2/23/2011

Backlit by the sun, a hoarfrosted forest with ice still glittering underneath. I gape and run for my camera, a tourist on my own porch.

9 Comments


  1. Man this is all too familiar with me. I’m so pathetic I usually take my camera with me now whenever I go outside.


    1. I’m so pathetic I often forget my camera and live to regret it!


  2. Ellipsis

    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


  3. Pathetic, there is so little I know.
    I sort of fart death’s breath
    in the oozing silence in the outhouse,
    the cupola of the copse,
    with Jack Daniels & petit 4’s
    where the stillness wilts
    over the hoarfrost in the hole.
    All alone, I unleaf myself.


  4. I repeat, there is so little I know.
    I wanted the word CUPOLA,
    and in my haste, I put in copula.
    Mea culpa.


    1. Corrected.

      (Y’all can always just email me with correction requests, you know. I did look into installing a plugin that would let commenters edit their own comments, but couldn’t find one I liked. I’ll keep studying the situation, but in the meantime, it’s no trouble for me to edit comments myself on request.)


      1. Ah, thanks Dave! You’re a hell of a good (and patient) Editor.



  5. A LESSON ON SEPARATION

    Backlit by the sun, a hoarfrosted forest
    glitters with ice caught underneath.
    But the glow ends where stubbs tear
    through the sheets like toes sticking
    out of pellmell blankets. Pity.

    The sylvan frost could have been magical
    like intertwined limbs insinuating joie du nuit
    beneath those sleep-stained sheets.
    But nothing remains crystal or pure as sunlight
    cutting through gnarled and naked branches.

    There will be long shadows on the pygmy tundra
    while the winter solstice overstays its welcome.
    There will be no glitter on the hoarfrosted forest
    when icy undertow surfaces to drown the valley.
    I would have left quietly like the absconding snow.

    —Albert B. Casuga
    Mississauga, 02-23-11

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