Author: Luisa A. Igloria

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.

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).

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.

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.

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).

and wind cleared the tops of trees, and passed;

the sun’s brave tribute dropped beyond the ridge.
On TV, the British laureate talked about the role

of poetry: how solitary events might meet the public
ones, disrupting the quiet of the page. The other

poet spoke of growing up in a town built from
the clanging of car parts, machinery— by the hands

of working men; and of his father’s love of Russian
novels, the ones filled with orchards and train

stations, characters fraught with the drama of too
much thinking and drink; love, desire, both, all

of the above. What is the essence of poetry?
asked the TV host. I didn’t catch their answers,

from trying to remember the scenes that led
the woman in the direction of the approaching

train, from trying to think of what the season
might have been; whether yellow leaves were

pasted to damp ground, or if she wore a coat
with a collar, because the morning was cold.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

One summer we hiked to my grandfather’s farm. Ninety degrees in the shade, sandaled
feet stumbling in carabao dung. I did my best to look as if I knew how to live.

Five days a week I used to teach in the capital, six hours from home. Riding the midnight
bus, I saw families huddled in sleep by the underpass; how was this a way to live?

Every now and then I’ll remember something with a start, like fruit I had in childhood.
Bell-shaped macopa: red skin, cool, spongy hearts. Their taste, hard to re-live.

A cross between indigo and purple— this is the star apple’s signature. A five-
fingered flower, pulp thick and sweet, encasing the seed that might live.

The waiter brings my usual bowl of noodles in clear broth, a pair of battered shrimp.
For the umpteenth time I tell him: soup spoon, not ladle— the mouth’s hinges would give!

I love the way light moves across surfaces: the floor beneath the bay becoming
honey, water rippling itself and what holds it in. A window’s essential, to live.

In a darkened room I stretch out and practice: slow down my breathing, arrange arms
straight by my sides. Imagine how cells quit movement, the compulsion to live.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.