Via Negativa

July 1, 2025July 1, 2025 by Luisa A. Igloria

Revelation

river in November light between bare woods and mountain

~ after Remedios Varo (1955)


        Within each time, the contemplation 
             of time. Devices for its calibration 
and measure, the recognition of how 
       it holds up the sky in whatever quadrant 
             we might reside. See how many points of 
existence want to push through the membrane 
       of this life. All the actors gathered here, 
             garbed in their own choice of armor, 
must hear that electric humming in 
             the atmosphere. Strings of tin-can stars 
       waterfall in the room. How thin the border 
between states: outside and in, love and labor, 
             quiet and clamor. The world is no longer 
       beginning to change. It has changed.

June 30, 2025June 30, 2025 by Luisa A. Igloria

Poetry Blog Digest 2025, Week 26

A personal selection of posts from the Poetry Blogging Network and beyond. Although I tend to quote my favorite bits, please do click through and read the whole posts. You can also browse the blog digest archive at Via Negativa or, if you’d like it in your inbox, subscribe on Substack (where the posts might be truncated by some email providers).

This week: industrious bees, birds made of text, the rhizodont, International Pineapple Day, and much more. Enjoy.

June 30, 2025June 30, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Mob rule

Up betimes, and to my office, where I found Griffen’s girl making it clean, but, God forgive me! what a mind I had to her, but did not meddle with her. She being gone, I fell upon boring holes for me to see from my closet into the great office, without going forth, wherein I please myself much.
So settled to business, and at noon with my wife to the Wardrobe, and there dined, and staid talking all the afternoon with my Lord, and about four o’clock took coach with my wife and Lady, and went toward my house, calling at my Lady Carteret’s, who was within by chance (she keeping altogether at Deptford for a month or two), and so we sat with her a little. Among other things told my Lady how my Lady Fanshaw is fallen out with her only for speaking in behalf of the French, which my Lady wonders at, they having been formerly like sisters, but we see there is no true lasting friendship in the world.
Thence to my house, where I took great pride to lead her through the Court by the hand, she being very fine, and her page carrying up her train.
She staid a little at my house, and then walked through the garden, and took water, and went first on board the King’s pleasure boat, which pleased her much. Then to Greenwich Park; and with much ado she was able to walk up to the top of the hill, and so down again, and took boat, and so through bridge to Blackfryers, and home, she being much pleased with the ramble in every particular of it. So we supped with her, and then walked home, and to bed.
Observations
This I take to be as bad a juncture as ever I observed. The King and his new Queen minding their pleasures at Hampton Court. All people discontented; some that the King do not gratify them enough; and the others, Fanatiques of all sorts, that the King do take away their liberty of conscience; and the height of the Bishops, who I fear will ruin all again. They do much cry up the manner of Sir H. Vane’s death, and he deserves it. They clamour against the chimney-money, and say they will not pay it without force. And in the mean time, like to have war abroad; and Portugall to assist, when we have not money to pay for any ordinary layings-out at home.
Myself all in dirt about building of my house and Sir W. Batten’s a story higher. Into a good way, fallen on minding my business and saving money, which God encrease; and I do take great delight in it, and see the benefit of it. In a longing mind of going to see Brampton, but cannot get three days time, do what I can.
In very good health, my wife and myself.

boring holes
into the clock
and calling it a month

speaking like
the rain water in a boat
to the top of the hill

fanatics at the height of ruin
cry up death and say
they will not pay

for a road when
we have no money
for ordinary dirt

building my house
a story higher I go on
minding my light

Erasure haiku derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 30 June 1662.

June 29, 2025June 29, 2025 by Luisa A. Igloria

Gathering

Out here, you can go to a farm and pick
armfuls of lavender that you cut yourself 
from plots threaded through with bee-flight. 
You can walk between rows of sunflowers, 
many of them taller than you, and angle 
your head as they do toward the sun's grand, 
unfollowable trajectory. Poets write of 
fleeting gold and leaves that yellow, 
of travelers that want to be in more than one 
place at once. But even when you haven't yet 
left, the scent of impending departure 
can wash over you like early morning 
fog. In that momentary stasis, it's as if 
time itself has pearled— a string of drops 
you can carry like a prayer in your hand.

June 29, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Healer

(Lord’s day). Up by four o’clock, and to the settling of my own accounts, and I do find upon my monthly ballance, which I have undertaken to keep from month to month, that I am worth 650l., the greatest sum that ever I was yet master of. I pray God give me a thankfull spirit, and care to improve and encrease it.
To church with my wife, who this day put on her green petticoat of flowred satin, with fine white and gimp lace of her own putting on, which is very pretty. Home with Sir W. Pen to dinner by appointment, and to church again in the afternoon, and then home, Mr. Shepley coming to me about my Lord’s accounts, and in the evening parted, and we to supper again to Sir W. Pen. Whatever the matter is, he do much fawn upon me, and I perceive would not fall out with me, and his daughter mighty officious to my wife, but I shall never be deceived again by him, but do hate him and his traitorous tricks with all my heart. It was an invitation in order to his taking leave of us to-day, he being to go for Ireland in a few days.
So home and prayers, and to bed.

I find my balance
under a coat of white

with pen point to whatever
the matter is

and I would fall again
but with all my heart

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 29 June 1662.

June 28, 2025June 28, 2025 by Luisa A. Igloria

Thrift

We go to the store with bags of worn or unused
apparel— trousers that keep shrinking a few inches
more above the ankle after each wash, shoes a rich 
friend liked to send every summer after yet another 
vacation to exotic places but which we never quite 
knew where to wear. It's the same thrift store 
we've been going to for the last twenty-some years, 
where we found our coffee table— marveling at
the swirls in the solid oak surface, discounting 
the few spots of water damage that must have been
enough reason for its donation. We try to remind
ourselves: before buying anything new, consider
need. And after, consider what could go 
into recirculation. But even in the aisles of 
Children's Hospital of the King's Daughters,
there is no lack of desire. In front of a narrow
mirror by the back wall, a woman has laid a blouse 
with a vintage collar across her chest. The older 
woman next to her says Just feel that fabric— 
isn't it a dream? We're surrounded by so much 
discarded beauty: crinkled cotton, bookends 
with painted ducks; beaded sheaths, shawls, 
sun bonnets, the tiniest pink booties.

June 28, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Fish dinner

Up to my Lord’s and my own accounts, and so to the office, where all the forenoon sitting, and at noon by appointment to the Mitre, where Mr. Shepley gave me and Mr. Creed, and I had my uncle Wight with us, a dish of fish. Thence to the office again, and there all the afternoon till night, and so home, and after talking with my wife to bed. This day a genteel woman came to me, claiming kindred of me, as she had once done before, and borrowed 10s. of me, promising to repay it at night, but I hear nothing of her. I shall trust her no more.
Great talk there is of a fear of a war with the Dutch; and we have order to pitch upon twenty ships to be forthwith set out; but I hope it is but a scarecrow to the world, to let them see that we can be ready for them; though, God knows! the King is not able to set out five ships at this present without great difficulty, we neither having money, credit, nor stores.
My mind is now in a wonderful condition of quiet and content, more than ever in all my life, since my minding the business of my office, which I have done most constantly; and I find it to be the very effect of my late oaths against wine and plays, which, if God please, I will keep constant in, for now my business is a delight to me, and brings me great credit, and my purse encreases too.

a dish of fish
is kindred to a ship

for a crow to know
no quiet life

in my mind of wine
if god is light

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 28 June 1662.

June 28, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Ogun at the Palmer

god of iron and war
carved from hard wood

Ogun with a gun propped
upright under his chin

on a Wednesday in June
behind museum glass

eyeholes turreted
in two directions

so no one can return
the ground-penetrating gaze

of a placeholder
for something more than mortal

the ore that reddens rocks
and makes them ring

something godlike
how with charcoal and bellows

iron can be made to bloom
for the blows of a hammer

how last night’s missiles
blazed across our screens

at what might well be
the very end of the Iron Age

in an empty gallery
with walls of marigold

Ogun casts two shadows
behind his back

June 27, 2025June 27, 2025 by Luisa A. Igloria

Very Superstitious

"When you believe in things you don't understand
Then you suffer..."
                    ~ Stevie Wonder



We were studying one weekend at home
for a test on the national hero, Rizal— 
he who had learned fencing, over a dozen 
languages, enough medicine to perform 
cataract surgery on his own mother, and
written two novels to inflame a people's 
revolution that toppled the Spanish colonial 
regime. On the eve of his execution in 1896, 
he wrote a long poem which his sisters smuggled 
out of his cell in a cocinilla: fourteen stanzas, 
each with five lines. He called it his last 
farewell— Mi último adiós. We had to memorize 
at least half of it. It was so hot, and we 
were tired of memorizing, so we thought 
of going to the corner store to buy more 
snacks. With a dramatic flourish, I called out, "Mi
último adiós!"— which made my mother and aunt, 
making dinner in the kitchen, drop whatever they 
were holding and shriek— Take that back, 
take it back, don't you ever say that again!