Month: November 2017

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Radical

Up and to the office, where all the morning, at noon to the ‘Change, and thence home to dinner, and so with my wife to the Duke’s house to a play, “Macbeth,” a pretty good play, but admirably acted. Thence home; the coach being forced to go round by London Wall home, because of the bonefires; the day being mightily observed in the City. To my office late at business, and then home to supper, and to bed.

at dinner
I bet on the bone

fires serve
the city up


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 5 November 1664.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Restless night

Waked very betimes and lay long awake, my mind being so full of business. Then up and to St. James’s, where I find Mr. Coventry full of business, packing up for his going to sea with the Duke. Walked with him, talking, to White Hall, where to the Duke’s lodgings, who is gone thither to lodge lately. I appeared to the Duke, and thence Mr. Coventry and I an hour in the Long Gallery, talking about the management of our office, he tells me the weight of dispatch will lie chiefly on me, and told me freely his mind touching Sir W. Batten and Sir J. Minnes, the latter of whom, he most aptly said, was like a lapwing; that all he did was to keepe a flutter, to keepe others from the nest that they would find. He told me an old story of the former about the light-houses, how just before he had certified to the Duke against the use of them, and what a burden they are to trade, and presently after, at his being at Harwich, comes to desire that he might have the setting one up there, and gets the usefulness of it certified also by the Trinity House.
After long discoursing and considering all our stores and other things, as how the King hath resolved upon Captain Taylor and Colonell Middleton, the first to be Commissioner for Harwich and the latter for Portsmouth, I away to the ‘Change, and there did very much business, so home to dinner, and Mr. Duke, our Secretary for the Fishery, dined with me. After dinner to discourse of our business, much to my content, and then he away, and I by water among the smiths on the other side, and to the alehouse with one and was near buying 4 or 5 anchors, and learned something worth my knowing of them, and so home and to my office, where late, with my head very full of business, and so away home to supper and to bed.

long awake
my mind like a lapwing
all a-flutter
or a lighthouse coursing
away and away


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 4 November 1664.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

What is left of the garden is the dream (A Cento)

Fog and rain. The stream runs brown—

It rankles to think my thinking
may senselessly inhere, be merely
in here—

I do not mean to say desire is everything.
But earth will do to exhume a heart.

My nostalgia is never a lovely wishing but instead
soldiers marching through yellow fields, dizzy with nausea.

Dress of milk and wire.
Threaded hearts,
barbed ornaments.

Let us eat what makes us holy
before the next war comes.

[source texts: Dave Bonta, Sylvia Curbelo, J. Allyn Rosser, Donika Kelly, Nicole Cooley, Hadara Bar-Nadav, Emily Jungmin Yoon, Ghassan Zaqtan (trans. Fady Joudah)]

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Posted on by J Likha Yatco

Small Things

I still want to live as if every small thing mattered
all the time, even if I know nothing can be ours to keep.
~ Luisa A. Igloria

small things like purple ink in a squat bottle,
matching Piper fountain pen cradled in a
velvet-lined box with a white satin ribbon
to hold it in place, forty pages of designer paper
with prints of monarch butterflies,
pink peonies with mint green leaves,
a peacock, its tail unfurled, set against
a sheet of music, a sparrow on a doily,
hot air balloons about to kiss the Eiffel Tower

you’d think paper as precious as this
would carry the scent of jasmine or roses
but no, what it presents is more enduring
the gift of possibilities as it travels over
thickets of pine trees, rivers polluted with
single-use plastic, children playing hopscotch,
drunks stumbling home

believe in the humblest of things
they waken to dreams too

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Reference point

Up and to the office, where strange to see how Sir W. Pen is flocked to by people of all sorts against his going to sea. At the office did much business, among other an end of that that has troubled me long, the business of the bewpers and flags. At noon to the ‘Change, and thence by appointment was met with Bagwell’s wife, and she followed me into Moorfields, and there into a drinking house, and all alone eat and drank together. I did there caress her, but though I did make some offer did not receive any compliance from her in what was bad, but very modestly she denied me, which I was glad to see and shall value her the better for it, and I hope never tempt her to any evil more. Thence back to the town, and we parted and I home, and then at the office late, where Sir W. Pen came to take his leave of me, being to-morrow, which is very sudden to us, to go on board to lie on board, but I think will come ashore again before the ship, the Charles, can go away. So home to supper and to bed. This night Sir W. Batten did, among other things, tell me strange newes, which troubles me, that my Lord Sandwich will be sent Governor to Tangier, which, in some respects, indeed, I should be glad of, for the good of the place and the safety of his person; but I think his honour will suffer, and, it may be, his interest fail by his distance.

where a flock
has troubled the fields
I drink alone
glad to see the town
way in the distance


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 3 November 1664.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

To wish

Skies are the color of blue slate, waters the tint of a camphor jar when the fisherman pulls out his coldly gleaming catch. This is the moment that divides before and after: What is your greatest wish? We know that even as he takes out the barb and throws back the fish, the edge of the sky recedes and grows more distant. His wife will make him go back more than once to ask for a boon. The stucco on their walls is a flaked and dirty white; the floor, littered with poultry droppings, the smell of things that don’t fly very far. The story never says much about her, or why she can’t seem to keep a clean house, though it has only one room and a window overlooking the outhouse. Technically they don’t own the land, but it’s at the edge of town and so far no one has made any trouble. Who can blame her for wanting a little more room? She’s had her eye on the adjacent lot, wants to plant vegetables, fruit, and flowers, sell them in the market. Whereas the scope of his ambition has always fallen across that surface of the water where he can stand, knee-deep, no further— whatever doesn’t escape through the holes in the net, he gets to keep. He doesn’t question this arrangement, believing it builds character. The fish catches both of them by surprise. Or rather, not the fish, but the possibility that it could be something more than itself. Like anything that might be equated with fate, it either changes them forever, or fixes them even more firmly in place. Overhead, millions of tiny lights adrift in that inverted bowl.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Emotion vs. insight

Up betimes, and down with Mr. Castle to Redriffe, and there walked to Deptford to view a parcel of brave knees of his, which indeed are very good, and so back again home, I seeming very friendly to him, though I know him to be a rogue, and one that hates me with his heart. Home and to dinner, and so to my office all the afternoon, where in some pain in my backe, which troubled me, but I think it comes only with stooping, and from no other matter.
At night to Nellson’s, and up and down about business, and so home to my office, then home to supper and to bed.

a red rave is good
seeming to be an art
to ice all pain

but ink comes only
from the night


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 2 November 1664.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Sand bar

Up and to the office, where busy all the morning, at noon (my wife being invited to my Lady Sandwich’s) all alone dined at home upon a good goose with Mr. Wayth, discussing of business. Thence I to the Committee of the Fishery, and there we sat with several good discourses and some bad and simple ones, and with great disorder, and yet by the men of businesse of the towne. But my report in the business of the collections is mightily commended and will get me some reputation, and indeed is the only thing looks like a thing well done since we sat.
Then with Mr. Parham to the tavern, but I drank no wine, only he did give me another barrel of oysters, and he brought one Major Greene, an able fishmonger, and good discourse to my information. So home and late at business at my office. Then to supper and to bed.

sand is good and simple
the only thing like a thing
since the wine bar oysters
brought me to bed


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 1 November 1664.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Postcard from another life

We were both on the same train, the countryside steadily unrolling green through a humid morning. There are some kinds of uncertainty that don’t ask for resolution. Like not being able to remember who fell asleep first. Or if we bought from hawkers a bag of roasted corn, or a packet of boiled quail eggs. In those days there were no toilets, not even a separate baggage coach. Someone played music from a portable radio. We were on our way to the beach, or returning from there. Everyone was on some kind of holiday though it was the middle of the week. The aisles were speckled with little bits of sand— gritty sugar sifting into our sandals. The sea was a postcard announcing itself before we arrived: its mineral smell, and then at last thin white lines of moving text glimpsed through trees.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Sandbar.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

All Souls’ Day

Under every surface, the tooth of a buried
word: forgotten names for moss and salt,
schist, blunt artifacts of skin and bone

shed by reptiles in the trees’ blue shadow.
Small papery hulls and speckled stones,
a body once grafted to its exoskeleton.

In the cool interior of a nine-sided tower,
once we listened for the spirit of absent
choirs, a chant that called all doors open

to everyone who sought refuge there. Where
are the seeds the wind bore from the old
country, and what offerings do the dead

most favor? Sometimes, in our petulance, we
forget to leave them a dish on the counter,
a cup of water. Crawling through narrow

tunnels, it’s hard to track the vein of ore.
Some days, there’s a trace of metal in the air;
if not, a tenderness: night scents soaked with

the aura of distance— all that points
to heartsickness as well as destination,
pouring out of the flowers’ white throats.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Lexicology.