Month: February 2015

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Internal dialogue

(Lord’s day). My cold being increased, I staid at home all day, pleasing myself with my dining-room, now graced with pictures, and reading of Dr. Fuller’s “Worthys.” So I spent the day, and at night comes Sir W. Pen and supped and talked with me. This day by God’s mercy I am 29 years of age, and in very good health, and like to live and get an estate; and if I have a heart to be contented, I think I may reckon myself as happy a man as any is in the world, for which God be praised. So to prayers and to bed.

Home all day
with my pent-up talk,
this ear like a state
and if I have ink
I reckon myself a world.


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 23 February 1661/62.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Hatchery

At the office busy all the morning, and thence to dinner to my Lady Sandwich’s, and thence with Mr. Moore to our Attorney, Wellpoole’s, and there found that Godfry has basely taken out a judgment against us for the 40l., for which I am vexed. And thence to buy a pair of stands and a hanging shelf for my wife’s chamber, and so home, and thither came Mr. Savill with the pictures, and we hung them up in our dining-room. It comes now to appear very handsome with all my pictures.
This evening I wrote letters to my father; among other things acquainting him with the unhappy accident which hath happened lately to my Lord of Dorset’s two oldest sons, who, with two Belasses and one Squire Wentworth, were lately apprehended for killing and robbing of a tanner about Newington on Wednesday last, and are all now in Newgate. I am much troubled for it, and for the grief and disgrace it brings to their familys and friends. After this, having got a very great cold, I got something warm to-night, and so to bed.

a busy pool—
the fry appear so happy
to kill their friends


Erasure haiku derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 22 February 1661/62.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

House Arrest

This entry is part 20 of 28 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Winter 2014-15

 

Weeks of rain or snow or any long stretch of bad weather
make, of course, for cabin fever. And cabin fever breeds
all kinds of nostalgia, because most likely the warmth
we seek cannot be completely delivered by the down-
filled comforter or the lotion-lined boucle socks
bought at the drugstore post-Christmas sale. To fill
the canyon-like longing in the gut is a marathon endeavor,
requiring several box sets of movies and a matching hunger.
Not only do we want to eat everything in sight, but first
fry it in fat, then toss in some salt and sugar. We’ll want
bowls of starch: rice, mashed potato, mac and cheese, pierogis,
Shanghai style dumplings, hot dan-dan noodles, chili cheese fries
till snot runs down our faces. Then we’ll feel gross and fat
and rueful, anxious for the first sign of clearing skies,
for icicles to break off the eaves and stab with vigor
into the tofu-like wasteland that used to be a yard.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Tip for travelers

All the morning putting things in my house in order, and packing up glass to send into the country to my father, and books to my brother John, and then to my Lord Crew’s to dinner; and thence to Mr. Lewes Philip’s chamber, and there at noon with him for business, and received 80l. upon Jaspar Trice’s account, and so home with it, and so to my chamber for all this evening, and then to bed.

Things I use
in a glass country:
lips for business
and rice for a bed.


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 21 February 1661/62.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

At sunset

All the morning putting things in my house in order, and packing up glass to send into the country to my father, and books to my brother John, and then to my Lord Crew’s to dinner; and thence to Mr. Lewes Philip’s chamber, and there at noon with him for business, and received 80l. upon Jaspar Trice’s account, and so home with it, and so to my chamber for all this evening, and then to bed.

packing up glass
to send into the country—
an amber evening


Erasure haiku derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 21 February 1661/62.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Enclosure

This morning came Mr. Child to see me, and set me something to my Theorbo, and by and by come letters from Tangier from my Lord, telling me how, upon a great defete given to the Portuguese there by the Moors, he had put in 300 men into the town, and so he is in possession, of which we are very glad, because now the Spaniard’s designs of hindering our getting the place are frustrated. I went with the letter inclosed to my Lord Chancellor to the House of Lords, and did give it him in the House. And thence to the Wardrobe with my Ladys, and there could not stay dinner, but went by promise to Mr. Savill’s, and there sat the first time for my picture in little, which pleaseth me well. So to the office till night and then home.

Morning on the moor:
the town is in possession
of no place, enclosed it
and could not stay
the night.


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 20 February 1661/62.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Not One or the Other but Other

I too dislike it— having it pointed out
that my books are nowhere in the Literature or Poetry section
of Barnes and Noble (if they were, they’d be somewhere
between Horace or Henry James and James Joyce)—

and perhaps it would be a good idea to let the purchasing
department know, except they would have to commit
to only a few copies; you know, because of the demographic
for this kind of readership, and the no

return policy for unsold copies—
And did I tell you about the time I received
a rejection letter saying “We’re sorry but your poems
just seem very (almost too?) American” (by which

I was made to understand there must have been
some confusion because wait with this kind of a surname
shouldn’t I have been writing instead about exile
and villages undressed by a hurricane, or dark-haired

mail order brides who wind up in the county morgue?
But I too thought I was writing about other, larger things
even when I slipped a river stone into a line, or a chorus
of frogs and the burnt smell of certain mornings—

And I had hoped to make art more than the taste of guilt
or reparation, more than the plea to take seriously
my fear of oblivion, here in the space between the margins
where white grows whiter and whiter, and dark is always darker.

— after Tony Hoagland’s “Write Whiter”

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Milk and Honey

She offers a photograph of herself as a young war bride, smiling and holding on to the railing of the ship minutes before they disembarked. In the background, the rust-red pylons of the famous bridge. She’s never left home before this time, except to go into town for doctor visits, or to find a dress for her sister’s wedding. She is a farmer’s daughter, but she’s taught herself stenography, a little bookkeeping. She sews her own clothes, has learned a bit of tailoring. At this time, she has not yet learned the names of trees in this new world. And it is nearly winter, so their branches rattle along the avenue. This is her welcome parade: no flags of green, the wind from the bay whipping her cotton skirt around her knees; gulls fighting for scraps on the pier. She laughs at the memory of a phrase she’d heard: milk and honey, they’d said. The streets don’t run with it. And inside the brick houses with heavy drapes, women like her scrubbed the heart of the wood with vinegar and water, their accents falling on tile when no one was listening.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Armchair Activist.