2 Comments


  1. Monday Landscape, with Clocks Borrowed from Dali

    “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


Comments are closed.