and chips from a child at a kiosk
who asks me "salt and vinegar?" repeatedly
until I understand and draw back the news-
print wrapper for this absolution over my food--
later, in the doll museum, among cases of broken
and found limbs, the knitted sock some nineteenth
century child pulled over sooty boot-sole or dry
bone, the mouth and two eyes she must have marked
with coal to make it easier to clasp the skeletal
figure closer to the bosom, that place we hollow
repeatedly and out of habit, from need or love--I see
your form and shadow and leave always something on my plate,
a slick of water on the windowsill, the smear of yellow
blooming on the hills, wild mustard glimpsed from the angled
roof where I spread a towel and write, read books in stolen
sunshine. Afternoons, walking, I see myself walking
and these years, fallen away: I remember the sting of chilies
stroked across my breasts to wean you from the table
of my body. Loosed like arrows, birds skim the nearly
wintering horizon, preparing to enter its other page, that
parallel world I wonder now
how you inhabit. Here, the paths cut through the woods in
different ways; it's by my doorstep where I feel sometimes
the weight of distance--how hard to plant in letters,
words, the sharp smell of wild onion, the milky tufts
of scattered seeds, the leathered hull of what remains,
what I've tried to keep for you, the grain of wood on
my table--cup, stained bowl, dried pomegranate.
(c)Luisa Igloria 2005
from Trill & Mordent
WordTech Editions, Cincinnati
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