Via Negativa

February 11, 2024February 11, 2024 by Luisa A. Igloria

Records

river in November light between bare woods and mountain

There's nearly an entire month you can't account for, when (you were told)
you were confined in the hospital. First or second grade, scabby-kneed, hard
to feed, breaking out in hives and blisters; nose bleeds almost every day.
Confine—a word that only brings up images of a high bed with a metal
frame; a drafty room, the old-building smell (like yellow piss, like peeling
paint and antiseptic. Nurses came at intervals to check your temperature or
bring a glass of water to your lips, bitter liquid in little dosage cups. In the hallways,
the sound of wheels rolling across tile. Years later this is the same hospital where
you give birth to your third child— every single time the resident pushed her thick
fingers in to check the progress of dilation, she'd say 2 cm. Unreal. It's the same
hospital where your father passed away on a makeshift pallet, the walls having
collapsed in the aftermath of earthquake. You can't remember how many days
and nights there was no running water, no power, no gas, no telephone service.
A drama of tents sprang up in parks. There was rain and mud, and makeshift
stoves into which you pushed torn newspapers. Box of matches, black-
bottomed pot from the ruined kitchen; tins of sardines, can opener.
Grocers handing out bread through a hole in the wall.

Flies led rescue teams to bodies.
The dead got their coffins. For such
things, there are actually records.

February 11, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Head-in-Sand Ritual

This entry is part 6 of 11 in the series Rituals

uncanny heat
for the tenth of February

but the creek’s trickle still hits
the right notes after dark

the evening jets rumble
somewhere out of mind

i disturb a sparrow
in the juniper tree

that holds my house close
to its accretionary trunk

and the fluttering of wings
where a heart would beat

tells me to go bury my head
under the blankets

to bed down with the radio
dead air hissing in my ear

and dream a killing floor
of windblown sand

where pump jacks raise
and lower their horse heads

and flare stacks
burn eternally
for unknown soldiers

it’s essential to keep
the necromance young

the lovely refrigerator
humming in my kitchen
depends on it

and the space heater
and the halloween ladybugs

awakening in the walls
too early
with a burning thirst

February 11, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Gone for a Soldier

At the office all the morning. Dined at home, and then to the Exchange, and took Mr. Warren with me to Mr. Kennard, the master joiner, at Whitehall, who was at a tavern, and there he and I to him, and agreed about getting some of my Lord’s deals on board to-morrow.
Then with young Mr. Reeve home to his house, who did there show me many pretty pleasures in perspectives, that I have not seen before, and I did buy a little glass of him cost me 5s. And so to Mr. Crew’s, and with Mr. Moore to see how my father and mother did, and so with him to Mr. Adam Chard’s (the first time I ever was at his house since he was married) to drink, then we parted, and I home to my study, and set some papers and money in order, and so to bed.

a war to join
you show me

many pleasures
I have not seen

a little glass
of hard drink

then home
to my paper order

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 11 February 1660/61.

February 10, 2024February 10, 2024 by Luisa A. Igloria

Cedrus Deodara

Beneath the tree  whose branches 
are garlanded with bits of paper 

covered with now indecipherable 
handwriting, we gather to string 

letters, wishes, poems. Its name in Sanskrit
means wood of the gods. The sky, azure 

after a cloudy morning, peeps through 
a latticework of branches. It must be

indeed patient and forbearing: letting us
transfer our supplications to its arms.

February 10, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Heating up

(Lord’s day). Took physique all day, and, God forgive me, did spend it in reading of some little French romances. At night my wife and I did please ourselves talking of our going into France, which I hope to effect this summer. At noon one came to ask for Mrs. Hunt that was here yesterday, and it seems is not come home yet, which makes us afraid of her. At night to bed.

god give me some
little stalk of hope

summer seems no home
which makes us afraid

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 10 February 1660/61.

February 10, 2024February 10, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Microcosmic

like a bloodshot eye
with a black pupil

crab-walking across my knee
a blacklegged tick

oh lovely horror
i take three photos

then decapitate
with a persistent thumbnail

the meek are inheriting the earth
with increasing speed

last night i came home
to an old cocoon

from one of the giant silkworms
lying on my doorstep

fabricated from a single leaf
like a dolma tied with silk

long since vacated
and weathered to old gold

and now the wind has taken
some interest in it

this empty shroud
that gave birth to wings

and to think i almost didn’t
crouch down to look

where does it come from
this disinclination

to get down close
and attend to the details

where the devil is said to dwell
among the flies

forefeet coming together
like prayerful hands

that’s what will finish us off
the piety of carrion-lovers

i tell a clump of sagging puffballs
on a stump beside the trail

their blunderbusses pointed
up down and sideways

i give one a tap
the smallest gray cloud of spores

spurts out and rides
off on the wind

Plummer’s Hollow, February 9, 2024

February 9, 2024February 9, 2024 by Luisa A. Igloria

Molting

                                         
Why do we speak of streaks
of light, but never of darkness?

I stand inside the circle of an xray 
machine that revolves around my face 
to locate white shards of bone in my gum.

The moon is something that looks
like I could put in my mouth, says the child.

While we talk on the phone, picking
at the remnants of our meal, star
fragments wash up on the beach.

Small bodies shed their tiny houses in the sand, 
looking to move into an empty nautilus.

February 9, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Current resident

To my Lord’s with Mr. Creed (who was come to me this morning to get a bill of imprest signed), and my Lord being gone out he and I to the Rhenish wine-house with Mr. Blackburne. To whom I did make known my fears of Will’s losing of his time, which he will take care to give him good advice about.
Afterwards to my Lord’s and Mr. Shepley and I did make even his accounts and mine. And then with Mr. Creed and two friends of his (my late lord Jones’ son one of them), to an ordinary to dinner, and then Creed and I to Whitefriars’ to the Play-house, and saw “The Mad Lover,” the first time I ever saw it acted, which I like pretty well, and home.

how is the wine
to know my fear
of losing time and friends

o Lord of the ordinary
I use time
like a home

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 9 February 1660/61.

February 8, 2024February 24, 2025 by Luisa A. Igloria

Tell me about the future

without telling me it's impossible—

Tell me about soft green that emerges
in between burned roots and branches,

and of the slow sorting of stones, 
the choosing of what withstood the worst.

Tell of the even slower: return of movement
in the outer reaches of air,  in hollows

opening again to rainwater. Patient schools
of dinosaur shrimp, harboring their cysts. 

Red bark beetles flat as guitar picks 
coming out of dehyrdation. At the very 

bottom of the Antarctic sea, glass 
sponges undulate, though they 

might not even remember when 
they last ate, 15.000 years ago.

February 8, 2024January 11, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Fugitives

At the office all the morning. At noon to the Exchange to meet Mr. Warren the timber merchant, but could not meet with him. Here I met with many sea commanders, and among others Captain Cuttle, and Curtis, and Mootham, and I, went to the Fleece Tavern to drink; and there we spent till four o’clock, telling stories of Algiers, and the manner of the life of slaves there! And truly Captn. Mootham and Mr. Dawes (who have been both slaves there) did make me fully acquainted with their condition there: as, how they eat nothing but bread and water. At their redemption they pay so much for the water they drink at the public fountaynes, during their being slaves. How they are beat upon the soles of their feet and bellies at the liberty of their padron. How they are all, at night, called into their master’s Bagnard; and there they lie. How the poorest men do use their slaves best. How some rogues do live well, if they do invent to bring their masters in so much a week by their industry or theft; and then they are put to no other work at all. And theft there is counted no great crime at all.
Thence to Mr. Rawlinson’s, having met my old friend Dick Scobell, and there I drank a great deal with him, and so home and to bed betimes, my head aching.

into the timber we flee
a life of slaves

we who have
been nothing
but water for the water

soles of the feet
at liberty
call to the dust

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 8 February 1660/61.