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Posted on by Dave Bonta

News that stays

Up very betimes and to my office, where most hard at business alone all the morning. At noon to the Exchange, where I hear that after great expectation from Ireland, and long stop of letters, there is good news come, that all is quiett after our great noise of troubles there, though some stir hath been as was reported.
Off the Exchange with Sir J. Cutler and Mr. Grant to the Royall Oak Tavern, in Lumbard Street, where Alexander Broome the poet was, a merry and witty man, I believe, if he be not a little conceited, and here drank a sort of French wine, called Ho Bryan, that hath a good and most particular taste that I never met with.
Home to dinner, and then by water abroad to Whitehall, my wife to see Mrs. Ferrers, I to Whitehall and the Park, doing no business. Then to my Lord’s lodgings, met my wife, and walked to the New Exchange. There laid out 10s. upon pendents and painted leather gloves, very pretty and all the mode. So by coach home and to my office till late, and so to supper and to bed.

all change is news
a quiet stir to the oak

and the poet
if not conceited

and particular as water
in her loves


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 10 April 1663.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Unfaithful

Up betimes and to my office, and anon we met upon finishing the Treasurer’s accounts. At noon dined at home and am vexed to hear my wife tell me how our maid Mary do endeavour to corrupt our cook maid, which did please me very well, but I am resolved to rid the house of her as soon as I can.
To the office and sat all the afternoon till 9 at night, and an hour after home to supper and bed. My father lying at Tom’s to-night, he dining with my uncle Fenner and his sons and a great many more of the gang at his own cost to-day.
To bed vexed also to think of Sir J. Minnes finding fault with Mr. Hater for what he had done the other day, though there be no hurt in the thing at all but only the old fool’s jealousy, made worse by Sir W. Batten.

we met in the cook house
night after lying night

at the cost of finding hate
for what hurt

all old jealousy
made worse


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 9 April 1663.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Eating at midnight

This entry is part 7 of 15 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Spring 2016

 

Once, greeting me at the door
at midnight when I’d come home

again after my week after week
of working in the city, you took

my bags and led me to the table.
You took from the refrigerator

a few green peppers, a handful
of mushrooms, a small onion

which you diced into quarters.
A slick of oil sizzled in the pan.

You crushed a clove of garlic
and sautéed the medley, soy-

spattered, which I ate and ate
until nothing remained

in the bowl of rice. I think
of that meal sometimes and try

without success to bring it all
back together on my stove.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Posted on by Jean Morris

The Archers

Only a radio soap, a knife imagined,
a sound effect, tense rush of air,
but as it’s playing out the sky grows dark
and thunder roars from way too close,
a memory rises of just such a kitchen knife
wielded in temper and with wild threats,
imagining becomes remembering…
the glinting blade… my mother’s house
on New Year’s Eve… so many, many
years ago, but trauma has a long half-life.


In response to Luisa Igloria’s “Only.”

The Archers  See here.

thunder roars  In London a brief but dramatic thunderstorm erupted just as the stabbing episode came to an end at 7:15 pm last Sunday.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Only

which amber
which old precedent
~ D. Bonta

I want to write about
the tyranny of only—

how for years I was taught:
fly low under the radar.

When the gods give you something,
give thanks; but when others notice,

belittle its importance. Say it’s only
a trifle, only by chance. Don’t praise

too loudly the cleanliness of your house,
the neatness of your numbered columns,

the smooth-running engine of days that do work.
Point instead to the flaw in the bed-spread,

the uneven table leg, the trouble that hasn’t
visited your house yet. Do this often enough

and soon you’ll believe as I did: the moment
warm in your hands isn’t in itself a gift.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Ova.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Sea dog

Up betimes and to my office, and by and by, about 8 o’clock, to the Temple to Commissioner Pett lately come to town and discoursed about the affairs of our office, how ill they go through the corruption and folly of Sir W. Batten and Sir J. Minnes.
Thence by water to White Hall, to chappell; where preached Dr. Pierce, the famous man that preached the sermon so much cried up, before the King against the Papists.
His matter was the Devil tempting our Saviour, being carried into the Wilderness by the spirit. And he hath as much of natural eloquence as most men that ever I heard in my life, mixed with so much learning.
After sermon I went up and saw the ceremony of the Bishop of Peterborough’s paying homage upon the knee to the King, while Sir H. Bennet, Secretary, read the King’s grant of the Bishopric of Lincoln, to which he is translated. His name is Dr. Lany. Here I also saw the Duke of Monmouth, with his Order of the Garter, the first time I ever saw it.
I am told that the University of Cambridge did treat him a little while since with all the honour possible, with a comedy at Trinity College, and banquet; and made him Master of Arts there. All which, they say, the King took very well. Dr. Raynbow, Master of Magdalen, being now Vice-Chancellor.
Home by water to dinner, and with my father, wife, and Ashwell, after dinner, by water towards Woolwich, and in our way I bethought myself that we had left our poor little dog that followed us out of doors at the waterside, and God knows whether he be not lost, which did not only strike my wife into a great passion but I must confess myself also; more than was becoming me. We immediately returned, I taking another boat and with my father went to Woolwich, while they went back to find the dog.
I took my father on board the King’s pleasure boat and down to Woolwich, and walked to Greenwich thence and turning into the park to show my father the steps up the hill, we found my wife, her woman, and dog attending us, which made us all merry again, and so took boats, they to Deptford and so by land to Half-way house, I into the King’s yard and overlook them there, and eat and drank with them, and saw a company of seamen play drolly at our pence, and so home by water. I a little at the office, and so home to supper and to bed, after having Ashwell play my father and me a lesson upon her Tryangle.

wild eloquence
translated into dog
a walk by the sea


Erasure haiku derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 8 April 1663.

Posted on by J Likha Yatco

Abaniko

in Filipino it means “fan,”
the same thing in Basque
a ream of paper, card stock,
hand-painted, or short roll of cloth,
even of Belgian lace, folded
these many times and bound
to an armature of
bamboo or sandalwood
that allows for the abaniko’s
unfolding, folding,
opening and closing like
a peacock’s tail

how evocative the abaniko is
of old Latin Sunday masses
when my mother and her aunts,
their heads covered with black veils,
their missals open, fanned themselves
while the priest rambled on

the word “fan” does not
quite capture the slight
breeze the abaniko
summons nor the imagined
sound of castanets clicking
as a flamenco dancer prepares
to enter center stage


In response to a writing prompt from Luisa A. Igloria:

On the unusual sea creatures site that I found, the Pink See-through Fantasia is described thus: “Its name makes it sound like a piece of sexy lingerie, but don’t be fooled: The pink see-through fantasia is a sea cucumber, found about a mile and a half deep in the Celebes Sea in the western Pacific (east of Borneo).”

Select the name of an unusual object or creature from a source of your choice (botany? anatomy textbook? geophysics text? plumbing manual?) Write a poem about a person/experience that might come to mind from this first trigger provided by the suggestive quality or sound of this name.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Psychologically ultimate seashore

Up very betimes, and angry with Will that he made no more haste to rise after I called him. So to my office, and all the morning there. At noon to the Exchange, and so home to dinner, where I found my wife had been with Ashwell to La Roche’s to have her tooth drawn, which it seems aches much, but my wife could not get her to be contented to have it drawn after the first twich, but would let it alone, and so they came home with it undone, which made my wife and me good sport.
After dinner to the office, where Sir J. Minnes did make a great complaint to me alone, how my clerk Mr. Hater had entered in one of the Sea books a ticket to have been signed by him before it had been examined, which makes the old fool mad almost, though there was upon enquiry the greatest reason in the world for it. Which though it vexes me, yet it is most to see from day to day what a coxcomb he is, and that so great a trust should lie in the hands of such a fool.
We sat all the afternoon, and I late at my office, it being post night, and so home to supper, my father being come again to my house, and after supper to bed, and after some talk to sleep.

angry as a noon toothache
raw and alone

the sea books a ticket
to my sleep


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 7 April 1663. The post title is a reference to the original ambient sound LP—see “The Man Who Recorded, Tamed and Then Sold Nature Sounds to America.” This erasure was made while listening to that recording on YouTube.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Have They Run Out of Tasteless White Yet?

Have they run out of tasteless white yet?
Looks like they haven’t, so we’ve reason to fret.
Long ago, they started a trend: statues in alabaster.
(Long ago, we thought this was just about marble.)
But then they stole to stuff their museums with our artifacts.
Brass Buddhas, bulols, black Venuses: filched, no contract.
With not so much as a by-your-leave, they set up camp
on our shores. Took our women, flogged our men, looked askance
but secretly salivated at dishes made by the kitchen slaves.
Pigafetta (another kind of white) wrote in his journals
with a certain type of disgust that the natives were not normal:
they wore next to nothing on their skin and ate things
fished from the swamp with bare hands. It’s why the white man brings
this gift called civilization. Cloth and cutlery, its own style of chow.
But on weekends they’ll make exceptions and head to Judy’s for the Xiao Long Bao.
Perhaps week after week of white Wonder Bread does things to the psyche—
already burdened with historical conflict, how to admit one’s curious about lychee?
So fascinating… but what’s beneath the crimson of those dragon-like scales?
They’ll wait for the food review, even knowing “epicures” eat things like snails.
From LA to New York, they read that Filipino food is the next big thing,
plus some others— too many to name. Like how at Panda Express, Beijing
Beef Bowl rates as actually good. But I’m so tired
of these cycles of bashing and reappropriation, tired
of the lame defenses of those who, let’s face it,
have no respect for either a spring roll or a tit.
We come from places with catalogs of jewel-colored rice
and more than a hundred names for moss, rain, spice.
We come from places where universities were founded
before their Ivy Leagues. Their lies about us, unfounded,
have glibly masqueraded as history, geography, poetry—
We can’t let them continue with such tasteless bigotries.

 

In response to Have They Run Out of Provinces Yet?.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Harboring

Up very betimes and to my office, and there made an end of reading my book that I have of Mr. Barlow’s of the Journal of the Commissioners of the Navy, who begun to act in the year 1628 and continued six years, wherein is fine observations and precedents out of which I do purpose to make a good collection.
By and by, much against my will, being twice sent for, to Sir G. Carteret’s to pass his accounts there, upon which Sir J. Minnes, Sir W. Batten, Sir W. Pen, and myself all the morning, and again after dinner to it, being vexed at my heart to see a thing of that importance done so slightly and with that neglect for which God pardon us, and I would I could mend it. Thence leaving them I made an excuse and away home, and took my wife by coach and left her at Madam Clerk’s, to make a visit there, and I to the Committee of Tangier, where I found, to my great joy, my Lord Sandwich, the first time I have seen him abroad these some months, and by and by he rose and took leave, being, it seems, this night to go to Kensington or Chelsey, where he hath taken a lodging for a while to take the ayre.
We staid, and after business done I got Mr. Coventry into the Matted Gallery and told him my whole mind concerning matters of our office, all my discontent to see things of so great trust carried so neglectfully, and what pitiful service the Controller and Surveyor make of their duties, and I disburdened my mind wholly to him and he to me his own, many things, telling me that he is much discouraged by seeing things not to grow better and better as he did well hope they would have done. Upon the whole, after a full hour’s private discourse, telling one another our minds, we with great content parted, and with very great satisfaction for my thus cleared my conscience, went to Dr. Clerk’s and thence fetched my wife, and by coach home. To my office a little to set things in order, and so home to supper and to bed.

I have a journal of observations
of the morning port

where I go to take the air
content to rust

my mind is a hole
full of little things


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 6 April 1663.