Month: November 2017

Posted on by Kristin Berkey-Abbott

All Saints Songs

with all the evening music
great as a prayer
Dave Bonta, “Red-Lined“

I awake early on the Feast
of All Saints and take
my coffee to the porch.
Once I would have stayed
awake until this hour, wringing
all the celebration possible
out of our All Hallows Eve.
I say a prayer for all those departed,
the ones gone much too early from the party.

Once I would have lit the candles
and declared my love
of thin spaces. Now I fear the hunger
of ghosts who are not ready
to leave and the hooligans
who take advantage of the dark.

I touch the pumpkin’s crumpled face
collapsed from the candle’s heat.
I put the gourd on the pile
of tree limbs ripped from the body
of the tree canopy during September’s storm.
I hear one lone bird singing
either a prayer to greet
the morning or a lullaby before sleep.
I look to the sky, still dark,
no message in the stars.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Lexicology

Very busy all the morning, at noon Creed to me and dined with me, and then he and I to White Hall, there to a Committee of Tangier, where it is worth remembering when Mr. Coventry proposed the retrenching some of the charge of the horse, the first word asked by the Duke of Albemarle was, “Let us see who commands them,” there being three troops. One of them he calls to mind was by Sir Toby Bridges. “Oh!” says he, “there is a very good man. If you must reform two of them, be sure let him command the troop that is left.”
Thence home, and there came presently to me Mr. Young and Whistler, who find that I have quite overcome them in their business of flags, and now they come to intreat my favour, but I will be even with them.
So late to my office and there till past one in the morning making up my month’s accounts, and find that my expense this month in clothes has kept me from laying up anything; but I am no worse, but a little better than I was, which is 1205l., a great sum, the Lord be praised for it!
So home to bed, with my mind full of content therein, and vexed for my being so angry in bad words to my wife to-night, she not giving me a good account of her layings out to my mind to-night.
This day I hear young Mr. Stanly, a brave young [gentleman], that went out with young Jermin, with Prince Rupert, is already dead of the small-pox, at Portsmouth.
All preparations against the Dutch; and the Duke of Yorke fitting himself with all speed, to go to the fleete which is hastening for him; being now resolved to go in the Charles.

the first word was oh
then presently you

is now any better
with my mind full
and vexed

angry words go out
in a dead mouth


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 31 October 1664.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Everything we loved of the wild, we took

The taste of air on the tongue; remembrance
of water before it swelled with dying coral.

From inside a cocoon of flotation chambers,
easy to speak of concern for the oceans’

disappearance. From within detergent commercials,
little narratives of rescue— birds slicked

with oil, unable to fly. When windows are
tightly sealed it’s easy to love the sound

rain makes: falling through cups in a copper
chain, down into a barrel. The fat of the land,

something to purchase from warehouse clubs.
At night, on the road, when beams cut through

the darkness: the shapes of furtive creatures,
following trails of disappearing scent.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Bird-lover.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Red-lined

(Lord’s day). Up, and this morning put on my new, fine, coloured cloth suit, with my cloake lined with plush, which is a dear and noble suit, costing me about 17l..1 To church, and then home to dinner, and after dinner to a little musique with my boy, and so to church with my wife, and so home, and with her all the evening reading and at musique with my boy with great pleasure, and so to supper, prayers, and to bed.

a red line
cost me my home

with all the evening music
great as a prayer


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 30 October 1664.