TRAVELS (and more) WITH CECILIA BRAINARD: GUEST BLOGGER - Luisa A. Igloria's POEMS ON HAIYAN

GUEST BLOGGER

POEMS ON HAIYAN
by Luisa A. Igloria

Ghazal for the Dead: In Tacloban

Processed but not identified: scattered by wind,

splintered, battered where the flood left them in Tacloban.

The dark is a cave is the mouth of God or the unfathomable—

O for sleep without such helpless waking in Tacloban.

How many baubles and stolen billions will bring lives back? Ask

the former First Lady, who attended Holy Infant Academy in Tacloban.

The mayor was lashed to a coconut tree. The mayor was the coconut in the tree.

The tree was in a ballroom. This is not about the oral tradition in Tacloban.

In the midst of calamity, would you have time to worry about your shoes?

Through the waters, a typhoon victim bore a general on his back in Tacloban.

Why were the military first on the scene? Why did it take so long for relief

to arrive? The dead are past blame, the dead are past games in Tacloban.

The actors and actresses turned politicians flash smiles at the camera

while the living vomit with grief, hunger, dysentery, in Tacloban.

~~~

Common Lot

Shoes for the shoeless, clothes for the naked; sand for the floor, cloud for tarp. Sheathed in black latex, elbow to elbow, thigh to thigh. No room to swerve, no more emergency lanes. Turn off your blinkers, take down the signs. Say little, or say much: all of it will be appropriate. (Just not the politician’s face on stickers, adorning grocery bags.) Neat rows, stacked, like in a capsule hotel. But there are no room numbers, no keys; no luggage to stash behind the welcome counter, no one to answer to the dinner bell.

~~~

Disintegrate

(a partly found poem)

“The death toll could still climb higher, with an additional 1,000 cadaver bags sent to provinces, the disaster council announced as search-and-rescue operations continued in Tacloban City.” ~ from a news report on the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines

Different cells die at different rates.

Hair and nails continue to grow a little

while, but nature is more efficient.

In the air decomposition is twice as fast

as when the body is under water, four times

more than underground. Clostridia

and coliforms, enzymes; greens and blues

that blister. Methane and mercaptans,

sulfides. More rapid in the tropics,

where the sun brings everything up

to a melon boil. Bluebottle flies,

carrion flies, ants and beetles

and maggots and wasps. Nails and teeth

detach, their ivory falling, letter

after letter that will never

again be sent. After weeks, a month,

a year, a decade: rags and bones,

motes indistinguishable

from dust. Finally

everything the body held,

burst open like a secret.

AUTHOR'S BIO: Luisa A. Igloria, Professor of Creative Writing and English, and Director of the MFA Creative Writing Program at Old Dominion University. She is the author of Night Willow (Prose Poems), forthcoming from Phoenicia Publishing (Montreal, Canada: spring 2014); The Saints of Streets (University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2013), Juan Luna’s Revolver (2009 Ernest Sandeen Prize, university of Notre Dame Press); Trill & Mordent (WordTech Editions, 2005), and 8 other books. Since November 20, 2010, she has been writing (at least) a poem a day, archived at Dave Bonta’s Via Negativa site.
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Here are more links to Luisa A. Igloria's works

Luisa A. Igloria - Seven Poems
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Here are Videopoems made on some of Luisa A. Igloria's Poems from her book, The Saint of Streets

"Reprieve" by Luisa A. Igloria on YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5N5tp4gtAw

"Mortal Ghazal poem from Luisa A. Igloria's The Saints of Streets

"Mortal Ghazal" poem from Luisa A. Igloria's The Saints of Streets

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Guest Blogger, Jon Pineda, poem "Matamis"

Guest Blogger, Lysley Tenorio, "The View from Culion

Guest Blogger, Julia Stein, "The Woman Disappears Bit by Bit" - poem re Iraq War