Via Negativa

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

Field Guide to Street Festivals

river in November light between bare woods and mountain

They come together in spring or summer, 
recalling the old timbre of brass bands, 

the vision of younger sisters waking at dawn 
to put on majorette's costumes and high boots. 

Their towns' most handsome will smile and wave 
from flower-bedecked floats, and queens touch 

the edges of butterfly sleeves, lightly holding 
the pearl of a smile. Though now in other climes, 

neither frost nor sun dampen the shine of chrome 
nor the flourish of cornets and euphoniums. Saints 

dressed as children or carpenters, farmers or 
fishermen are borne aloft in the streets, gems 

of paste winking from foil-covered crowns. Rice 
grains turned into petals dyed yellow and green 

curtain each window looking out— not over fields 
and volcanoes but train tracks and city skylines.

April 27, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Mob rule

(Sunday). Sir W. Pen got trimmed before me, and so took the coach to Portsmouth to wait on my Lord Steward to church, and sent the coach for me back again. So I rode to church, and met my Lord Chamberlain upon the walls of the garrison, who owned and spoke to me. I followed him in the crowd of gallants through the Queen’s lodgings to chappell; the rooms being all rarely furnished, and escaped hardly being set on fire yesterday. At chappell we had a most excellent and eloquent sermon. And here I spoke and saluted Mrs. Pierce, but being in haste could not learn of her where her lodgings are, which vexes me. Thence took Ned Pickering to dinner with us, and the two Marshes, father and Son, dined with us, and very merry. After dinner Sir W. Batten and I, the Doctor, and Ned Pickering by coach to the Yard, and there on board the Swallow in the dock hear our navy chaplain preach a sad sermon, full of nonsense and false Latin; but prayed for the Right Honourable the principal officers. After sermon took him to Mr. Tippets’s to drink a glass of wine, and so at 4 back again by coach to Portsmouth, and then visited the Mayor, Mr. Timbrell, our anchor-smith, who showed us the present they have for the Queen; which is a salt-sellar of silver, the walls christall, with four eagles and four greyhounds standing up at the top to bear up a dish; which indeed is one of the neatest pieces of plate that ever I saw, and the case is very pretty also.
This evening came a merchantman in the harbour, which we hired at London to carry horses to Portugall; but, Lord! what running there was to the seaside to hear what news, thinking it had come from the Queen. In the evening Sir George, Sir W. Pen and I walked round the walls, and thence we two with the Doctor to the yard, and so to supper and to bed.

war rode the crowd
into fire

a sad sermon
full of false Latin

for mouth and timbrel
eagle and hound

a dish of red sea
round the walls

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 27 April 1662.

April 26, 2025April 26, 2025 by Luisa A. Igloria

Wearing the Skin

Sometimes I hum as I wield the knife

over the rind of a potato, over the coarse

grain holding in the sweet gold of a squash.

Some mornings when I wake and feel the old 

familiar tendrils of that unshakeable 

sadness brush against my cheeks, I want 

to curl back into the shape of my own 

skin. It takes tenderness to peel away 

what held you so long in the dark. 

And so, much as I admire the self-

containment of the daikon, also 

I can't help loving how it's blushed 

with the palest stroke of green.

April 26, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Undeadly

Sir George and I, and his clerk Mr. Stephens, and Mr. Holt our guide, over to Gosport; and so rode to Southampton. In our way, besides my Lord Southampton’s parks and lands, which in one view we could see 6,000l. per annum, we observed a little church-yard, where the graves are accustomed to be all sowed with sage. At Southampton we went to the Mayor’s and there dined, and had sturgeon of their own catching the last week, which do not happen in twenty years, and it was well ordered. They brought us also some caveare, which I attempted to order, but all to no purpose, for they had neither given it salt enough, nor are the seedes of the roe broke, but are all in berryes. The towne is one most gallant street, and is walled round with stone, &c., and Bevis’s picture upon one of the gates; many old walls of religious houses, and the key, well worth seeing. After dinner to horse again, being in nothing troubled but the badness of my hat, which I borrowed to save my beaver. Home by night and wrote letters to London, and so with Sir W. Pen to the Dock to bed.

in my little grave I am
not tempted to purpose

neither salt nor seed
hero to one stone

and one old horse
which I borrow by night

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 26 April 1662.

April 25, 2025April 25, 2025 by Luisa A. Igloria

Achievement

The wheel and the chariot. The lever,

the nail, the spirit level. That moment

when the earth was unseated as center 

of the universe, after who knows how  

many scientists were publicly condemned 

for pointing out the sun. The feather 

and the ball, dropping at the same rate 

due to gravity. The compass and the caravelle,

navigation by the stars. The printing press,

moveable type, sewing needles. Pasteurized 

milk and clean hands in the surgery. With each 

discovery, how we then proclaimed a new 

pinnacle of human success. Pyramids and 

pagodas, spices and sugar; lower death 

rates, cures for most things except

the common cold, avarice, cruelty, and 

ego. Who wants the gold medal at the end 

of this race? The athlete crumples onto

concrete in a spasm of joy and pain.

April 25, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Doctoring

All the morning at Portsmouth, at the Pay, and then to dinner, and again to the Pay; and at night got the Doctor to go lie with me, and much pleased with his company; but I was much troubled in my eyes, by reason of the healths I have this day been forced to drink.

morning a mouth
and night the doctor
to ease my eyes
I have a drink

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 25 April 1662.

April 25, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Ticker

Up and to Sir G. Carteret’s lodgings at Mrs. Stephens’s, where we keep our table all the time we are here. Thence all of us to the Pay-house; but the books not being ready, we went to church to the lecture, where there was my Lord Ormond and Manchester, and much London company, though not so much as I expected. Here we had a very good sermon upon this text: “In love serving one another;” which pleased me very well. No news of the Queen at all. So to dinner; and then to the Pay all the afternoon. Then W. Pen and I walked to the King’s Yard, and there lay at Mr. Tippets’s, where exceeding well treated.

I keep time
in my chest

no love serving
the soft afternoon

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 24 April 1662.

April 24, 2025April 24, 2025 by Luisa A. Igloria

Stream

Look at the birds of the air...
                          ~ Matthew 6:26 



They do not sow and neither 
                            do they 

      reap   Nor can they 
                         add or take away 

from a single 
              hour of my life 

      Yet they 
               clock the seasons and make

on the sky a moving 
                    wonderment of letters

      A language of such 
                         quick punctuation

I understand 
             is the nature of belief


One wing tilts
               The river follows

April 23, 2025April 23, 2025 by Luisa A. Igloria

Vertical Transmission

 
Meaning through your mother's  
        bloodstream 
       
                    at birth
                              Or through lactation

Mouth closed around a notch
        a node 
               
               to catch warm
      
                       milky spurt 

But now you are of 
               an age 
                        with scant 

                   or nonexistent childhood
records 

        When did your skin stipple
           with so much burn and loneliness
              

How many years
        
               did you see that double-stranded

shadow 
       helix behind closed lids

This condition 
                supposed to be endemic

in your part of the world
 
                           Spherical and enveloped
             Cells flood the brick-colored organ  

          Your hands helpless against the  
      flutter  
 
              as if some otherworldly 
force came nightly to feast

                            Then in the morning 
           the thing grown back

And you
        bound to the rock 

                           Your own eternal
                     observer

April 23, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Clearing

Up early, and to Petersfield, and there dined well; and thence got a countryman to guide us by Havant, to avoid going through the Forest; but he carried us much out of the way, and upon our coming we sent away an express to Sir W. Batten to stop his coming, which I did project to make good my oath, that my wife should come if any of our wives came, which my Lady Batten did intend to do with her husband. The Doctor and I lay together at Wiard’s, the chyrurgeon’s, in Portsmouth, his wife a very pretty woman. We lay very well and merrily; in the morning, concluding him to be of the eldest blood and house of the Clerkes, because that all the fleas came to him and not to me.

a field in the forest

the press of her mouth

a well of the eldest blood

me and not me

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 23 April 1662.