July 2013 – Page 3 – Via Negativa

July 23, 2013May 30, 2016 by Dave Bonta

Venison

We sat at the office this morning, Sir W. Batten and Mr. Pett being upon a survey to Chatham. This morning I sent my wife to my father’s and he is to give me 5l. worth of pewter. After we rose at the office, I went to my father’s, where my Uncle Fenner and all his crew and Captain Holland and his wife and my wife were at dinner at a venison pasty of the venison that I did give my mother the other night.
I did this time show so much coldness to W. Joyce that I believe all the table took notice of it.
After that to Westminster about my Lord’s business and so home, my Lord having not been well these two or three days, and I hear that Mr. Barnwell at Hinchinbroke is fallen sick again. Home and to bed.

We chat of fat venison,
of that mother the other table took.
We sin and so fall sick.

~or~

I sent my wife a pewter rose,
a venison pasty—
so much cold joy we fall sick.

Erasure poems derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 20 July 1660.

July 23, 2013 by Dave Bonta

Sea Kale

I’m currently camping in Scotland, whence the lack of new blog posts. In the meantime, here’s a photo of some sea kale on a pebbly beach on the south coast of England, which I visited briefly eight days ago. The new leaves were surprisingly mild and tasty raw. Continue reading “Sea Kale”

July 22, 2013 by Luisa A. Igloria

Poem for a Landscape at the End of Time

You don’t know the depths made fierce
by fire and water; you don’t hear

the pillars crumble, the great Tortoise of Heaven
and the sounds she makes as she awakens. Not even

emperors, great statesmen, soldiers, movie stars,
moguls, philosophers, judges and lawmen

can forestall the hour— A gong
sounds, and the echo of that song

floods the hollows of its shell. All
drown and tremble, as old tales foretell.

In response to Via Negativa: Poem for Display in an Inaccessible Location.

July 21, 2013September 17, 2015 by Luisa A. Igloria

[poem removed by author]

In response to Via Negativa: Poem for Display in a Vacant Lot.

July 20, 2013July 21, 2013 by Luisa A. Igloria

Poem for Passing Encounters at the Grocery Checkout Aisle

after D. Bonta’s “Poem for Display at a Police Checkpoint”

The cashier sporting a nose ring and Kiss Everlasting French Fake Nails cracks her gum every few seconds; her high ponytail bobs as she flips through the a three-ring binder and its plastic-covered product list pages. Finally she asks, What’s that?— pointing to the 4 small purple potatoes I’ve placed on the counter. After I tell her and she rings me up, the young man— most likely a high school or college student working through the summer— bags my purchases. Paper or plastic? he asks, and I say Paper to Jihad, for that is what his name tag says. And I know that his name might mean either a holy war or the struggle of believers in Islam to fulfill their religious duties or to make believers out of their enemies. But I do not think there are any mujahideen here, no children running through the frozen food section with homemade bombs strapped under their vests. A couple of men are buying lottery tickets in the corner, and it’s true, no one ever seems to buy any of the exotic imported fruit marked at ridiculous prices. The deeply sun-tanned man in the aisle next to us hefts two six-packs of Dos Equis into his cart, and whistles as he moves to the exit. When he passes I read Alma y Luz tattooed with roses on his right bicep. Behind me, a couple of local firefighters are waiting their turn with a cart full of pork spareribs, lean ground beef, and barbeque sauce. One of them picks out a foil-covered piece of candy from the rack near the gum and magazines. What? he says to his companion; I love Cadbury Creme Eggs. And his friend says Whatever, man and laughs.

In response to Via Negativa: Poem for Display at a Police Checkpoint.

July 19, 2013July 21, 2013 by Luisa A. Igloria

Boy

Flickering in the light of the neighbor’s
surveillance camera, you see this boy

pulling the trash bin away from the curb. He is
thirteen, it is ten in the morning, he is a boy

at home with his mother and brother in a blue
house with a porch and a screen door. This boy

doesn’t say anything I can hear, because I am looking
at the last moments of his life on tape: this boy,

from this distance— from beyond frame after frame and from
beyond his life because now he is dead. Around this boy,

what was the quality of the light that morning? Was it
warm or musky like the silk of corn, was it milky? This boy,

and this other boy who walked to the corner convenience store
for a can of soda and a bag of sweets: under his hood, this boy—

And the boy that, surely, once in his life, the white
man brandishing the gun must have been? Only a boy,

each of them. Black face, sepia-tinted body stepping from
shadow into warm light: how does he become less than a boy?

On camera, two frantic dogs run circles around the man
and the boy; you might hear the voice of the boy

who pleads for his life. Play it again, and still it is the same:
see the man lunge forward, raise his arm, take aim at the boy.

In response to small stone (244).

July 19, 2013May 30, 2016 by Dave Bonta

In/formal

I did lie late a-bed. I and my wife by water, landed her at Whitefriars with her boy with an iron of our new range which is already broke and my wife will have changed, and many other things she has to buy with the help of my father to-day.
I to my Lord and found him in bed. This day I received my commission to swear people the oath of allegiance and supremacy delivered me by my Lord.
After talk with my Lord I went to Westminster Hall, where I took Mr. Michell and his wife, and Mrs. Murford we sent for afterwards, to the Dog Tavern, where I did give them a dish of anchovies and olives and paid for all, and did talk of our old discourse when we did use to talk of the King, in the time of the Rump, privately; after that to the Admiralty Office, in White Hall, where I staid and writ my last observations for these four days last past.
Great talk of the difference between the Episcopal and Presbyterian Clergy, but I believe it will come to nothing. So home and to bed.

I talk with my dog
where I talk to the king:
privately.
Between home and bed.

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 19 July 1660.

July 18, 2013July 18, 2013 by Luisa A. Igloria

By Hand

This was the way we wrought
the thing the moment needed:

wood shaved down to level
under a carpenter’s plane,

tallow thickened around
a plumb line; stitches

running a sail, a pair
of sleeves and pantaloons,

a knitted shape
to parry the wind

to hold or hurry
a body out the door.

In response to Via Negativa: Sic Transit.

July 18, 2013May 30, 2016 by Dave Bonta

Surgery

This morning the carpenter made an end of my door out of my chamber upon the leads. This morning we met at the office: I dined at my house in Seething Lane, and after that, going about 4 o’clock to Westminster, I met with Mr. Carter and Mr. Cooke coming to see me in a coach, and so I returned home.
I did also meet with Mr. Pierce, the surgeon, with a porter with him, with a barrel of Lemons, which my man Burr sends me from sea.
I took all these people home to my house and did give them some drink, and after them comes Mr. Sheply, and after a little stay we all went by water to Westminster as far as the New Exchange.
Thence to my Lord about business, and being in talk in comes one with half a buck from Hinchinbroke, and it smelling a little strong my Lord did give it me (though it was as good as any could be).
I did carry it to my mother, where I had not been a great while, and indeed had no great mind to go, because my father did lay upon me continually to do him a kindness at the Wardrobe, which I could not do because of my own business being so fresh with my Lord. But my father was not at home, and so I did leave the venison with her to dispose of as she pleased. After that home, where W. Hewer now was, and did lie this night with us, the first night.
My mind very quiet, only a little trouble I have for the great debts which I have still upon me to the Secretary, Mr. Kipps, and Mr. Spong for my patent.

This morning the carpenter
made an end of my door,
this morning the surgeon
with a barrel of lemons
went to the exchange
and broke me where
I had not been, so fresh
was the night within me.

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 18 July 1660. (This is, incidentally, my 200th erasure of Pepys.)

July 17, 2013July 17, 2013 by Luisa A. Igloria

Why appropriation is not necessarily the same as mastery

The child wants to know the names of all the herbs and spices on the shelf: those roots floating in a jar like a stunted man treading water, those dried leaves twisted carelessly with twine and left in the kitchen drawer.

Sounds made in a different tongue are often so enchanting— at the start, they are like rain falling, plinking over looped chains in the garden.

Remember that things have names. It is important to know that one thing will not always substitute for another. The beautiful berry leaves a dark stain on the tongue, a body lifeless in its bed.

Remember that a syllable can be slighter than an eyelash. The way it flicks up or down can mean a question, or your chin.

The violinist recounts a fairy tale of a boy kept years with others like him in captivity. They buff the witch’s floors to the sheen of glass, gather the fine amber dust in the air to bake into bread, the dewdrops in the hearts of roses to feed her unslakeable thirst.

Later, trying to remember, the one bewitched says phrases over and over. But there is no one there to catch his mistakes, to help him put the pieces back together.

And you, you’ve been such a good student of that epistemology, of thinking-into-being: don’t you know that spells are made of words?

Remember too: not all saying is true.

I have heard another story: how the Pont de l’Archevêché groans with the weight of hundreds of padlocks, etched with promises made to eternity. What happens when the language of the promise is wrong, when the word for “expensive” is used instead of “love?”

Do you glimpse my original shape beneath this overlay of form? The rain falls and falls over the village. The tailor sews in his shop, the fiddler plays a tune by the fire.

Arrival is recognition, which brings a catch in the throat. We weep when words break through a surface. We weep when we have seen ourselves.

In response to Via Negativa: Rain House.