Author: Luisa A. Igloria

There is so much I did not know.
For every sapling of silver birch, flowering cherry,
elder, chaste tree and mountain ash—

trees of a darker timber: red stinkwood,
yellow wood, Mukui and Meru oak; mahogany,
Flame kurrajong and cigar cassia.

At the kitchen table over tea and cookies,
my friend visiting from Kenya tells me
of local witchcraft and sorcery.

In the coastal towns of Mombasa, Kilifi, Kwale
and Malindi, a number of fishermen will weave
the hair from albinos into their fishing nets,

believing their golden glimmer will bring
a bigger catch. All the children with bodies
the sun has dusted with its chalk

have gone into hiding, all the men
and women. Their legs and arms are
amulets, their fingers and ears, genitals.

Backlit by the sun, a hoarfrosted forest
glitters with captured ice. I read
news stories of miners

who quarter the limbs of the kidnapped
and bury them like magic stones
to make gold grow.

The crow flies over trails, following
a running stitch of red.

—Luisa A. Igloria
02 23 2011

In response to today’s Morning Porch entry.

Dear aggregate of semi-synthetic solids, dear
clear acrylic, polyester, silicone, polyurethane
or halogenated plastics; menagerie of molded
food boxes separated from their lids and falling
to the floor as I root around in the kitchen
cabinets— I’m certain my ancestors could not
have had the same early morning dilemmas
as I do: where to stash that bit of leftover
scrambled egg or steel-cut oatmeal, which
cute snack holder will keep the grade-
schooler’s cut-up kiwi and blueberries
from spilling and turning the bottom of her
book bag into a mulch of paper and fruit.
Outside, chipmunks traverse a fresh cement of
wintry mix, their tails italic with urgency.
A bento box holds carrot flower cups and
shiso leaves against neat rows of jeweled rice.
Here, shelves of ice-coated branches rattle
in the wind; unrolled, how far east would their
cellophane sheets reach? On highland trails
in my childhood home, woodsmen make
their way to town with provisions in leaf-
lined baskets: boiled shoots and purple yams,
salads of curly fern; dried venison and quail
fermented with smoke, salted with dew.

—Luisa A. Igloria
02 21 2011

In response to today’s Morning Porch entry.

If I were a brook I would unwind
like a spool in the sun, shake my green
maracas with sequined stones.

If I were a beet in the soil I’d pulse
like a heart, pull myself out
of my muddy shroud.

If I were a bowl of new
steamed rice I’d curl fringes of steam
and float a grateful face above it.

All over the newly bare field, melting
voices— whispering, murmuring, sighing
and gurgling a hundred ways at once.

—Luisa A. Igloria
02 18 2011

In response to today’s Morning Porch entry.

Dear ruefulness, dear regret, I’ve rounded
the bend and here you are again in the clearing,
each tree planted like a taper in a circle
of melted ground. How deep are your roots,
really? The sky’s chipped at the rim like an old
piece of crockery— its white band milky,
its saucer mismatched. Where’s the calico
napkin appliqued with cats? I’ve forgotten
if I’ve set the table for dinner or for tea.
Perhaps it’s not too late to take a long
vacation by the sea. A fleet of sandpipers
and gulls holds the rocks at siege. The water
asks over and over, What is the heart?
You know it makes a sound louder
than any internal combustion engine.
Here I am waiting for the skin of leaves
to split open; waiting for lightning
to marble in the marrow.

—Luisa A. Igloria
02 17 2011

In response to today’s Morning Porch entry (and to another response-poem, by Dale Favier)

“…And everich of hem did his besy cure
Benygnely to chese or for to take,
By hir acord, his formel or his make.”
—Geoffrey Chaucer, “Parlement of Foules” (369-371)

In Cosmedin, Rome— in the Chiesa di Santa Maria,
a flower-wreathed skull sits preserved in a shrine
more ornate than any foil-covered box of candy—
that’s Saint Valentine himself, as the hand-lettered
strip of bandage across his brow proclaims.
“Protector of love,” martyr of Terni, he got
couples hitched at a time when (would you believe)
it was illegal to marry. The stories say he was “beaten
with clubs and stoned; and when that failed to kill him,
he was beheaded” outside the Porta del Popolo.
Poor Val, his aquiline nose may even have been broken.
But he seems to have kept most of his teeth, which rest
(some gaps between, though they say that can be sexy)
just inside the edge of the reliquary frame. His gold box
resembles a 1930’s RCA TV, or the consoles in the Dr. Who
episode where an alien disguised as a woman is trying
to take over the world. Even here, the theme is love
and monsters; or love and sex, lust, appetite, desire–
everything you want but can’t actually have, so naturally
you want it even more. On the eve of the festival
of Lupercalia, young Roman boys and girls wrote
their names on slips of paper and put them into jars;
then they held a grand old raffle to find out who
they’d walk hand in hand with the next day, share
a honeyed sweetmeat with, maybe spoon a little,
golden in the olive grove. Did the trees make noise
under the cloudless sky, touching in ways we
rarely do? Everyone loves a little sugar every
now and then; why not them too? Cushioned
in red and gold, the saint would understand
the meanings of excess: candygrams and chalky
conversation hearts (“Sweet Dreams”, “URDGR8ST”,
“Be Mine”, “Big Hugs”), little mounds of milk
chocolate goopy in their maraschino centers,
cardboard boxes lettered with their swirly
tic-tac-toe of X’s and O’s; lacy thong, slinky
sarong, velvet codpiece. Welt of pepper and spice,
ascetic stripe of sea-salt on the hungry tongue.

—Luisa A. Igloria
02 14 2011

In response to today’s Morning Porch entry.

Dear arrhythmia, dear perennially
side-stepping, asynchronous and rapid
tachycardia, I’ve learned not so much
to fancy up my footwork than to fake
a passable improv: not even time
to do my nails, check my hair or lines
for an audition call— but here we are
again in the molasses of a telenovela,
gliding from moments of near hysteria
then shimmying to the Copacobana
as doors revolve like windmills
in the background… And it’s true, then,
what they say about you: how you break
knees, break hearts, and then ask
Will you dance? Sometimes I want to stop,
just be the wallflower, enjoy the view— be
the one the waiters come and tend to,
their silver trays bobbing with fancy,
pileated tufts of napkins. Oh but I’ve never
known the ease of a downier partner:
only you dealing and dealing it out;
sometimes, more than I can muster.

—Luisa A. Igloria
02 13 2011

In response to today’s Morning Porch entry.

Nearly noon, but only a few
hours since I washed my face
upon rising. The day needs
to bloom harder, needs more
roundness— The swell of plucked
bandurria strings, the glisten
of corn chaff flying, soft
stripes of light dipped in saffron
wash; this thin milk passing for air
bursting instead with pollen,
as if some goddess had carelessly
flicked the dust off her sandals,
as if it were August, and all
she wants is the green-gold
mango hanging from the tree.

—Luisa A. Igloria
02 11 2011

In response to today’s Morning Porch entry.