Author: Luisa A. Igloria

The mascot of my school is a lion; a monarch,
to be exact. Meaning king, the creature who sits
atop the food chain in the wild. Except its statue 
on the quad has no cojones; just a rough undersurface 
of concrete. Is this departure from anatomical 
correctness intentional? A conservatism made
sure the mermaid mascots around this port 
city are flat: flat-hipped, flat-chested, no tit-
illation of boobs beneath painted bandeaus. 
It's not clear when balls was first used  
to mean both the possession and lack of bravery 
or nerve. Decades ago, my ex pushed my father 
against the wall and swore lukdit mo to his face, 
meaning dickhead. We were living with my parents 
and he was angry at not being the man of the house. 
I didn't have the nerve to speak up against this
injustice. Perhaps I hadn't grown my own balls yet.
But really, I had not yet come to understand 
how strength, like in the Rider tarot, can be 
a woman subduing the fearsome beast so it lets her 
pat its head and scratch its chin, while the symbol 
for infinity whirls gently above their heads.  

"...late 14c., prouynen, proinen, of a bird, "to trim 
the feathers with the beak;" of a person, "to dress 
or groom oneself carefully," from an extended or 
transferred sense of Old French proignier, 
poroindre "cut back (vines), prune" — etymonline.com


They tell Mark, we have no tall ladder, 
no tools to dismember the limbs of the tree: 
this annual pruning before spring's promise 
of regreening, so summer will be full of fruit. 

They also show him three planks on the deck's 
back steps— ends rotted through, middles soft— 
they need replacing. Along another length, 
dark streaks which call for power washing. 

He will cut, he will replace, he will fix
what needs fixing without fanfare; an hour
here and there in the weeks ahead, after 
his day working at his construction 

sites. They will pay him the honest cost 
of his labor by the hour, plus materials. 
The arrangement suits all of them. They come 
from people with histories of migrant labor—

people who've bent to furrows in the soil 
for ten cents a day and climbed the roofs 
of orchards when everyone else declined; 
people who've always struggled 

to make do with less. But today, as he
sits on the bottom step, he pauses; pulls out
his phone and tells them he's just returned 
from the islands, where he had to claim 

the body of his son from the morgue; 
arrange cremation, and then for the ashes 
to be sent to him. Only twenty, felled
by bullets after his own family 

kicked him out into the streets.
The photo he shows them leaves 
no doubt this child grew from 
the tree that is his father. 

Tall and willowy of build, angular 
jaw, smooth skin; so young. Eyes 
already shadowed by knowledge of what 
the world exacts by way of maintenance.   

Sometimes I am a sieve; I sift the day 
       into smaller pieces that can fall 
more softly onto the clay. At times 
       I am a raucous cawing, staking 
territory in the trees. Today I am an ivory 
       handkerchief edged in lace, beautiful 
heirloom stained with tears. Hand wash,
       cold water only; lightly iron.

"The Great Wave off Kanagawa," Hokusai, 1831;
on a dishcloth from Maruyama Fiber Industry, Japan


How slender the boats beneath the cresting
     waves; how bent over the oars the people
in them must be. What they do is more
     necessity than recklessness— bring in 
the daily catch, plow a path through ebb 
     and flow; avoid the treachery of rocks 
and undertow. Wave upon wave upon wave  
     breaks against the mountain's solemn  
shape. Where do they get the courage to say 
     goodbye, when no one knows if evening 
brings them back unscathed? I think of tiny
     lantern lights in windows on the shore;
and above, dark sapphire sweep gathering  
     the spill and swirl of fractured light.  

 
~ with thanks to Nini Teves Lapuz

She was the type of woman who'd slip 
    an entire block of butter into a pot 
of spaghetti sauce. She was the type 
    who laughingly said, as you ate forkful 
after forkful: You should think of marrying 
    an Italian when you grow up. She would say,
with neither hint of irony nor malice, 
    That's where, if you're a beautiful woman, 
they'll pinch your behind. She never forgot
    to put blush where it would most emphasize
her high cheekbones, never forgot scoop
    necklines best showed off her Audrey 
Hepburn neck, her chiseled clavicle.  
    Though you had the same shoe size, 
you could never fit your wide, flat feet 
    into her pointy-toe kitten heels. Your calves,
shapely as yams; but your fingers, not shying  
    away from her lessons— scaling and gutting  
fish, severing the joints and vertebra of fowl. 

We like sausage and maple syrup
so we had pancakes for supper 
yesterday, which was Shrove 

Tuesday. I didn't have 
a miniature plaster figure
of a baby to bury

in a pan of king cake, 
but I said why not, let's 
fry up some eggs too, 

though eggs (the kind that come 
a dozen to a tray) are almost 
like the new caviar. This 

is our life these days— 
there seems no other choice
but live it, until the invisible 

pendulum swings the other way. 
The famous poet who used to be 
a banker wrote, Teach us to care 

and not to care Teach us to sit 
still. Here too, an old man
drivels beyond repair. 

Lies and spite among 
the roses. Cruelties 
in the very sand.

How many times did we hear
the words gold and golden
on the radio?  

So we spread the butter
on the pancakes, spear
the little fingers 

of meat. The dust is upon us,
but we will lick the sweetness
until our tongues grow numb.

"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.