Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
Clouds hide the top of Ice Mountain
and it looks like a real mountain again,
no turbines in sight.
Below, the ugly subdivision
where a black family once woke
to a burning cross.
I find a shed antler on the powerline,
a twisted Y like the bottom half
of a stick figure.
In the morning to my Lord’s, and there dined with my Lady, and after dinner with Mr. Creed and Captain Ferrers to the Theatre to see “The Chances,” and after that to the Cock alehouse, where we had a harp and viallin played to us, and so home by coach to Sir W. Batten’s, who seems so inquisitive when my house will be made an end of that I am troubled to go thither. So home with some trouble in my mind about it.
In the morning din,
the cock had a harp and violin
played to an inquisitive hen-house end:
to go within.
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 27 April 1661.
A small cloud on the cliff
above the railroad tracks—
the shadbush is in bloom.
As I drive up the hollow on
our one-lane road, a red-tailed hawk
passes me going down.
All the spring ephemerals are emerging,
leaves wrinkled and damp
like freshly pitched tents.
At the office all the morning, and at noon dined by myself at home on a piece of meat from the cook’s.
And so at home all the afternoon with my workmen, and at night to bed, having some thoughts to order my business so as to go to Portsmouth the next week with Sir Robert Slingsby.
at noon a piece of meat
at night a mouth
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 26 April 1661.
Accost the moon as it scuds
across the fields.
Brake hard
against the surf.
Chain the bike to the back gate, then
come in and take off your shoes.
Don’t wake the sleeping parakeet
swinging in its cage.
Every other object in the room
conceals a flaw.
Find each, and you shall have
succeeded where no one else has.
Gongs sound
a muffled music;
heard through burlap
thicknesses of air,
it’s no longer obvious
they’re brass with jawbone handles.
Joss sticks in the alcove
sweeten the air.
Kindness, they remind,
is all.
Long as
the days might be,
memory is
longer by far.
Nothing goes unpunished; not
even the skin around a callus;
oversight is merely time’s way
of staging an intermission.
Pillow books catch
the days’ unsaid intentions,
questions that we’ll mull over
in the afterward.
Rouged by heat, I like when our
foreheads touch lightly after love.
Stay with me and pretend
ours is a house on stilts anchored
to water. We’ll watch
the colors change,
undo their drafts,
revise what came before.
Voyage is a noun
or verb;
what is the grammar
of the states between the two?
Exactitude is not possible;
I’ve heard it said we
yearn because we’re born
into a chain of misunderstandings:
zoetropes flash brightly lit
illusions of static pictures moving.
In response to Via Negativa: Insomniac's to-do list.
Kept closer
than friends,
kept sharp
in surveillance—
kept in
check
so a plot
never
thickens
with foes.
In response to Via Negativa: Spring appetites.
All the morning with my workmen with great pleasure to see them near coming to an end. At noon Mr. Moore and I went to an Ordinary at the King’s Head in Towre Street, and there had a dirty dinner. Afterwards home and having done some business with him, in comes Mr. Sheply and Pierce the surgeon, and they and I to the Mitre and there staid a while and drank, and so home and after a little reading to bed.
A great ear on
an ordinary head
had some business
with the urge to be.
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 25 April 1661.
I eat my enemies by the handful:
spicy leaves of the invasive
garlic mustard.
Back home, I strip
in front of the mirror,
checking for ticks.
A squirrel walks past the window
with bulging cheeks,
carrying one of her young.
Everything reduces to one country, one town, one night
in a rain that falls on the grass like a halo of quills.
Think of it: how blades of grass, their green, their lush
underlining are no match for a bed like a halo of quills.
Confess through the shadowed grille of your deepest heart:
there are wounds not yet healed of their halo of quills.
In gold-leafed scrolls and triptychs, trace with your finger
the figures of saints and martyrs with their halo of quills.
Just before I drop off to sleep, a tremor shakes my frame—
as if my leg or hand brushed against a halo of quills.
Enter my dreams like rain, like the tipped echo
of an echo deflecting from points in a halo of quills.
In response to Via Negativa: In hepatica time.
Waked in the morning with my head in a sad taking through the last night’s drink, which I am very sorry for; so rose and went out with Mr. Creed to drink our morning draft, which he did give me in chocolate to settle my stomach. And after that I to my wife, who lay with Mrs. Frankelyn at the next door to Mrs. Hunt’s.
And they were ready, and so I took them up in a coach, and carried the ladies to Paul’s, and there set her down, and so my wife and I home, and I to the office.
That being done my wife and I went to dinner to Sir W. Batten, and all our talk about the happy conclusion of these last solemnities.
After dinner home, and advised with my wife about ordering things in my house, and then she went away to my father’s to lie, and I staid with my workmen, who do please me very well with their work.
At night, set myself to write down these three days’ diary, and while I am about it, I hear the noise of the chambers, and other things of the fire-works, which are now playing upon the Thames before the King; and I wish myself with them, being sorry not to see them.
So to bed.
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 24 April 1661.