Via Negativa

July 3, 2014May 30, 2016 by Dave Bonta

Enigma

This morning I went up and down into the city, to buy several things, as I have lately done, for my house. Among other things, a fair chest of drawers for my own chamber, and an Indian gown for myself. The first cost me 33s., the other 34s. Home and dined there, and Theodore Goodgroome, my singing master, with me, and then to our singing. After that to the office, and then home.

Is the city a thing—
one house, a chest
of drawers—
or a singing master,
singing to the office
and the home?

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 1 July 1661.

July 3, 2014December 11, 2014 by Luisa A. Igloria

Visitor

“Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.” ~ T.S. Eliot

One by one, the lost or forgotten return:
bulbs erupt from their winter envelopes;
seeds sprout in the yard, following
the scything arc of the careless

hand that must have scattered them.
And the ache in my heart I thought
I’d buried deep in the teeming soil
of everyday ferment skims

lightly again to the surface, asking
to be taken in my palms, asking to be
examined. And I don’t know now
just as I didn’t know before,

what to believe if suddenly it lifts
two dusty brown wings hinged to its soft
moth body, though its breathing is the only
prayer I can remember in the room.

July 2, 2014December 11, 2014 by Luisa A. Igloria

Flayed

My gold tooth in my hand, the space it left behind
an indentation chalked with paste and sand—

My garment made of skin, held out at arm’s
length for the anatomist to see within—

My paper window shade, accordion drawn against
this faltering light: its outline parsed by fire.

In response to Via Negativa: Walking Dead.

July 1, 2014December 11, 2014 by Luisa A. Igloria

Instructions for Waldorf Salad

Astoria: middle class and commercial neighborhood in the northwestern corner of New York City. Borough: Queens. Astoria is bounded by the East River. Nearest are three other Queens neighborhoods: Long Island City, Sunnyside, Woodside. Astoria is patrolled by the New York City Police Department’s 114th Precinct. Astoria was first settled by the Dutch and Germans. Then the Irish came in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Now there are other ethnic settlers: Italians, Jews, Cypriots, Arabs. There is a street there called “Little Egypt.” When I go into Arab shops I think of dates, figs, pistachios; I do not think of walnuts. Oscar at the Waldorf did not put them into his original salad recipe. Someone else did, years and years later, in California. Then grapes followed. Own it, goes a slogan heard often on the lips of the young. He was Swiss. As for epicure: the word appears in all the stubs on his biography. The word comes from the late 14th century, meaning “follower of Epicurus,” after the Athenian philosopher who taught that pleasure is the highest good and virtue is the greatest pleasure. The first lesson, therefore, is apples. Apples and honey, celery slices thinned to the shape of commas. The juice and zest of a lemon. Zest licks the fingers on which the sweet dressing has spilled, as the tray is borne from kitchen to dining plaza in that famous hotel.

July 1, 2014December 14, 2020 by Dave Bonta

Walking dead

(Lord’s day). To church, where we observe the trade of briefs is come now up to so constant a course every Sunday, that we resolve to give no more to them. A good sermon, and then home to dinner, my wife and I all alone.
After dinner Sir Williams both and I by water to Whitehall, where having walked up and down, at last we met with the Duke of York, according to an order sent us yesterday from him, to give him an account where the fault lay in the not sending out of the ships, which we find to be only the wind hath been against them, and so they could not get out of the river. Hence I to Graye’s Inn Walk, all alone, and with great pleasure seeing the fine ladies walk there. Myself humming to myself (which now-a-days is my constant practice since I begun to learn to sing) the trillo, and found by use that it do come upon me. Home very weary and to bed, finding my wife not sick, but yet out of order, that I fear she will come to be sick. This day the Portuguese Embassador came to White Hall to take leave of the King; he being now going to end all with the Queen, and to send her over.
The weather now very fair and pleasant, but very hot. My father gone to Brampton to see my uncle Robert, not knowing whether to find him dead or alive. Myself lately under a great expense of money upon myself in clothes and other things, but I hope to make it up this summer by my having to do in getting things ready to send with the next fleet to the Queen.
Myself in good health, but mighty apt to take cold, so that this hot weather I am fain to wear a cloth before my belly.

I walk alone
seeing the fine ladies there
humming to myself

I fear I am dead
under my clothes

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 30 June 1661.

June 30, 2014December 11, 2014 by Luisa A. Igloria

Emblems

Who turns to the window, points
at a line of feathered bodies
ranged like an aria on a stave?

Who wants to know which one
carries in its beak the missing
charm to complete her life,

which one will fly
into the trees to sing a song
of greatest enchantment?

The price of listening
is either the song itself,
or a heart transformed

to granite. A mountain stands
in the pockmarked background,
littered with burial caves

and dreamlike vegetation—
Who has ever returned un-
changed from those heights?

In response to Via Negativa: Birds on a Wire.

June 30, 2014May 30, 2016 by Dave Bonta

Inspiration

By a letter from the Duke complaining of the delay of the ships that are to be got ready, Sir Williams both and I went to Deptford and there examined into the delays, and were satisfyed. So back again home and staid till the afternoon, and then I walked to the Bell at the Maypole in the Strand, and thither came to me by appointment Mr. Chetwind, Gregory, and Hartlibb, so many of our old club, and Mr. Kipps, where we staid and drank and talked with much pleasure till it was late, and so I walked home and to bed.
Mr. Chetwind by chewing of tobacco is become very fat and sallow, whereas he was consumptive, and in our discourse he fell commending of “Hooker’s Ecclesiastical Polity,” as the best book, and the only one that made him a Christian, which puts me upon the buying of it, which I will do shortly.

The ships were satisfied by wind
and I by a book.

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 29 June 1661.

June 29, 2014December 11, 2014 by Luisa A. Igloria

Vanishing Point

Boys paddle into the surf
on their boards, waiting for the swells
which will whip them up to that stance
where they’re poised between dark
cobalt sky and the quivering lip
of a wave— Above, a helicopter hovers
and for a moment I teeter, too,
on the edge of this spectacle:
green and blue umbrellas raised
in defense against the sun,
oiled bodies glistening on the shore;
far off in the distance,
the silhouette of a boat slim
as a needle poised on the water’s surface.

June 29, 2014May 30, 2016 by Dave Bonta

Slugabed

At home all the morning practising to sing, which is now my great trade, and at noon to my Lady and dined with her. So back and to the office, and there sat till 7 at night, and then Sir W. Pen and I in his coach went to Moorefields, and there walked, and stood and saw the wrestling, which I never saw so much of before, between the north and west countrymen.
So home, and this night had our bed set up in our room that we called the Nursery, where we lay, and I am very much pleased with the room.

Morning is now my night.
I saw rest I never saw before,
the bed I call Nurse,
and I lease the room.

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 28 June 1661.

June 29, 2014May 30, 2016 by Dave Bonta

Birds on a wire

To my father’s, and with him to Mr. Starling’s to drink our morning draft, and there I told him how I would have him speak to my uncle Robert, when he comes thither, concerning my buying of land, that I could pay ready money 600l. and the rest by 150l. per annum, to make up as much as will buy 50l. per annum, which I do, though I not worth above 500l. ready money, that he may think me to be a greater saver than I am. Here I took my leave of my father, who is going this morning to my uncle upon my aunt’s letter this week that he is not well and so needs my father’s help.
At noon home, and then with my Lady Batten, Mrs. Rebecca Allen, Mrs. Thompson, &c., two coaches of us, we went and saw “Bartholomew Fayre” acted very well, and so home again and staid at Sir W. Batten’s late, and so home to bed. This day Mr. Holden sent me a bever, which cost me 4l. 5s.

Starlings land
above me, greater
than my aches,
and mew.

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 27 June 1661.