Written by Luisa A. Igloria on Nov 16, 2022 10:34 pm
Can you imagine others who'll come
after you (if it were possible, meaning,
if the world you know wouldn't have
ended yet), sorting through photos
on thumb drives or in the Cloud, piecing
together parts of stories they heard second-
or third-hand? Perhaps the one you took outside
your first apartment, standing in front of your first
car (a blue compact sedan) with the key in one hand
and the loan agreement in the other, wondering
if you should've smiled when the agent at the dealership
boomed Congratulations! doesn't this make you
feel more American now? and wondering if you
should have told him your naturalization
ceremony was two months down the road?
Perhaps, that first Christmas when you and your
husband went back and forth about going out
for a real tree, and then when you finally decided,
it was too late and there was no more to be had
from any of the lots nearby? Will they notice
that in some of the pictures taken in more
recent summers, your hair has gotten visibly
thinner at the top? The panoramic view
makes the living room wider and the kitchen
somehow more cozy. There's the hand-me-down
piano that took five people to carry across
the threshold. There's the counter perennially
piled with books out of place next to a bowl
of fruit, where on holidays or celebrations you'd
lay out a food offering for the ancestors.
Written by Dave Bonta on Nov 16, 2022 07:38 am
it’s easy to stop seeing
what’s on the horizon
people in the valley
don’t really believe in it
what summer makes seem
no less than a mountain
winter shows as it is
no more than a hill
from my front porch
a sudden influx of sky
after the leaves fall
look it’s snowing
the flakes come to settle
in their multitudes
well into the evening
lightness piling up
between the trees
no more omnivorous earth
but a colony of the clouds
pale and puritanical
against which the individual
trunks stand out
an absent crowd
dreaming
together
underground
and after my own sleep
i rise and look again
on the underside
of a snowy limb
a gray squirrel is walking
upside-down
