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  1. You probably know the name for that band of pink (and blue) but it’s so lovely I’ll leave it anyway for those who might not – the Belt of Venus.

    I captured one with the perigee moon last year from my balcony – there are far more stunning photos if you do a google image search for Belt of Venus. It occurs at both sunrise and sunset, and the blue near the horizon is the earth’s shadow.


    1. I didn’t know that. Very good to know! This band may or may not qualify, though — it was the kind that occurs because there’s a thinnner layer in the clouds near the horizon.


  2. Ephemera

    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


        1. Oh, I don’t doubt that he did. I just question his wisdom. “To everything there is a season.”



  4. Jessie’s wearing a knit belt,
    a band of vivid pink.

    She whistles the beginning of something
    again and again.

    I glance down at my coffee.
    When I look back up

    she’s pulled on a gray sweater
    and gone to look at the sky.


  5. Things That Make Me Smile
    In Two Ways At Once

    Flounced ruffles
    Swagger-me boots
    Lost and found capers
    A long drink
    of something mint
    Dimpled time
    A lie-in
    Bright circlet
    inside a small hour
    Homing like
    the hummingbird
    That little dish
    of nectar partly
    hidden in
    the leaves–

    02 09 2011


  6. Jessie’s wearing boots of mint. She whistles the hummingbird out of the leaves in another story, one without curved bakery cases and metal tubes that hiss into small cups. In this dimpled time, nectar drips from gold cages, & a sad lawyer feeds himself to a lie-in. She hums & taps her toe. She homes in.


  7. Bedtime Story

    But what if she hasn’t learned how to whistle? Will the hummingbird come out of hiding, will it part the leaves for a pucker, for a yodel, or if she crooned? Will it flutter its wings more rapidly than eyelashes? Summer is a long way away. Summer is stripes of vermilion, the plumage of birds of paradise. She looks out where the wind has started sifting fine snow again. The birdbath is an upturned bundt pan ringed by tiny marzipan leaves. Knock on its sides and the echo circles the garden. When it’s cold, we want to suck everything down to the marrow, forgetting the fire in the feathers, the smolder in the song. The sad lawyer in the canopy bed stops alternately tossing in the sheets and sitting up to smooth them. She regales him with stories, pretending she is Sheherazade: short of the endings, before daylight, she braids their ends and coils them flat as coins. Laughing, she tells him he must find them himself. She hides them underneath the mattress, then wishes she were a florin, a ducat, a coronet dollar piece.

    02 09 2011


  8. That ache in the lungs
    on a very cold dawn—
    I almost enjoy it.
    The blue near the horizon
    is the earth’s own shadow.

    Half-in, half-out,
    a leaf flaps
    from the frozen birdbath.
    I pluck an unsightly hair
    from the bridge of my nose.

    In the post office window,
    the clerk & I compared
    ten dollar bills.
    1001 spam emails
    vanish with one click.


  9. That ache in the lungs
    on a very cold dawn,
    that blue near the horizon–

    Across the counterpane
    I’ve chased my shadow
    half-in, half-out of sleep–

    I fill the chamber with ink
    and the nib presses
    against creamy paper–

    Ink color named after a battle,
    cornfields bordering
    Antietam creek–

    That ache in the wake
    of language, words like pennants
    marking what can’t ever be held–

    As in a roomful of people
    where I find I’m still always
    speaking to you–

    02 10 2011


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