Month: October 2016

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Life plan

When I croak, my neighbor said, they’ll know
where I keep my final instructions. I assume

she means arrangements for her disposal, a will—
who gets what: the orange cat, the gentle dog;

real estate, heirlooms, the painting
in the hallway. I wonder if she’s given

thought to where she’ll want to be laid to rest—
a crypt? six feet under? turned into ashes

someone will scatter over water or keep on the mantel
in an urn? I need to start thinking about whether there’s

enough time to put my own affairs in order, need to figure out
what kind of seed I’d like to lay down with in the soil.

Easy enough to miss the signs above the exit ramps branching off
the main highway, though some destinations are closer than imagined.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Funeral plan.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Funeral plan

Up and to my office, and there we sat a very full board all the morning upon some accounts of Mr. Gauden’s. Here happened something concerning my Will which Sir W. Batten would fain charge upon him, and I heard him mutter something against him of complaint for his often receiving people’s money to Sir G. Carteret, which displeased me much, but I will be even with him.
Thence to the Dolphin Tavern, and there Mr. Gauden did give us a great dinner. Here we had some discourse of the Queen’s being very sick, if not dead, the Duke and Duchess of York being sent for betimes this morning to come to White Hall to her.
So to my office and there late doing business, and so home to supper, my house being got mighty clean to my great content from top to toe, and so to bed, myself beginning to be in good condition of health also, but only my laying out so much money upon clothes for myself and wife and her closet troubles me.

in my will I mutter against money
but I will be dead and clean from top to toe

and laying out so much
on clothes for my close


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 17 October 1663.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Outcome

Up and to my office, where all the morning doing business, and at noon home to dinner, and then up to remove my chest and clothes up stairs to my new wardrobe, that I may have all my things above where I lie, and so by coach abroad with my wife, leaving her at my Lord’s till I went to the Tangier Committee, where very good discourse concerning the Articles of peace to be continued with Guyland, and thence took up my wife, and with her to her tailor’s, and then to the Exchange and to several places, and so home and to my office, where doing some business, and then home to supper and to bed.

up the morning stairs
to war with my wife
the tang of peace


Erasure haiku derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 16 October 1663.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Some facts about water

It takes numerous forms,
not just some flat expanse

where the moon looks at itself
from time to time: for instance,

a liter bottle of soda, a plastic tub
that used to hold a gallon of ice cream;

a tin drum in the yard, mouth open
to the rain gutter. They say hair

washed in this water is softer.
That a body sudsed in rain remembers

what it used to be before hurt.
Salt pours itself into a glass.

Sugar does the same. Water’s impervious
to their charms and keeps its own

counsel. Once, in a far-flung town,
a singer asked where she could get a sip

of water to cool her parched throat
before a performance; they led her

to a bathroom. I don’t know what
happened. I don’t know if the song

held more of the need to be quenched or if,
obedient, it took the shape of that moment.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Landscape gardener

Up, I bless God being now in pretty good condition, but cannot come to make natural stools yet; and going to enjoy my wife this morning, I had a very great pain in the end of my yard when my yard was stiff, as if I strained some nerve or vein, which was great pain to me.
So up and to the office, where we sat all the morning, and at noon dined at home, my head full of business, and after stepping abroad to buy a thing or two, compasses and snuffers for my wife, I returned to my office and there mighty busy till it was late, and so home well contented with the business that I had done this afternoon, and so to supper and to bed.

I cannot make natural
as if I rain

my head full of stepping thin
compasses of ice


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 15 October 1663.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Anatomy

Up and to my office, where all the morning, and part of it Sir J. Minnes spent, as he do every thing else, like a fool, reading the Anatomy of the body to me, but so sillily as to the making of me understand any thing that I was weary of him, and so I toward the ‘Change and met with Mr. Grant, and he and I to the Coffee-house, where I understand by him that Sir W. Petty and his vessel are coming, and the King intends to go to Portsmouth to meet it. Thence home and after dinner my wife and I, by Mr. Rawlinson’s conduct, to the Jewish Synagogue: where the men and boys in their vayles, and the women behind a lattice out of sight; and some things stand up, which I believe is their Law, in a press to which all coming in do bow; and at the putting on their vayles do say something, to which others that hear him do cry Amen, and the party do kiss his vayle. Their service all in a singing way, and in Hebrew. And anon their Laws that they take out of the press are carried by several men, four or five several burthens in all, and they do relieve one another; and whether it is that every one desires to have the carrying of it, I cannot tell, thus they carried it round about the room while such a service is singing. And in the end they had a prayer for the King, which they pronounced his name in Portugall; but the prayer, like the rest, in Hebrew. But, Lord! to see the disorder, laughing, sporting, and no attention, but confusion in all their service, more like brutes than people knowing the true God, would make a man forswear ever seeing them more and indeed I never did see so much, or could have imagined there had been any religion in the whole world so absurdly performed as this. Away thence with my mind strongly disturbed with them, by coach and set down my wife in Westminster Hall, and I to White Hall, and there the Tangier Committee met, but the Duke and the Africa Committee meeting in our room, Sir G. Carteret; Sir W. Compton, Mr. Coventry, Sir W. Rider, Cuttance and myself met in another room, with chairs set in form but no table, and there we had very fine discourses of the business of the fitness to keep Sally, and also of the terms of our King’s paying the Portugees that deserted their house at Tangier, which did much please me, and so to fetch my wife, and so to the New Exchange about her things, and called at Thomas Pepys the turner’s and bought something there, and so home to supper and to bed, after I had been a good while with Sir W. Pen, railing and speaking freely our minds against Sir W. Batten and Sir J. Minnes, but no more than the folly of one and the knavery of the other do deserve.

all the anatomy of the body out of sight
to the kiss the press the every
desire singing

but like people knowing the true God
we imagine a whole world absurdly set down
in our room


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 14 October 1663.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Unprotected, the elements acquire a patina

After the storm we threw spoiled food away then bought bread and milk,
a tray of eggs, their shells flecked with brown and copper—

A week later at the fair, under a deep blue sky, an artisan
showed us how he beat a sheet into an airy bangle of copper—

And tonight we looked up at the floodlit moon
to marvel at its largeness, its closeness, its copper—

Then we read how the Great Barrier Reef looks from space, bleached
with paleness from its dying; no more algae blooming coral—

While in the apiary, the wax moth and hive beetle inch closer.
Most bees are gone but the halls are still dusted with copper—

We’re here, my love, but only tenuously. I weep sometimes at the thought
of all we can’t control; how the very air burnishes the heart’s copper.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

After the ecstasy, the laundry?

And so rose in the morning in perfect good ease, but only strain I put myself to shit, more than I needed. But continued all the morning well, and in the afternoon had a natural easily and dry stoole, the first I have had these five days or six, for which God be praised, and so am likely to continue well, observing for the time to come when any of this pain comes again
1. To begin to keep myself as warm as I can.
2. Strain as little as ever I can backwards, remembering that my pain will come by and by, though in the very straining I do not feel it.
3. Either by physic forward or by clyster backward or both ways to get an easy and plentiful going to stool and breaking of wind.
4. To begin to suspect my health immediately when I begin to become costive and bound, and by all means to keep my body loose, and that to obtain presently after I find myself going the contrary.
This morning at the office, and at noon with Creed to the Exchange, where much business, but, Lord! how my heart, though I know not reason for it, began to doubt myself, after I saw Stint, Field’s one-eyed solicitor, though I know not any thing that they are doing, or that they endeavour any thing further against us in the business till the terme.
Home, and Creed with me to dinner, and after dinner John Cole, my old friend, came to see and speak with me about a friend. I find him ingenious, but more and more discern his city pedantry; but however, I will endeavour to have his company now and then, for that he knows much of the temper of the City, and is able to acquaint therein as much as most young men, being of large acquaintance, and himself, I think, somewhat unsatisfied with the present state of things at Court and in the Church.
Then to the office, and there busy till late, and so home to my wife, with some ease and pleasure that I hope to be able to follow my business again, which by God’s leave I am resolved to return to with more and more eagerness. I find at Court, that either the King is doubtfull of some disturbance, or else would seem so (and I have reason to hope it is no worse), by his commanding all commanders of castles, &c., to repair to their charges; and mustering the Guards the other day himself, where he found reason to dislike their condition to my Lord Gerard, finding so many absent men, or dead pays.
My Lady Castlemaine, I hear, is in as great favour as ever, and the King supped with her the very first night he came from Bath.
And last night and the night before supped with her; when there being a chine of beef to roast, and the tide rising into their kitchen that it could not be roasted there, and the cook telling her of it, she answered, “Zounds! she must set the house on fire but it should be roasted!” So it was carried to Mrs. Sarah’s husband’s, and there it was roasted.
So home to supper and to bed, being mightily pleased with all my house and my red chamber, where my wife and I intend constantly to lie, and the having of our dressing room and mayds close by us without any interfering or trouble.

will I keep my body
after I find myself

I know no reason for my one-eyed
solicitor and his pedantry

will I be present and able
to follow my business

like the night tide rising
into the kitchen


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 13 October 1663.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Refuse Ghazal

The woman begs to cover her husband’s body
with a blanket, but the police refuse—

Their daughter sits on the curb, wailing into her hands.
Someone will try to pull her away, say Shh; she will refuse.

A train whistle cuts through the rain. Leaves quiver and mix
with shadows in the alley— the only witnesses that won’t refuse.

Everyone else averts their eyes: the duck egg vendor, the drunk,
men out for a smoke; late night owls at the bar. All refuse.

Mid-October, near dawn. The pedicabs ghost away. Tinny rattle,
gravel spray. How many deaths as of today? The mind wants to refuse

these horrors. The MO’s like this: two masked men on a motorbike ride
up to their target. Shots ring out. Every day, bodies pile up like refuse.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Posted on by Kristin Berkey-Abbott

Oracles

mediums; the ones who never deign to tell us anything
about that future whose smell we already know.
“Always, the women get their hands dirty” by Luisa Igloria

The wind changes direction, and we smell
the future, just a hint of iron
underneath the scent of oyster
beds at low tide.

I think of ancient ancestors
who could forecast the week’s weather
based on the wanderings
of each cloud. But I consult
the oracles through my computer.

My oracles will be silenced
tonight. The wind howls
around my closed hurricane shutters.
I can smell the distant miseries
that this storm has folded
into itself, the despair that threatens
to fill the house with sorrow.
I add extra spices to the pot of stew,
some peppers dried during a distant harvest.

Although I still have electricity, I light
the candles and turn off
every switch. I fill the lamps with oil.
I could live forever in this light
that hides the dust intent on colonizing
every surface.

I give the stew one last stir and tuck
towels at every entrance. I rock
in the chair carved long ago for a pregnant
bride. I open the antique
prayer book and let the ancient rhythms
cast their spell.