Posts

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Mahjongg

The aunts and uncles could play all night,
washing the tiles on felted tablecloth,

building them up— all those ivory facets
like yellowing teeth yanked loose from a velvet-

lined box. This, their own version of a great wall
that began perhaps in ennui, that ended in small

satisfactions or despair. Who played for change
or crisp stacks of larger bills? I never learned,

just like I never learned those card games
that mattered, perennially stuck with Old

Maid or Solitaire. I didn’t fan out and shuffle,
cut, and do it over. I was only the girl

who traveled from table to table, bringing hot
garlic peanuts from the kitchen, buckets

of ice for their drinks. I was too young,
really, to be noticed: good lesson for listening

and watching to click and click and waterfall,
hum of hands touching above the table and below.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Survey

Up, still in a constant pain in my back, which much afflicts me with fear of the consequence of it. All the morning at the office, we sat at the office extraordinary upon the business of our stores, but, Lord! what a pitiful account the Surveyor makes of it grieves my heart. This morning before I came out I made a bargain with Captain Taylor for a ship for the Commissioners for Tangier, wherein I hope to get 40l. or 50l..
To the ‘Change, and thence home and dined, and then by coach to White Hall, sending my wife to Mrs. Hunt’s. At the Committee for Tangier all the afternoon, where a sad consideration to see things of so great weight managed in so confused a manner as it is, so as I would not have the buying of an acre of land bought by the Duke of York and Mr. Coventry, for ought I see, being the only two that do anything like men; Prince Rupert do nothing but swear and laugh a little, with an oathe or two, and that’s all he do.
Thence called my wife and home, and I late at my office, and so home to supper and to bed, pleased at my hopes of gains by to-day’s work, but very sad to think of the state of my health.

in constant fear
I survey my heart for hope
an acre of land bought
for nothing but a laugh


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 3 June 1664.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Parable

“…A bee circles a clover,
A fisherman mends a glimmering net.”

~ “A Song on the End of the World,” Czeslaw Milosz

In a picture from a book on how to sew
your own clothes, a woman pulls out

the linings of her pockets to show
they are in a contrast color: red,

like heads of tulips emerging from the sides
of her hips, or koi nosing out of the depths

of a pond. Such even, hand-stitched rows
going around the neckline and the wrists

and the hem— like a path on a field
to illustrate where a bee might circle,

driven by some tiny stroke of sweetness. The linen
is thick and coarse and gray. The air is full

of smoke, and there are cries on the bridge.
But the bee, the bee: it keeps threading the air.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Last resort

Up and to the office, where we sat all the morning, and then to the ‘Change, where after some stay by coach with Sir J. Minnes and Mr. Coventry to St. James’s, and there dined with Mr. Coventry very finely, and so over the Parke to White Hall to a Committee of Tangier about providing provisions, money, and men for Tangier. At it all the afternoon, but it is strange to see how poorly and brokenly things are done of the greatest consequence, and how soon the memory of this great man is gone, or, at least, out of mind by the thoughts of who goes next, which is not yet knowne. My Lord of Oxford, Muskerry, and several others are discoursed of. It seems my Lord Tiviott’s design was to go a mile and half out of the towne, to cut down a wood in which the enemy did use to lie in ambush. He had sent several spyes; but all brought word that the way was clear, and so might be for any body’s discovery of an enemy before you are upon them. There they were all snapt, he and all his officers, and about 200 men, as they say; there being left now in the garrison but four captains. This happened the 3d of May last, being not before that day twelvemonth of his entering into his government there: but at his going out in the morning he said to some of his officers, “Gentlemen, let us look to ourselves, for it was this day three years that so many brave Englishmen were knocked on the head by the Moores, when Fines made his sally out.”
Here till almost night, and then home with Sir J. Minnes by coach, and so to my office a while, and home to supper and bed, being now in constant pain in my back, but whether it be only wind or what it is the Lord knows, but I fear the worst.

we try out visions
but see poorly and brokenly

and memory is a cut-down wood
in the bush of our selves

for this we knock till night
be it only the Lord


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 2 June 1664.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Prayer for last things

I pray it will be easy. I pray it will
be swift. I pray, before the window

shade drops, for the most lucid light
there is; for there to be a strong,

hot wind from the sea. I pray the mouth
released from its feverish workings,

the eye clear-washed of all its salt
and stings. I pray the hands applied

to touch, then recognition of a face.
I pray at the last utterance of love,

the void fills up with gold as if
for burning, before the flood.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Sea wind.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Growth

Up, having lain long, going to bed very late after the ending of my accounts. Being up Mr. Hollyard came to me, and to my great sorrow, after his great assuring me that I could not possibly have the stone again, he tells me that he do verily fear that I have it again, and has brought me something to dissolve it, which do make me very much troubled, and pray to God to ease me.
He gone, I down by water to Woolwich and Deptford to look after the dispatch of the ships, all the way reading Mr. Spencer’s Book of Prodigys, which is most ingeniously writ, both for matter and style.
Home at noon, and my little girl got me my dinner, and I presently out by water and landed at Somerset stairs, and thence through Covent Garden, where I met with Mr. Southwell (Sir W. Pen’s friend), who tells me the very sad newes of my Lord Tiviott’s and nineteen more commission officers being killed at Tangier by the Moores, by an ambush of the enemy upon them, while they were surveying their lines; which is very sad, and, he says, afflicts the King much. Thence to W. Joyce’s, where by appointment I met my wife (but neither of them at home), and she and I to the King’s house, and saw “The Silent Woman;” but methought not so well done or so good a play as I formerly thought it to be, or else I am nowadays out of humour. Before the play was done, it fell such a storm of hayle, that we in the middle of the pit were fain to rise; and all the house in a disorder, and so my wife and I out and got into a little alehouse, and staid there an hour after the play was done before we could get a coach, which at last we did (and by chance took up Joyce Norton and Mrs. Bowles. and set them at home), and so home ourselves, and I, after a little to my office, so home to supper and to bed.

having lain long in bed
my sorrow is a stone
in the book of prodigies
ingeniously writ by water
in a storm of hail


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 1 June 1664.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Sea wind

Up, and called upon Mr. Hollyard, with whom I advised and shall fall upon some course of doing something for my disease of the wind, which grows upon me every day more and more. Thence to my Lord Sandwich’s, and while he was dressing I below discoursed with Captain Cooke, and I think if I do find it fit to keep a boy at all I had as good be supplied from him with one as any body. By and by up to my Lord, and to discourse about his going to sea, and the message I had from Mr. Coventry to him. He wonders, as he well may, that this course should be taken, and he every day with the Duke, who, nevertheless, seems most friendly to him, who hath not yet spoke one word to my Lord of his desire to have him go to sea. My Lord do tell me clearly that were it not that he, as all other men that were of the Parliament side, are obnoxious to reproach, and so is forced to bear what otherwise he would not, he would never suffer every thing to be done in the Navy, and he never be consulted; and it seems, in the naming of all these commanders for this fleete, he hath never been asked one question. But we concluded it wholly inconsistent with his honour not to go with this fleete, nor with the reputation which the world hath of his interest at Court; and so he did give me commission to tell Mr. Coventry that he is most willing to receive any commands from the Duke in this fleete, were it less than it is, and that particularly in this service. With this message I parted, and by coach to the office, where I found Mr. Coventry, and told him this. Methinks, I confess, he did not seem so pleased with it as I expected, or at least could have wished, and asked me whether I had told my Lord that the Duke do not expect his going, which I told him I had. But now whether he means really that the Duke, as he told me the other day, do think the Fleete too small for him to take or that he would not have him go, I swear I cannot tell. But methinks other ways might have been used to put him by without going in this manner about it, and so I hope it is out of kindness indeed.
Dined at home, and so to the office, where a great while alone in my office, nobody near, with Bagwell’s wife of Deptford, but the woman seems so modest that I durst not offer any courtship to her, though I had it in my mind when I brought her in to me. But I am resolved to do her husband a courtesy, for I think he is a man that deserves very well.
So abroad with my wife by coach to St. James’s, to one Lady Poultny’s, where I found my Lord, I doubt, at some vain pleasure or other. I did give him a short account of what I had done with Mr. Coventry, and so left him, and to my wife again in the coach, and with her to the Parke, but the Queene being gone by the Parke to Kensington, we staid not but straight home and to supper (the first time I have done so this summer), and so to my office doing business, and then to my me last month, and now come to 930l..
I was told to-day, that upon Sunday night last, being the King’s birth-day, the King was at my Lady Castlemayne’s lodgings (over the hither-gates at Lambert’s lodgings) dancing with fiddlers all night almost; and all the world coming by taking notice of it, which I am sorry to hear.
The discourse of the town is only whether a warr with Holland or no, and we are preparing for it all we can, which is but little.
Myself subject more than ordinary to pain by winde, which makes me very sad, together with the trouble which at present lies upon me in my father’s behalf, rising from the death of my brother, which are many and great. Would to God they were over!

it is a disease of the wind
to keep going to sea

fleet as the fleet
but too small for the great ice
or a ship on a still night

dancing
preparing for an ordinary death


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 31 May 1664.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Against hardness

Dichoso el árbol que es apenas sensitivo,
y más la piedra dura, porque ésta ya no siente…
~ Rubén Darío, “Lo fatal”

I don’t know that the tree is neither
happy nor sentient, or that the rock

wouldn’t feel a thing: why not light
or shade, why not parched summer

if sediment breaks down from water
flowing? Wasn’t it just last weekend

that the boy we heard of yesterday as dead,
looked for one moment straight into our eyes

as he bagged the last of our groceries,
saying Did you find everything you need?

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Deflorate

Hydrangea mass their heads of pale white
and lilac beneath the window, like girls
in dotted swiss lace communion veils
huddled in a circle, sharing secrets—

Too early before the age
of formal confession, I had a few
myself that I never could disclose
until much later, only as an adult

when finally I’d learned the vocabulary
for what was done to me. Don’t tell, the man
said, with his oily locks and oily fingers:
pinning my two wrists like stalks to the green.