Month: October 2015

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Surveillance

Up to Hinchingbroke, and there with Mr. Sheply did look all over the house, and I do, I confess, like well of the alteracions, and do like the staircase, but there being nothing to make the outside more regular and modern, I am not satisfied with it, but do think it to be too much to be laid out upon it. Thence with Sheply to Huntingdon to the Crown, and there did sit and talk, and eat a breakfast of cold roast beef, and so he to St. Ives Market, and I to Sir Robert Bernard’s for council, having a letter from my Lord Sandwich to that end. He do give it me with much kindness in appearance, and upon my desire do promise to put off my uncle’s admittance, if he can fairly, and upon the whole do make my case appear better to me than my cozen Roger did, but not so but that we are liable to much trouble, and that it will be best to come to an agreement if possible. With my mind here also pretty well to see things proceed so well I returned to Brampton, and spent the morning in looking over papers and getting my copies ready against to-morrow. So to dinner, and then to walk with my father and other business, when by and by comes in my uncle Thomas and his son Thomas to see us, and very calm they were and we to them. And after a short How do you, and drinking a cup of beer, they went away again, and so by and by my father and I to Mr. Phillips, and there discoursed with him in order to to-morrow’s business of the Court and getting several papers ready, when presently comes in my uncle Thomas and his son thither also, but finding us there I believe they were disappointed and so went forth again, and went to the house that Prior has lately bought of us (which was Barton’s) and there did make entry and forbade paying rent to us, as now I hear they have done everywhere else, and that that was their intent in coming to see us this day. I perceive most of the people that do deal with us begin to be afraid that their title to what they buy will not be good. Which troubled me also I confess a little, but I endeavoured to remove all as well as I could. Among other things they make me afraid that Barton was never admitted to that that my uncle bought of him, but I hope the contrary.
Thence home, and with my father took a melancholy walk to Portholme, seeing the country-maids milking their cows there, they being there now at grass, and to see with what mirth they come all home together in pomp with their milk, and sometimes they have musique go before them.
So back home again, and to supper, and in comes Piggott with a counterfeit bond which by agreement between us (though it be very just in itself) he has made, by which I shall lay claim to the interest of the mortgage money, and so waiting with much impatience and doubt the issue of to-morrow’s Court, I to bed, but hardly slept half an hour the whole night, my mind did so run with fears of to-morrow.

inching over the house like a staircase
the crow spent the morning
looking in on us
and our paper
our melancholy milk


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 13 October 1662.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Agimat

Yes, nothing as fine as snow sifts down on our mountains.
At least, not merely for our recreation or pleasure.
Frost, when it blisters those rare, chilled nights
at the end of the year, can be very beautiful—
for several incandescent hours, it outlines with silvery-green
the heads of cabbages that farmers thereafter must send
to the sorrow of composting bins.

A resinous musk once clothed the trees that you call
evergreen— now they wear something more stark,
more bitter. One morning not so long ago our children
woke from sleep to find the ashes of a faraway volcano
on their lashes. We marveled even more thereafter
at the precision of fate, at the impossibility of explaining
what we’d always lived with as mystery.

Only a few elders remain who know the patterns
for our rivers’ undulating forms. They can tap them
into your skin— say, on your shoulders, across
your collarbone— with only the soot
gathered by history’s ghosts. When you fall
back into the dust, the stones might remember
for you what you’ve forgotten.

[Agimat]

 

In response to Via Negativa: Beautification.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Beautification

(Lord’s day). Made myself fine with Captain Ferrers’s lace band, being lothe to wear my own new scallop, it is so fine; and, after the barber had done with us, to church, where I saw most of the gentry of the parish; among others, Mrs. Hanbury, a proper lady, and Mr. Bernard and his Lady, with her father, my late Lord St. John, who looks now like a very plain grave man. Mr. Wells preached a pretty good sermon, and they say he is pretty well in his witts again.
So home to dinner, and so to walk in the garden, and then to Church again, and so home, there coming several people about business, and among others Mr. Piggott, who gives me good assurance of his truth to me and our business, in which I am very much pleased, and tells me what my uncle Thomas said to him and what he designs, which (in fine) is to be admitted to the estate as well as we, which I must endeavour to oppose as well as I can.
So to supper, but my mind is so full of our business that I am no company at all, and then their drink do not please me, till I did send to Goody Stanks for some of her’s which is very small and fresh, with a little taste of wormewood, which ever after did please me very well. So after supper to bed, thinking of business, but every night getting my brother John to go up with me for discourse sake, while I was making unready.

Made myself fine
like a grave in the garden—
my estate which I lease
to wormwood
every night.


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 12 October 1662.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Permanent Marker:

proclaims the lettering on the grey
plastic barrel. I am told I can choose

from fine or chisel tip and an array
of basic colors; or from new
archival tints in copper, silver,

or gold. But how well will our bones
survive apocalypse, a century or two
buried then boiled in dark

denser than the heart of asphalt?
It is coming, that curtain wrought
finer than chain mail. When it drops

will the smallest shelter a little
longer, the ones that live now
anyway in the interstices?

From the likes of them we know
about palimpsest; what they dropped
or left as they fled. How long

the insect’s brittle, translucent shell
clung to the bark, long after the body’s
insides were blasted.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Transient.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Night country

Up betimes, and after a little breakfast, and a very poor one, like our supper, and such as I cannot feed on, because of my she-cozen Claxton’s gouty hands; and after Roger had carried me up and down his house and orchards, to show me them, I mounted, and rode to Huntingdon, and so to Brampton; where I found my father and two brothers, and Mr. Cooke, my mother and sister. So we are now all together, God knows when we shall be so again. I walked up and down the house and garden, and find my father’s alteracions very handsome. But not so but that there will be cause enough of doing more if ever I should come to live there, but it is, however, very well for a country being as any little thing in the country.
So to dinner, where there being nothing but a poor breast of mutton, and that ill-dressed, I was much displeased, there being Mr. Cooke there, who I invited to come over with my brother thither, and for whom I was concerned to make much of. I told my father and mother of it, and so had it very well mended for the time after, as long as I staid, though I am very glad to see them live so frugally.
But now to my business. I found my uncle Thomas come into the country, and do give out great words, and forwarns all our people of paying us rent, and gives out that he will invalidate the Will, it being but conditional, we paying debts and legacies, which we have not done, but I hope we shall yet go through well enough.
I settled to look over papers, and discourse of business against the Court till the evening; and then rode to Hinchingbroke (Will with me), and there to my Lady’s chamber and saw her, but, it being night, and my head full of business, staid not long, but drank a cup of ale below, and so home again, and to supper, and to bed, being not quiet in mind till I speak with Piggott, to see how his business goes, whose land lies mortgaged to my late uncle, but never taken up by him, and so I fear the heire at law will do it and that we cannot, but my design is to supplant him by pretending bonds as well as a mortgage for the same money, and so as executor have the benefit of the bonds.

we come to the country
in the country where no poor live

come into the country
and eat all our rent and debts

we have no papers but it being night
whose land is it


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 11 October 1662.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

When in doubt, keep moving

To a certain extent I am convinced
it is the making of things that might save us.

I am not saying there are certain types of lassitude
or pain, doubt or indeterminate sadness,

that will refuse to be governed. But isn’t it also true
we don’t really think when we drive the points

of ice picks through the dull silver bottoms of tin
cans— It’s like we’ve always known gravity

has the power to override numerous intentions.
This was before we even learned

of Sisyphus’ stumbling labors. Also
there are things whose rhythms dictate

their repetition, that don’t seem to need
explaining— Just watch how the cool water

from a pail runs in streams: how what’s parceled out
sieves over the still invisible, whose tendrils

have not even broken through the pericarp.
Sometimes it takes that long to soften the skin.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Ennui 2.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Transient

Up, and between eight and nine mounted again; but my feet so swelled with yesterday’s pain, that I could not get on my boots, which vexed me to the blood, but was forced to pay 4s. for a pair of old shoes of my landlord’s, and so rid in shoes to Cambridge; but the way so good that but for a little rain I had got very well thither, and set up at the Beare: and there being spied in the street passing through the town my cozen Angier came to me, and I must needs to his house, which I did; and there found Dr. Fairbrother, with a good dinner, a barrel of good oysters, a couple of lobsters, and wine. But, above all, telling me that this day there is a Congregation for the choice of some officers in the University, he after dinner gets me a gown, cap, and hood, and carries me to the Schooles, where Mr. Pepper, my brother’s tutor, and this day chosen Proctor, did appoint a M.A. to lead me into the Regent House, where I sat with them, and did [vote] by subscribing papers thus: “Ego Samuel Pepys eligo Magistrum Bernardum Skelton, (and which was more strange, my old schoolfellow and acquaintance, and who afterwards did take notice of me, and we spoke together), alterum e taxatoribus hujus Academiae in annum sequentem.” The like I did for one Biggs, for the other Taxor, and for other officers, as the Vice-Proctor (Mr. Covell), for Mr. Pepper, and which was the gentleman that did carry me into the Regent House.
This being done, and the Congregation dissolved by the Vice-Chancellor, I did with much content return to my Cozen Angier’s, being much pleased of doing this jobb of work, which I had long wished for and could never have had such a time as now to do it with so much ease.
Thence to Trinity Hall, and there staid a good while with Dr. John Pepys, who tells me that [his] brother Roger has gone out of town to keep a Court; and so I was forced to go to Impington, to take such advice as my old uncle and his son Claxton could give me. Which I did, and there supped and talked with them, but not of my business till by and by after supper comes in, unlooked for, my cozen Roger, with whom by and by I discoursed largely, and in short he gives me good counsel, but tells me plainly that it is my best way to study a composition with my uncle Thomas, for that law will not help us, and that it is but a folly to flatter ourselves, with which, though much to my trouble, yet I was well satisfied, because it told me what I am to trust to, and so to bed.

a little rain
the bear passing through town
needs no advice


Erasure haiku derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 10 October 1662.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Trellis

Aching to find the truth behind the constant
murmuring I seemed to hear all through childhood,
I’d stumble into the kitchen or living room late
at night— unable to sleep, sensing the change

in the tenor of conversations even through walls,
the way you’d feel a drop in temperature. Stale
smoke in the air, stubs in ashtrays; glasses
half-filled or half empty; collective hush,

bodies turning, someone taking me by the hand,
leading me back to bed. Even then I knew
what I know clearly now: that the hunger
to comprehend exceeded the desire

never to be orphaned, never to feel
as a thing severed from its roots.
In school, when girls whispered to each
other or behind their hands about how I

must have been adopted, I kept my dark
counsel, stilled my stoic face even
as something in me felt like a coil
retracting more tightly into itself.

Only decades later did I learn of biology’s
complications: how the body that first carried
and housed me was different from the body
that took me in, that fed and raised me—

And it’s thanks to that time hasn’t sewn up
wounds that glint like fruit in the far
reaches of the tree: whose breath, whose kiss,
whose clasp, all accidents faithful to the last.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Parts unknown.

Posted on by Jean Morris

Dahlias she said

en masse
they weren’t
her kind of flower
so cultivated stiff symmetrical
such vulgar uncoordinated colours
but one late bloom surprised her
with its strange translucent fingers
splayed to catch the sun
a fragile old soul suddenly
not like the dahlias
she’d had in mind
at all

Dahlias by Jean Morris

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

The house creates rain:

isn’t that the only explanation possible

for all the times someone wept, thereby
setting off a cascade of weeping? We rowed

from room to room, each in our own
teetering gondola, burnished

but breakable as glass. This is the way
the self becomes tired of weaving

bridge after bridge of sighs.
It wants to climb onto a dock

and slip into a crowd of revelers—
they’ll bear her away, dizzy

and uncertain, stumbling
into the plaza’s yellow light;

and all those wings,
reeling overhead.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Pear tree house.