Month: July 2018

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

What we think of when we’re told Go Home

Pinewood slats pulled up
from where they met the front door,
then re-laid on the horizontal.
Something about the grain running
like water out into the street otherwise,
taking all the household luck with it.
Across from us at #5: two magnolia trees
we were sometimes allowed to climb.
Creamy flowers opening to a handful
of droopy matchsticks at the center.
Their opulent breath.

Metallic taste of water
from a drum whose mouth was always
open to the rain. Did I say rain?
June to November, nights
of flooded lagoons, canned
sardine rations, boiled rice.
On our street: the engineer
married to a white woman who wore
only blouses and long skirts.
She pressed coins into our palms
when we went caroling— bottlecaps
strung on a piece of wire, jangled
accompaniment to our tinny voices.

The retired judge walking up
the road in a suit of alabaster
sharkskin. Tremors in the hands
of the man next door: butterflies
trapped in the blinds. We used
to say: were we sediment
at the bottom of the cup
that was our valley? After
the great earthquake, looking
at rescue helicopters’ dragonfly
wings hovering above city ruins,
some of us left; some stayed.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Appendix

An amber-colored vial, stoppered.
I couldn’t tell what floated in the water—
some tendrils, some gauzy substance.
Mother said the doctors let her have it.
Meaning, that bit of her own excised flesh,
that little pocket meant to catch stray bits
until it nearly burst: so much smaller than a heart,
that little pocket meant to catch stray bits:
meaning, that bit of her own excised flesh.
Mother said the doctors let her have it:
some tendrils, some gauzy substance.
I couldn’t tell what floated in the water.
An amber-colored vial, stoppered.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Enemies list

Up, and sat at the office all the morning. At noon to the ‘Change and thence to the Dolphin, where a good dinner at the cost of one Mr. Osbaston, who lost a wager to Sir W. Batten, Sir W. Rider, and Sir R. Ford, a good while since and now it is spent. The wager was that ten of our ships should not have a fight with ten of the enemy’s before Michaelmas. Here was other very good company, and merry, and at last in come Mr. Buckeworth, a very fine gentleman, and proves to be a Huntingdonshire man. Thence to my office and there all the afternoon till night, and so home to settle some accounts of Tangier and other papers. I hear this day the Duke and Prince Rupert are both come back from sea, and neither of them go back again. The latter I much wonder at, but it seems the towne reports so, and I am very glad of it.
This morning I did a good piece of work with Sir W. Warren, ending the business of the lotterys, wherein honestly I think I shall get above 100l.
Bankert, it seems, is come home with the little fleete he hath been abroad with, without doing any thing, so that there is nobody of an enemy at sea. We are in great hopes of meeting with the Dutch East India fleete, which is mighty rich, or with De Ruyter, who is so also.
Sir Richard Ford told me this day, at table, a fine account, how the Dutch were like to have been mastered by the present Prince of Orange his father to be besieged in Amsterdam, having drawn an army of foot into the towne, and horse near to the towne by night, within three miles of the towne, and they never knew of it; but by chance the Hamburgh post in the night fell among the horse, and heard their design, and knowing the way, it being very dark and rainy, better than they, went from them, and did give notice to the towne before the others could reach the towne, and so were saved. It seems this De Witt and another family, the Beckarts, were among the chief of the familys that were enemys to the Prince, and were afterwards suppressed by the Prince, and continued so till he was, as they say, poysoned; and then they turned all again, as it was, against the young Prince, and have so carried it to this day, it being about 12 and 14 years, and De Witt in the head of them.

enemy of the papers
I wonder at his broad body

enemy of the rich
like an army in the rain

enemies he suppressed
continue in his head


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 4 July 1665.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Swan song

Up and by water with Sir W. Batten and Sir J. Minnes to White Hall to the Duke of Albemarle, where, after a little business, we parted, and I to the Harp and Ball, and there staid a while talking to Mary, and so home to dinner. After dinner to the Duke of Albemarle’s again, and so to the Swan, and there ‘demeurais un peu’de temps con la fille’, and so to the Harp and Ball, and alone ‘demeurais un peu de temps baisant la’, and so away home and late at the office about letters, and so home, resolving from this night forwards to close all my letters, if possible, and end all my business at the office by daylight, and I shall go near to do it and put all my affairs in the world in good order, the season growing so sickly, that it is much to be feared how a man can escape having a share with others in it, for which the good Lord God bless me, or to be fitted to receive it.
So after supper to bed, and mightily troubled in my sleep all night with dreams of Jacke Cole, my old schoolfellow, lately dead, who was born at the same time with me, and we reckoned our fortunes pretty equal. God fit me for his condition!

the swan all alone
growing so sickly it dreams
of dead tunes


Erasure haiku derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 3 July 1665.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Those early years in the city

like being on a movie set— cliche

of high rise apartments: cheap rates,
old, coin-operated laundry machines

in the basement; predominantly tenants
of color— students, interns, clerks,

transients, restaurant workers. Riding
up elevators like rising through

a fifteen layer cake warm with the scents
of curry and shoyu, fried onions, fish

sauce. Night and day laced with the alarm
of sirens from the Veterans’ Hospital

on the west side, the county hospital across
from the train station entrance— the same

one where they filmed a few scenes for
The Fugitive, Harrison Ford caught in a fugue

composed of Big Pharma and a one-armed man.
Everyone coming and going at all hours: nurses

with 16 hour shifts, sari-clad mothers
laden with grocery bags, salesmen stumbling

into the building near midnight. One
sweltering summer evening broken by sheets

of warm rain: and three brown-skinned exchange
students dare each other to go out on the bit

of grass near the entryway, to bathe their limbs
and upturned faces like they used to back in their

island home. The doorman on duty lights a lazy cigarette,
calls Hey! Do you want me to teach you some English?

They run back through the revolving door,
punch the elevator button and disappear.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Outcast

(Sunday). Up, and all the morning dressing my closet at the office with my plates, very neatly, and a fine place now it is, and will be a pleasure to sit in, though I thank God I needed none before. At noon dined at home, and after dinner to my accounts and cast them up, and find that though I have spent above 90l. this month yet I have saved 17l., and am worth in all above 1450l., for which the Lord be praised!
In the evening my Lady Pen and daughter come to see, and supped with us, then a messenger about business of the office from Sir G. Carteret at Chatham, and by word of mouth did send me word that the business between my Lord and him is fully agreed on, and is mightily liked of by the King and the Duke of Yorke, and that he sent me this word with great joy; they gone, we to bed.
I hear this night that Sir J. Lawson was buried late last night at St. Dunstan’s by us, without any company at all, and that the condition of his family is but very poor, which I could be contented to be sorry for, though he never was the man that ever obliged me by word or deed.

cast the word out
word like a hat
word I eat
at night without any company
poor word


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 2 July 1665.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Citizen or subject?

Called up betimes, though weary and sleepy, by appointment by Mr. Povy and Colonell Norwood to discourse about some payments of Tangier. They gone, I to the office and there sat all the morning. At noon dined at home, and then to the Duke of Albemarle’s, by appointment, to give him an account of some disorder in the Yarde at Portsmouth, by workmen’s going away of their owne accord, for lacke of money, to get work of hay-making, or any thing else to earne themselves bread.
Thence to Westminster, where I hear the sicknesse encreases greatly, and to the Harp and Ball with Mary talking, who tells me simply her losing of her first love in the country in Wales, and coming up hither unknown to her friends, and it seems Dr. Williams do pretend love to her, and I have found him there several times.
Thence by coach and late at the office, and so to bed. Sad at the newes that seven or eight houses in Bazing Hall street, are shut up of the plague.

point of order
the work to get work increases
and who tells me
simply love the country
unknown to love
and shut up


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 1 July 1665.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

My hands, like jumper cables,

my friend explains; they try to get

blocked energy moving again. I lie
on a massage table, eyes half-

shut in a room where the shades
have been drawn against summer light.

Though it doesn’t whinny, I know
there is a dark-maned horse that nibbles

on bleached grass behind a stone wall
in the high field adjacent; I’ve seen it,

on looking out the window early mornings.
Now, my friend taps along certain meridians,

fingertips listening to the body’s pulses
the way a car mechanic might turn on

the ignition to check for engine sound.
I try to imagine what this circuitry

might resemble: the points between heart
and liver and spleen and hand and foot

then back again, the kinds of traffic
moving with different speeds through

the branches. Sometimes it’s hard to believe,
or maybe I’ve just forgotten: how the tight-

ness in my limbs hasn’t always been there, nor
the feeling of a dam about to burst in my chest.

~ for M.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Host

Flight path sounds so lovely—until one appears in your neighborhood. Then it’s more like that 80s Peruvian guerrilla group The Shining Path, launching a fresh assault every two minutes on silence, which is clearly an imperialist imposition. Though when it came to entertainment, the Senderistas would tolerate nothing but indigenous folk music. Or so I was told back in 1991 by a Peruvian punk rocker, who’d come all the way to the States to pursue his raucous dream. Me, I like heavy metal… but not necessarily the sleek bellies of Boeings and Airbuses coming in low over the house, wheels extended like the tiny claws on Tyrannosaurs, howling with the strain of deceleration and descent. Which I can sort of understand, you know? How much better to stay aloft and remote as a fluke in the bloodstream, its paths nearly infinite, however circumscribed by the exigencies of a living host.

a week of sun
in the far north
they wave at our train

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Perihelion days

A friend writes, in Texas
it is nearly a hundred & fifty
degrees in the shade. There’s been
almost no rain all spring & plants
are dying; while in January, in Ain
Sefra, snow fell on the sands
of the Sahara for two days. Burnt
orange sand flecked with white
like a creamsicle, while in Baguio
there’s no way to completely dry
laundry as rains pour as if
without end, & streets fill
with floodwater. Once we saw one
swallow after another emerge
from somewhere along the edge
of a train track— a nest,
improbably, beneath the constant
rumble of wheels. The station clock
chimes the noon hour, when shadows
disappear and its two hands come
together as if in prayer.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Bourbonic.