Ignatius Valentine Aloysius | 3 Poems
Windows
We look out through windows. We have our
clear windows & want more windows to look through.
A spotted green gecko waits for a live meal
on the painted side wall. Three deer step up to
the edge of the thicket then retreat. The park
is a playground for freed dogs & toddlers un-
winding from sleep or boredom. The office desk
stands empty for weeks in the building across
the street. Roll up the windows because the rain
falls now in sheets as we drive, when just
yesterday, fall leaves left their branches & kissed
ground snow. A great rumble surrounds me. Beyond
this vast desert are lush hills singing for peace,
asking if I see them through the blue bowled sky.
Even the Raindrop
~from an Instagram post
If it’s true that the spirits of the dead walk
about unseen among us, then do they touch
the plants I water, the road signs I read, my
dead mother’s photograph on the wall?
Do they lift that butterfly into the air
and breathe into my coffee cup as I sip?
Somewhere, the pulse of a drumbeat winds
through the idyll cold outside, while I try to
keep warm in layered clothes, look out past
the smeary window glass & see the winded
pine hold a nestled nest in place, wet romance
in tilted rain. The spirits stand between us,
love, even the raindrop watches, it watches,
the writer thinks, our rituals richer than food.
Wanderings
I meditate too, but not that way with breath
and body’s back whisked up like mountain’s form,
or kneaded dough hungering for new life in
fire’s hot lap, returning to silent fates.
I meditate too, but not like ashes peaked
with bated breath, before reaching winds come
lifting their gauze through the trees. Take the
case of each word that’s worth meditating on—
there’s its form, how it’s made, how it clicks
and slips between lines on a page, its meaning,
as an island or far mountain of wanderings
gifting good rain or burning pangs. I meditate on
words and wanderings, mother’s two strokes throwing
her head-first to the floor. I couldn’t save her.
Ignatius Valentine Aloysius earned his MFA in Creative Writing from Northwestern University. He is a lecturer in writing, a designer, and musician, and author of the novel Fishhead. Republic of Want (Tortoise Books, 2020) and The Imaginal Stage, a doom/sludge metal album by WOOND, his studio project on Mental Illness Recordings, Iowa City. Ignatius was selected as a 2020-21 Creative Writing Fellow by the Ludington Writers Board and the Ludington Area Center for the Arts in Michigan. He serves as a judge for the Evanston Arts Council’s 2020-21 Cultural Fund Grants Applications, and is on the curatorial board at Ragdale Foundation. Ignatius was a featured July 2020 author for Ragdale’s By-and-for-Artists Series. He is also co-curator of Sunday Salon Chicago, a bi-monthly literary reading event series in Chicago. Ignatius lives with his wife in Evanston, IL and is currently at work on his next novel and album. Visit him at woond.bandcamp.com, or on social media.
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