Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
What kinds of tests
keep changing so much,
each time results
require updating?
The egg cakes aren’t
perfect, the sushi master
informs his apprentice-son.
Maybe in 40 more years.
The applicant is told: We
wouldn’t have brought you
this far only to turn
you away at the gates.
Patiently she folds
a thousand squares of paper
into shapes with wings.
This is a way to promise.
In response to Via Negativa: Phoenix.
(Lord’s day). Up, and after a little at my office to prepare a fresh draught of my vowes for the next yeare, I to church, where a most insipid young coxcomb preached. Then home to dinner, and after dinner to read in “Rushworth’s Collections” about the charge against the late Duke of Buckingham, in order to the fitting me to speak and understand the discourse anon before the King about the suffering the Turkey merchants to send out their fleete at this dangerous time, when we can neither spare them ships to go, nor men, nor King’s ships to convoy them.
At four o’clock with Sir W. Pen in his coach to my Lord Chancellor’s, where by and by Mr. Coventry, Sir W. Pen, Sir J. Lawson, Sir G. Ascue, and myself were called in to the King, there being several of the Privy Council, and my Lord Chancellor lying at length upon a couch (of the goute I suppose); and there Sir W. Pen begun, and he had prepared heads in a paper, and spoke pretty well to purpose, but with so much leisure and gravity as was tiresome; besides, the things he said were but very poor to a man in his trade after a great consideration, but it was to purpose, indeed to dissuade the King from letting these Turkey ships to go out: saying (in short) the King having resolved to have 130 ships out by the spring, he must have above 20 of them merchantmen. Towards which, he in the whole River could find but 12 or 14, and of them the five ships taken up by these merchants were a part, and so could not be spared. That we should need 30,000 [sailors] to man these 130 ships, and of them in service we have not above 16,000; so we shall need 14,000 more. That these ships will with their convoys carry above 2,000 men, and those the best men that could be got; it being the men used to the Southward that are the best men for warr, though those bred in the North among the colliers are good for labour. That it will not be safe for the merchants, nor honourable for the King, to expose these rich ships with his convoy of six ships to go, it not being enough to secure them against the Dutch, who, without doubt, will have a great fleete in the Straights. This, Sir J. Lawson enlarged upon. Sir G. Ascue he chiefly spoke that the warr and trade could not be supported together, and, therefore, that trade must stand still to give way to them.
This Mr. Coventry seconded, and showed how the medium of the men the King hath one year with another employed in his Navy since his coming, hath not been above 3,000 men, or at most 4,000 men; and now having occasion of 30,000, the remaining 26,000 must be found out of the trade of the nation.
He showed how the cloaths, sending by these merchants to Turkey, are already bought and paid for to the workmen, and are as many as they would send these twelve months or more; so the poor do not suffer by their not going, but only the merchant, upon whose hands they lit dead; and so the inconvenience is the less. And yet for them he propounded, either the King should, if his Treasure would suffer it, buy them, and showed the losse would not be so great to him: or, dispense with the Act of Navigation, and let them be carried out by strangers; and ending that he doubted not but when the merchants saw there was no remedy, they would and could find ways of sending them abroad to their profit.
All ended with a conviction (unless future discourse with the merchants should alter it) that it was not fit for them to go out, though the ships be loaded.
The King in discourse did ask me two or three questions about my newes of Allen’s loss in the Streights, but I said nothing as to the business, nor am not much sorry for it, unless the King had spoke to me as he did to them, and then I could have said something to the purpose I think. So we withdrew, and the merchants were called in.
Staying without, my Lord Fitz Harding come thither, and fell to discourse of Prince Rupert, and made nothing to say that his disease was the pox and that he must be fluxed, telling the horrible degree of the disease upon him with its breaking out on his head. But above all I observed how he observed from the Prince, that courage is not what men take it to be, a contempt of death; for, says he, how chagrined the Prince was the other day when he thought he should die, having no more mind to it than another man. But, says he, some men are more apt to think they shall escape than another man in fight, while another is doubtfull he shall be hit. But when the first man is sure he shall die, as now the Prince is, he is as much troubled and apprehensive of it as any man else; for, says he, since we told [him] that we believe he would overcome his disease, he is as merry, and swears and laughs and curses, and do all the things of a [man] in health, as ever he did in his life; which, methought, was a most extraordinary saying before a great many persons there of quality. So by and by with Sir W. Pen home again, and after supper to the office to finish my vows, and so to bed.
insipid discourse about suffering
is dangerous
all unprepared heads must be spared
those being the best for war
it will not be safe to expose
the rich to doubt
or the poor to conviction
horrible is the death grin
they escape in fight not laughs and curses
and the things of life
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 15 January 1665.
Even as your figment I have my limits.
I will not, for example,
join your network on LinkedIn.
I will neither architect nor incubate
your cloud-based growth strategies.
Deep dives into data are dangerous
if you’re boiling the ocean. Best
to circle back and drill down—
but let mine be the box you think
outside of. I charge by the minute
and day-dreaming is not—
to paraphrase Bill Gates—
an efficient allocation of time resources.
I am not your low-hanging fruit,
and at the end of the day, you can’t
leverage my deliverables or turn
me into another sounding board.
You don’t need me. Given
your mouth’s open-door policy,
you’re hollow enough to echo
anything back.
You know the beginning of certain
dreams by the signals they send—
Chime ringing behind one door
at the end of a long hallway
from “Found” by Luisa A. Igloria
A different year, a different state,
a different bar…this one called
Suds, and open early, from 8 AM
to midnight six days, and 1 PM
to 10 on Sunday. It occupied one
end of an old strip-mall, really
two business locations: the watering-
hole on the corner, and an adjoining
washeteria, one with no apparent entry.
My first visit was an accident, or rather,
just to ask to use their phone to call
one in, a fender-bender on the corner
I’d just passed (no one hurt, but both
the drivers asked me please to stop
somewhere and ring the police). No cell
phones then, but payphones in transition:
some a quarter, but sometimes still
a dime. When I stepped in, first thing
I heard was a chime, followed by
the proprietor (in a formal voice
befitting any maître-d’) announcing:
Number Four. Your laundry is ready.
I thought I’d misheard, but followed
the young woman who’d stood up from
a wood table on which sat a small
red pyramid emblazoned with a 4. She
broke off the conversation she was
having with a friend and headed
toward the back, around the corner
of the bar and through a door into
a sort of airlock with two phones,
one-dollar-or-five-dollars change
machine, and three adjoining entries:
Ladies, Gents, and Laundry. I rang
the police as promised, then explored…
Behind door three, sixteen machines,
eight each to wash and dry, each with
a painted number beside the coin-feeder.
Above the rows, a CCTV camera panned
slowly back and forth above the status-
of-operation lights, and as dryer number
five was winding down to come in for
a landing, again the chime and maître-d’
announcing: Number Five. Your laundry.
I fell in love. It was such a practical,
delightful way of doing. I stepped back
through the airlock, sat at the bar and asked
if I could maybe get a coffee. While
the barkeep poured, he kept an eye
on a little screen beside the register.
Then he came over, said: All clear till
Number One is dry. Your first time here?
We got to chatting casually, he said he
was the owner actually, and had a couple
other barkeeps who’d come in now and then
to spell him, but mostly he was there.
We were interrupted for two Michelob,
another shot of Dewar’s, and a double
shot of fabric softener in a paper cup.
The bar was slightly damp, my coffee mug
had slipped a bit. He toweled it up, gave
me a cardboard coaster, one with a picture
of a painting: Degas. A Woman Ironing.
(The closing coaster is a nod to Neil Creighton’s poem “Ironer.” See the previous poems in the series here, here and here.)
will you remember the time before consciousness
before the world’s farmstead was sold off in parts
one by one or wholesale first the animals then
the barn then the land divided & the furniture
finally the people saving what they could to go
elsewhere each on their own can you remember much
earlier that one evening the father gathering
the family the hurried ride to someone’s house where
they might sleep undisturbed one weekend more confer
with lawyers before he was put on a plane deported
while threats of violence swept over neighborhoods or
fires that razed everything from the dry mountainsides
up palm-lined avenues store windows melting clapboards
shingles that someone’s ancestors might have hammered
to make roofs to withstand a storm the test of time
therefore what’s meant by consciousness is really elegy
what can i offer besides the salt lick of commiseration
this morning in a box of old photographs i heard before
i saw one of those old musical greeting cards squirrels
on a branch a small chittering sound meant to mimic teeth
chipping away one hard flake at a time to get to the seed
(continuation of a series which began with “Because I Sort of Knew Him” and “What’s In a Name“)
but I have been alone
here at the present
infinite spot
from “Sitting Place” by Dave Bonta
There was another brother
I’d met at that same bar, who some
years later, turned out to be
the hillside neighbor
of the man I said I’d marry.
We shall leave the brother nameless
(in keeping with our policy
of anonymity, but if you need
a form or frame of reference, think
of him as Snoopy’s brother Spike.)
I was kneeling on last year’s Yellow
Pages (my way of recycling) in front
of a Coleman cooler whose hinges had
gone bad. I was pulling out clean jeans
and wringing out the blue-gray water.
He came wandering over the hill
and leaned on my truck and watched
me. I kept wringing. (He was the one
come visiting, not me, so I kept on
doing until he got around to speaking.)
A man in the desert’s a good thing
he said. A man and his dog
in the desert. Add a woman
and a clothesline and it gets different.
Then you have a g-ddammed homestead.
I finished wringing, stood up and took
my basket over to the tow-rope I’d
strung up between the trailer
awning and the bumper of my truck,
began to pin wet jeans and shirts up
on the slippery divide between that
untamed frontier and civilized.
who runs past at 2 am on the sidewalk
saying o my god o my god o my god
the silence of porch chairs swing of porch
ornaments & a cold strangling wind from god
no ambulance in sight no fire truck we heard
panic in the voice crying out to his god
my friend offered to call a shaman for a housewarming
she warned we’d have to kill a goat for the gods
for sure the sound would carry bleating then gurgling
explain to the neighbors about sacrifice to the gods
the idea of spirits is they’re everywhere in the air &
trees the difference is they’re hungrier than gods
i couldn’t see anyone in pursuit though there were other
voices i swear in the dark blue dark the echo o god
Up and to White Hall, where long waited in the Duke’s chamber for a Committee intended for Tangier, but none met, and so I home and to the office, where we met a little, and then to the ‘Change, where our late ill newes confirmed in loss of two ships in the Straights, but are now the Phoenix and Nonsuch! Home to dinner, thence with my wife to the King’s house, there to see “Vulpone,” a most excellent play; the best I think I ever saw, and well acted. So with Sir W. Pen home in his coach, and then to the office. So home, to supper, and bed, resolving by the grace of God from this day to fall hard to my business again, after some weeke or fortnight’s neglect.
I am confirmed in loss
a phoenix
resolving by the grace
of God to fall
hard again
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 14 January 1665.
(sequel to “Because I Sort of Knew Him“)
He kept his chin up
no matter what, weathering
all weather.
from “Crushed” by Dave Bonta
When I am working, sometimes
there’s tension and frustration,
sometimes supervisors or
customers will shout at the shirt,
call its name out with a string
of expletives.
Inside the shirt, I am safely
anonymous, and protected.
No one ever actually gets
to shout at me.
***
When I am working, sometimes
it’s tedious and repetitive,
nothing to hold my interest, so
I pretend I am a spy working
undercover.
Within my cover identity,
I then become attentive to every
thing and every one around me,
and as I occupy my mind
with this, the mindless work
gets done.
***
When I am working, sometimes
it is challenging, feels perhaps
a bit beyond me, overwhelming,
and I feel uncertain, hesitant.
But then I remember that I am
a superhero, and already in
my costume, my hero-name
clearly visible right there
on my lapel, and then I can
tap right in to the superpower
secrets and proceed
with confidence.
***
Make no mistake: I DO go
to the laundromat, and wash
my boxers, socks, and jeans.
Shirt-selections from St. Vincent’s
are more about some other things
(and a bit about not ironing).
One of the hardest things
in the world to lift is a jar
of rain filled from the last
monsoon; or the fine, electric net
threaded of cricket cries over a field.
When you were young, you hardly noticed
the splendor fading light could give
to ragged skies, the way small
craft at the pier threatened to come
untethered in a squall. Now, the sound
of thunder is the hoof of the first
horseman striking stone. Quickly,
you gather the brightly patterned cloths
that you were counting and folding to give
away: deeply tinted orchids, careful beads
bursting their brightest blue and yellow.