn’t really know.
He thought she hesitated, but she came up to him and pressed his hand while saying something ordinary: How are you? Are you enjoying the evening?
There was a portrait in the lobby, a reproduction: a woman with a thorn necklace and a hummingbird for a pendant. Even in the copy, her recognition of emphatic solitude is apparent. How she gazes outward at the world without rancor, with sadness; but always, with passion.
In response to The Morning Porch and Sparrow.
“Leaving no one and nothing behind. The greater love.”
I haven’t stopped trying, but I don’t know if I could. Spurts of intention alternate with bouts of helplessness. And so I too manage with the laundry, the flotsam left in the wake of daily tidal pools, hurricanes, the exhausting dance of whirlwinds. This is a book of commonplace hours. No one is a saint, or everyone is a saint: the homeless man sprawled on a park bench, drab duffel bag for a pillow; the teenage boys laughing on the street corner, the glow from cigarettes in cupped hands haloing their faces like in a fresco. I too remind myself of the work I need to finish. I don’t believe it was only forty days in the desert. Night comes on, unfurling its stole of saffrons and purples. Is that the order to which we must ascend? Coming in, unlatching the gate, sometimes it takes so little to send the arrow flying: tonight, for instance— one tiny bud of wild garlic, precarious on its stalk.
In response to cold mountain (48) (49).
Paradiso
That scene in your favorite movie, the one where the boy has ditched his one errand and escaped through the side door into the cinema: of course he has forgotten the milk, the bread, the pullet, the eggs— the rest of the market list. The everyday sun rolls itself uphill as always, through the humid air. Let the carpenter drive nails into the wood, the baker snatch the loaves from the fire, the seamstress mend the panels that have come undone. When he slips back into the street, it’s dusk; the leaves look twice as big for their shadows— dark as olives, pits hard as hearts that have not leached their bitterness. And his mother, sails billowing like a galleon, has cuffed him on the ear: this is how they head home, one tugging, one pulling, the neighbors shaking their heads or laughing along the way. The plaza retracts to the size of a postage stamp: someday this will all have a different flavor, linger on the mouth like a memory of forbidden kisses.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
La Caminata
Accordion ache, pouring from the speakers. What is it with the catch and dip, the bite, the breathless phrasing of air-not-air? Closeness of knees that dapple till dawn, that navigate the space described by feet in figure eights— this way I’m willing to be led, alternately blinded by light and shade: close enough to touch-not-touch, your hand on the small of my back; levering the notes that pitch and thrum, backlit and green.
—Luisa A. Igloria
05 02 2012
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch and small stone (84).
Rotary
Whirl, I say to the wind, to the red brick wall, to the cobbled street, to nothing and no one in particular. This is the thread I’ll tie around my wrist today. Curlicue of an ear, shape of an open palm waiting to cup the notes that blow from a tuba’s lip, that croon from a fruit’s half-eaten skin. My child stirs kedgeree with a fork, fluffing the yellow rice, tapping the sides of the bowl. If only it were as easy to festoon the days with curry, with bits of egg and smoky fish. I’d dangle iridescent earrings to waylay dreams. Across the world, a friend gets up to take another shower. It’s a sweltering night in summer: an ice cube has a half-life of fizzle. Meanwhile, here, the ground is glazed with water. The downpour past, the beaches are clean as swept porches. Here come the waves, scrolling their bluegreen pages. The carriage rolls back at each interval: return, return, return.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Flush
Love is the opening of the heart, the welcoming of your beloved.
Birdling, tiny thing that bumps head-on, unwittingly, into the glass— you are not yet the announcing angel. Like you I’ve been distracted by the flicker on surfaces, yellow-green, light-dusted, feathery as eyelashes. What do you see as you stop to take a breath, as you teeter, then center, weight full on the ledge? Indentations in the stucco: imperfect, unlevel— clumsy as a new lover’s caress, yet punctuated with ardor. I lie beneath the sill, hair in disarray, attempting repose. It is either the moment before or the moment after. When you find your bearings and flit away, your shadow mimics the pulse fluttering at my throat: momentary touch, what visited there last.
—Luisa A. Igloria
04 30 2012
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch and new year’s resolutions: witness.
Precaution
It’s that paper-thin hour just after rain, and the windows are open, and fragments of sky are visible behind a haze of leaves. One by one the lights come on in houses down the way. The odors of supper fill the air: charred meat, boiled potatoes, onions. The smell of wilted greens does not carry clean, unlike the tang of mint from the garden, the neighbor’s jasmine. A voice on the radio talks of this time last year, the soldiers raiding the fugitive’s safe house, the helicopter letting them down in the cabbage patch. The burial at sea with no witnesses. And now the neighbor is working on his back gate, taking advantage of the good hour or so of remaining light. Lately, he’s taken to smoking Cuban cigars; the sweet, leaf-smoky note adds itself to what’s gathered: an odd bouquet. He’s put in a small solar panel attached to a motion-sensor light. The frame of white plastic tilts up among the ivy. I watch as he tests it and it flickers on, a warning flare of yellow.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
A single falling note above
this chorus of blossoming: some unseen bird,
calling the echo that returns, so each
joy’s doubled, brings back its twin—
Whatever name you might give it, whatever
undertone it rings, each bright ripple
shades toward deepening. I used to wonder
what it might feel like, pushed closer
toward the front of the line— place
of dubious honor: the one called on
by whatever might demand a reckoning.
My hair not all completely grey, my hems
not fully rent or frayed; my nerves, my hands
not all quite wrung. I know the days we file
away will not return; this light that pulses
like music in a cage, go under the velvet hood.
The silver bar inside will swing as gently
even then: its occupant, slight of muscle,
heart large as a sea, will dream of trinkets
thrown into the depths. O, nothing’s ever lost,
only unseen, those times the light goes out.
—Luisa A. Igloria
04 28 2012
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch and Cold mountain (44, 45, 46, 47).