Series: Morning Porch Poems: Winter 2010-11

“Caeditur et tilia ante jugo levis…”
(“A light linden-tree also is felled betimes for the yoke…”)
–Virgil, Georgics I

Inside, all the clocks are blinking,
as though even time could not fully
wake to Monday morning. Should I walk
down the hall and flip each limp clock face,
counting and stretching in succession?
They droop along the mantel’s edge, unstuffed
quesadillas before the hot comal and the salsa picante.
Did you know that if you put ham and cheese
between two flour tortillas, you have instead
what they call a syncronizada? Cut into pie-
shaped wedges they might resemble six
two-hour bites of the clock, which might explain
the reference to time-keeping. Or perhaps
it’s simply from our habits of always
keeping time, watching the clock: no more
than three minutes in the shower, five
to grab a coffee and banana, an hour to get
the kids to school and ourselves to work
if we should be so lucky; an hour for lunch,
a morning for sifting through the flour
and meal of correspondence… Who
has the time anymore to notice the squirrel
tunneling back into the icy snow, the neighbor
walking to his truck a quarter mile away?
Above our heads, the rough-hewn hours
shift into shapes of ploughs. Soon,
along the avenues, leaves will mottle
the linden trees: whole libraries of green
lifting their faces in a chorus to work and time.

—Luisa A. Igloria
02.07.2011

In response to today’s Morning Porch entry.

Last night’s wet snow sticks here
or there, creating alpine trails
beneath the shadow of low walls,
leaving blank spaces where the wind
has drawn its hasty maps and then
like some cartographer unsure
of where the continents might lie,
erased them… In one of these
pockets drawn as wintry latitudes,
bergamot heads confer, a little
brotherhood of toques blanches.

—Luisa A. Igloria
02.08.2011

In response to today’s Morning Porch entry.

Dawn: a thin band of vivid pink. I glance down at my coffee,
and when I look back it’s gone, the sky is gray.

In the crowded station, volatile citrus spray.
I look around but cannot find the orange rind.

New girl at the coffee shop— Between taking orders, her brown
barrette glints like a clipped accent from somewhere else.

Where did the four green slices of starfruit go?
The pineapples on the serving plate are silent.

Last night, in my living room, the poet who wrote of temples
and butterflies slid off his sandals and padded barefoot to the dinner table.

—Luisa A. Igloria
02.09.2011

In response to today’s Morning Porch entry.

UPDATE: Some more poems happening in the comment thread over there.

In the foyer, I’ve installed
a tabletop fountain: four
gradated stone-like bowls
balanced lip to bottom, one
atop the other; water pouring
from a fluted edge down to
the basin, where a tiny engine
drives the stream up and up
again. Miniature homage to
perpetual motion, its murmur
audible until we pull the plug
before we go upstairs to bed
at night. And it will never
ice over, never fill with pond
scum, floating koi or iridescent
insect bodies, its purpose simply
to distill some part of what teems
without cease outdoors, without
relief but only momentary stay—
Today, bitter cold; high wind
at sunrise sends small clouds
in search of sun— perpetual errand,
as leaves keep trying to transmute
the thin, harsh sounds of tearing
before they flutter to the ground.

—Luisa A. Igloria
02 10 2011

In response to today’s Morning Porch entry, via Blackberry. And now Dale Favier has posted a response to Luisa’s poem…

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.

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.

“…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 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)