Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
So little it takes:
scent of a white unfurling
at the end of a stem.
A cabbage leaf to tent
a new mother’s tender breast.
That handful of lights pulsing
in soft smudge above pine
needle mulch. From the dark
field above, what we call stars:
far away but sure of themselves.
From what symposium on what
riverbank did you make your way
to open like a book provisioned
for reading, like a moon magnified
to copper before it split in two
and each rolled toward the spell
of their yoked nostalgias? A scapular
has two faces of rough wool: one
to wear on the chest, the other
on the back. Do you see how,
by nature, it trains the body
in the middle toward ballast,
how it spins the compass
that turns around itself?
All day before dinner with Creed, talking of many things, among others, of my Lord’s going so often to Chelsy, and he, without my speaking much, do tell me that his daughters do perceive all, and do hate the place, and the young woman there, Mrs. Betty Becke; for my Lord, who sent them thither only for a disguise for his going thither, will come under pretence to see them, and pack them out of doors to the Parke, and stay behind with her; but now the young ladies are gone to their mother to Kensington.
To dinner, and after dinner till 10 at night in my study writing of my old broken office notes in shorthand all in one book, till my eyes did ake ready to drop out. So home to supper and to bed.
I am going without speaking
the doors to the park sing old
broken notes
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 8 June 1664.
Up and to the office (having by my going by water without any thing upon my legs yesterday got some pain upon me again), where all the morning. At noon a little to the ‘Change, and thence home to dinner, my wife being ill still in bed. Thence to the office, where busy all the afternoon till 9 at night, and so home to my wife, to supper, and to bed.
O my legs
be still
be off to my wife
to bed
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 7 June 1664.
Today you learn this word
for that deeper information
channel keeping tabs on the body
from within— Like an eye
inside the operating system,
like a lever beneath the million
levers of the machine. All
day long their subtle ticking:
imagine brain-not-brain-only,
the wash from one emotion
to the next; how much it takes
to move one finger in one hand,
then two, then five; to rise
from bed to window and pull
the curtains back, for light
to buoy and flood the cell.
In the pause between a sip of coffee
or water, the shift from anxiety
to surprise or rage. The salted
caramels of nostalgia, the wilted
leaves of doubt and grief. So many
pulleys and windows. So many eyes.
Up and found my wife very ill again, which troubles me, but I was forced to go forth. So by water with Mr. Gauden and others to see a ship hired by me for the Commissioners of Tangier, and to give order therein. So back to the office, and by coach with Mr. Gauden to White Hall, and there to my Lord Sandwich, and here I met Mr. Townsend very opportunely and Captain Ferrer, and after some discourse we did accommodate the business of the Wardrobe place, that he shall have the reversion if he will take it out by giving a covenant that if Mr. Young dyes before my father my father shall have the benefit of it for his life.
So home, and thence by water to Deptford, and there found our Trinity Brethren come from their election to church, where Dr. Britton made, methought, an indifferent sermon touching the decency that we ought to observe in God’s house, the church, but yet to see how ridiculously some men will carry themselves. Sir W. Batten did at open table anon in the name of the whole Society desire him to print his sermon, as if the Doctor could think that they were fit judges of a good sermon.
Then by barge with Sir W. Batten to Trinity House. It seems they have with much ado carried it for Sir G. Carteret against Captain Harrison, poor man, who by succession ought to have been it, and most hands were for him, but only they were forced to fright the younger Brethren by requiring them to set their hands (which is an ill course) and then Sir G. Carteret carryed it.
Here was at dinner my Lord Sandwich, Mr. Coventry, my Lord Craven, and others. A great dinner, and good company. Mr. Prin also, who would not drink any health, no, not the King’s, but sat down with his hat on all the while; but nobody took notice of it to him at all; but in discourse with the Doctor he did declare himself that he ever was, and has expressed himself in all his books for mixt communion against the Presbyterian examination.
Thence after dinner by water, my Lord Sandwich and all us Tangier men, where at the Committee busy till night with great confusion, and then by coach home, with this content, however, that I find myself every day become more and more known, and shall one day hope to have benefit by it. I found my wife a little better. A little to my office, then home to supper and to bed.
if forced to it we shall elect
a different God
ridiculous as ink
in a poor king’s book
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 6 June 1664.
I was a rose, or something else
blasted loose; I was a peony,
a morbid pink surrender. On the way
to the outhouses, there was a wall
that breathed with a thousand
filaments of green. When I inquired
about the names of streets, I was met
with a blank stare. Down by the docks,
a keening rose in the air; it issued
from inside columns made entirely
of thick buzzing wings. I found
bombed fragments: pieces of blue
and yellow tile, a half-moon’s
metal stare. The door to what might
have been a bedroom, the page
of a calendar still stuck to it
with a remnant of tape. Walls
with daisy chains of bullet holes.
A house beam in the shape of a wing,
a curling fern, a serpent’s severed tail.
In response to Via Negativa: Bygone.
(Lord’s day). About one in the morning I was knocked up by my mayds to come to my wife who is very ill. I rose, and from some cold she got to-day, or from something else, she is taken with great gripings, a looseness, and vomiting. I lay a while by her upon the bed, she being in great pain, poor wretch, but that being a little over I to bed again, and lay, and then up and to my office all the morning, setting matters to rights in some accounts and papers, and then to dinner, whither Mr. Shepley, late come to town, came to me, and after dinner and some pleasant discourse he went his way, being to go out of town to Huntington again to-morrow. So all the afternoon with my wife discoursing and talking, and in the evening to my office doing business, and then home to supper and to bed.
I was a rose
or something else loose
and a little over
the morning paper
talk of sin
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 5 June 1664.
In the fashion district, I pass double
rows of mannequin legs on the sidewalk:
brightly sheathed in spandex, tattooed
with print, their torsos gone missing— When I
was a child I was taught the gospel of wild
creatures in the bush: trembling fawns that came
near the backyard fence in cold December, locusts
that swarmed dry skies above the shimmer of fire
trees at summer’s height. Termites that bubbled
in a cord of wood; and while we slept, who knows
what sat, seething, in gnarled arms of trees—
gaunt monsters with their fumes of rolled
tobacco, spurned women split in half,
darkening the world with the ribbed umbrellas
of their wings. Jung spoke of the unconscious
glimpsed through dreams as if it were the soul:
how its phantoms are sad, poor wraiths, combustible
desire that fled the scenes of severance: all
that might ground to bring the itinerant self
closest to what might pass for holy in this
forsaken world. When it scours the wilderness
and rattles the garret windows, climbs down the old
pipes at night, offer what sweetness is left in the blood.
Like you, it could not possibly want any more raw, nor salt.
* with thanks to R.A. Villanueva for his Editor’s Reflection, Tongue Journal
Up and to St. James’s by coach, after a good deal of talk before I went forth with J. Noble, who tells me that he will secure us against Cave, that though he knows, and can prove it, yet nobody else can prove it, to be Tom’s child; that the bond was made by one Hudson, a scrivener, next to the Fountaine taverne, in the Old Bayly; that the children were born, and christened, and entered in the parish-book of St. Sepulchre’s, by the name of Anne and Elizabeth Taylor and he will give us security against Cave if we pay him the money. And then up to the Duke, and was with him giving him an account how matters go, and of the necessity there is of a power to presse seamen, without which we cannot really raise men for this fleete of twelve sayle, besides that it will assert the King’s power of pressing, which at present is somewhat doubted, and will make the Dutch believe that we are in earnest. Thence by water to the office, where we sat till almost two o’clock. This morning Captain Ferrer came to the office to tell me that my Lord hath given him a promise of Young’s place in the Wardrobe, and hearing that I pretend a promise to it he comes to ask my consent, which I denied him, and told him my Lord may do what he pleases with his promise to me, but my father’s condition is not so as that I should let it go if my Lord will stand to his word, and so I sent him going, myself being troubled a little at it.
After office I with Mr. Coventry by water to St. James’s and dined with him, and had excellent discourse from him. So to the Committee for Tangier all afternoon, where still the same confused doings, and my Lord Fitz-Harding now added to the Committee; which will signify much. It grieves me to see how brokenly things are ordered.
So by coach home, and at my office late, and so to supper and to bed, my body by plenty of breaking of wind being just now pretty well again, having had a constant akeing in my back these 5 or 6 days.
Mr. Coventry discoursing this noon about Sir W. Batten (what a sad fellow he is!) told me how the King told him the other day how Sir W. Batten, being in the ship with him and Prince Rupert when they expected to fight with Warwick, did walk up and down sweating with a napkin under his throat to dry up his sweat; and that Prince Rupert being a most jealous man, and particularly of Batten, do walk up and down swearing bloodily to the King, that Batten had a mind to betray them to-day, and that the napkin was a signal; “but, by God,” says he, “if things go ill, the first thing I will do is to shoot him.”
He discoursed largely and bravely to me concerning the different sort of valours, the active and passive valour. For the latter, he brought as an instance General Blake; who, in the defending of Taunton and Lime for the Parliament, did through his stubborn sort of valour defend it the most ‘opiniastrement’ that ever any man did any thing; and yet never was the man that ever made any attaque by land or sea, but rather avoyded it on all, even fair occasions. On the other side, Prince Rupert, the boldest attaquer in the world for personal courage; and yet, in the defending of Bristol, no man ever did anything worse, he wanting the patience and seasoned head to consult and advise for defence, and to bear with the evils of a siege. The like he says is said of my Lord Tiviott, who was the boldest adventurer of his person in the world, and from a mean man in few years was come to this greatness of command and repute only by the death of all his officers, he many times having the luck of being the only survivor of them all, by venturing upon services for the King of France that nobody else would; and yet no man upon a defence, he being all fury and no judgment in a fight.
He tells me above all of the Duke of Yorke, that he is more himself and more of judgement is at hand in him in the middle of a desperate service, than at other times, as appeared in the business of Dunkirke, wherein no man ever did braver things, or was in hotter service in the close of that day, being surrounded with enemies; and then, contrary to the advice of all about him, his counsel carried himself and the rest through them safe, by advising that he might make his passage with but a dozen with him; “For,” says he, “the enemy cannot move after me so fast with a great body, and with a small one we shall be enough to deal with them;” and though he is a man naturally martiall to the highest degree, yet a man that never in his life talks one word of himself or service of his owne, but only that he saw such or such a thing, and lays it down for a maxime that a Hector can have no courage. He told me also, as a great instance of some men, that the Prince of Condo’s excellence is, that there not being a more furious man in the world, danger in fight never disturbs him more than just to make him civill, and to command in words of great obligation to his officers and men; but without any the least disturbance in his judgment or spirit.
who will secure us against security
the lock on discourse
the breaking down of valor
a thing avoided on all occasions
like the adventure of death
or being surrounded by art
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 4 June 1664.