Via Negativa

April 7, 2026April 6, 2026 by Luisa A. Igloria

I Did Not Buy Flowers Today

river in November light between bare woods and mountain

Feeling slightly out of alignment with
the world, I stop at the grocery store 
looking for something to nudge me back 
onto the road of purpose I drive each 
day— home to work, work to home. I think 
of getting flowers, but would that be  
admitting something I can't say aloud? 
In there, the sunflowers are smaller 
than I remember: heads disheveled 
under LED lights, faces turned nowhere 
in particular. Have they, too, forgotten 
how to follow the sun? There's not one 
particular cause for blame— not the hike 
in oil prices nor the increasingly infertile 
soil from climate change, not the store 
and the unpredictability of supply and demand. 
Once, the hills of my childhood were dotted 
with the same yellow blooms. Their brightness 
reflected a light I never questioned, as if 
it would always be there, forgiving me 
everything before I even thought to say
what for. I try to think of that light again 
here, and in the end I leave the flowers 
with their price tags exactly where they are. 
I walk back into my day, hands empty 
of everything but this honesty.

April 6, 2026April 6, 2026 by Dave Bonta

Poetry Blog Digest 2026, Week 14

A personal selection of posts from the Poetry Blogging Network and beyond. Although I tend to quote my favorite bits, please do click through and read the whole posts. You can also browse the blog digest archive at Via Negativa or, if you’d like it in your inbox, subscribe on Substack (where the posts might be truncated by some email providers).

This week: nursing a dying animal, unfolding layers of meaning, summoning a friend from the underworld, committing poems to memory, and much more. Enjoy!

April 6, 2026 by Dave Bonta

Dilettante

Up very betimes and to my office, and there made an end of reading my book that I have of Mr. Barlow’s of the Journal of the Commissioners of the Navy, who begun to act in the year 1628 and continued six years, wherein is fine observations and precedents out of which I do purpose to make a good collection.
By and by, much against my will, being twice sent for, to Sir G. Carteret’s to pass his accounts there, upon which Sir J. Minnes, Sir W. Batten, Sir W. Pen, and myself all the morning, and again after dinner to it, being vexed at my heart to see a thing of that importance done so slightly and with that neglect for which God pardon us, and I would I could mend it. Thence leaving them I made an excuse and away home, and took my wife by coach and left her at Madam Clerk’s, to make a visit there, and I to the Committee of Tangier, where I found, to my great joy, my Lord Sandwich, the first time I have seen him abroad these some months, and by and by he rose and took leave, being, it seems, this night to go to Kensington or Chelsey, where he hath taken a lodging for a while to take the ayre.
We staid, and after business done I got Mr. Coventry into the Matted Gallery and told him my whole mind concerning matters of our office, all my discontent to see things of so great trust carried so neglectfully, and what pitiful service the Controller and Surveyor make of their duties, and I disburdened my mind wholly to him and he to me his own, many things, telling me that he is much discouraged by seeing things not to grow better and better as he did well hope they would have done. Upon the whole, after a full hour’s private discourse, telling one another our minds, we with great content parted, and with very great satisfaction for my thus cleared my conscience, went to Dr. Clerk’s and thence fetched my wife, and by coach home. To my office a little to set things in order, and so home to supper and to bed.

reading my book
in the morning light

where I take the air
and rust

my mind is a hole
full of little things

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 6 April 1663.

April 6, 2026April 6, 2026 by Luisa A. Igloria

Lonely God Potato Twists

I would too, if I were lonely
and if I were a god. I'd invent

a snack like this: Lonely God
Potato Twists, red and yellow 

and foil-wrapped among the shrimp 
chips and Boy Bawang in the Asian 

grocery. Also, what's not to love
about a plot twist after years of yawn 

and meh? Remember Chubby 
Checker in the '60s, who hit 

number one on the Billboard Hot 
100 not once but twice? Suddenly 

everyone was dancing in place, 
swiveling their hips, having 

a good time: Come on baby... and go 
like this. But in 1962, a bishop 

in Buffalo, New York saw only lewdness 
in these gyrations and banned them— 

which only made the Twist more popular. 
Joy doesn't need permission. It catches on

like contagion. Any lonely god would want 
to feel loosed from the world's grip 

sometimes. As for the chips, of course 
I buy them. I tear the packet open with 

my hands— each salty crunch loud as 
the sound of a rule breaking somewhere.

April 5, 2026 by Dave Bonta

Mired

(Lord’s day). Up and spent the morning, till the Barber came, in reading in my chamber part of Osborne’s Advice to his Son (which I shall not never enough admire for sense and language), and being by and by trimmed, to Church, myself, wife, Ashwell, &c. Home to dinner, it raining, while that was prepared to my office to read over my vows with great affection and to very good purpose. So to dinner, and very well pleased with it.
Then to church again, where a simple bawling young Scot preached.
So home to my office alone till dark, reading some papers of my old navy precedents, and so home to supper, and, after some pleasant talk, my wife, Ashwell, and I to bed.

Lord’s day in the mire
by myself

a simple bawling ache
of dark precedents

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 5 April 1663.

April 5, 2026April 5, 2026 by Luisa A. Igloria

Plans and conditions,

wills and directives— if this,  

then that. If we're lucky, or
not. Who benefits from certain

actions? Who gains from my love 
of bathing in sunlight, loses

from my habit of pulling up weeds 
with bare hands? I know the cost

of not putting things in order. 
I also know also how impossible 

it is to itemize assets vs. debts,
time spent vs. time held against

future use. Finally, I'm learning
to sort the mail as soon as it

comes, to believe in dreams 
as dreams instead of prophecy—

one springs from the mind
of what can be, and the other

from the mind of what seems
to know what can't be known.

April 4, 2026 by Dave Bonta

Consumer report

Up betimes and to my office. By and by to Lombard street by appointment to meet Mr. Moore, but the business not being ready I returned to the office, where we sat a while, and, being sent for, I returned to him and there signed to some papers in the conveying of some lands mortgaged by Sir Rob. Parkhurst in my name to my Lord Sandwich, which I having done I returned home to dinner.
Whither by and by comes Roger Pepys, Mrs. Turner her daughter, Joyce Norton, and a young lady, a daughter of Coll. Cockes, my uncle Wight, his wife and Mrs. Anne Wight. This being my feast, in lieu of what I should have had a few days ago for my cutting of the stone, for which the Lord make me truly thankful.
Very merry at, before, and after dinner, and the more for that my dinner was great, and most neatly dressed by our own only maid. We had a fricasee of rabbits and chickens, a leg of mutton boiled, three carps in a dish, a great dish of a side of lamb, a dish of roasted pigeons, a dish of four lobsters, three tarts, a lamprey pie (a most rare pie), a dish of anchovies, good wine of several sorts, and all things mighty noble and to my great content.
After dinner to Hide Park; my aunt, Mrs. Wight and I in one coach, and all the rest of the women in Mrs. Turner’s; Roger being gone in haste to the Parliament about the carrying this business of the Papists, in which it seems there is great contest on both sides, and my uncle and father staying together behind. At the Park was the King, and in another coach my Lady Castlemaine, they greeting one another at every tour. Here about an hour, and so leaving all by the way we home and found the house as clean as if nothing had been done there to-day from top to bottom, which made us give the cook 12d. a piece, each of us.
So to my office about writing letters by the post, one to my brother John at Brampton telling him (hoping to work a good effect by it upon my mother) how melancholy my father is, and bidding him use all means to get my mother to live peaceably and quietly, which I am sure she neither do nor I fear can ever do, but frightening her with his coming down no more, and the danger of her condition if he should die I trust may do good.
So home and to bed.

a sandwich for dinner
in a car park

there is a test every day
on how to live

a quiet which neither ear
can ever own

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 4 April 1663.

April 4, 2026April 3, 2026 by Luisa A. Igloria

Still

We go back to the doctor whose name
means either target or stain. Back to 
the room with crinkly paper on the exam 
table, posters on the walls illustrating 
roads connecting the nose to the throat 
and the ear. We are here for results, 
which means consequence or outcome,
or the score after a test. The doctor
says a few new spots, as if he might 
be talking about cafés in town 
or tickets to a sold-out concert.
Small, he says like an afterthought;
just something to watch. But already 
the muscle that anticipates grief 
has awakened again in me. We walk
to the parking garage. Magnolias 
are pinking their branches. Cars honk. 
A guy walks across the street, eyes glued 
to a phone in his hands, oblivious. Almost 
evening but the light is still impossibly 
bright, so we decide to stop for ice  
cream. When we lie down at night, I listen 
to your breathing, tell myself the future 
isn't arriving yet, or all at once.

April 3, 2026 by Dave Bonta

Protecting the homeland

Waked betimes and talked half an hour with my father, and so I rose and to my office, and about 9 o’clock by water from the Old Swan to White Hall and to chappell, which being most monstrous full, I could not go into my pew, but sat among the quire. Dr. Creeton, the Scotchman, preached a most admirable, good, learned, honest and most severe sermon, yet comicall, upon the words of the woman concerning the Virgin, “Blessed is the womb that bare thee (meaning Christ) and the paps that gave thee suck; and he answered, Nay; rather is he blessed that heareth the word of God, and keepeth it.”
He railed bitterly ever and anon against John Calvin, and his brood, the Presbyterians, and against the present term, now in use, of “tender consciences.” He ripped up Hugh Peters (calling him the execrable skellum), his preaching and stirring up the maids of the city to bring in their bodkins and thimbles.
Thence going out of White Hall, I met Captain Grove, who did give me a letter directed to myself from himself. I discerned money to be in it, and took it, knowing, as I found it to be, the proceed of the place I have got him to be, the taking up of vessels for Tangier. But I did not open it till I came home to my office, and there I broke it open, not looking into it till all the money was out, that I might say I saw no money in the paper, if ever I should be questioned about it. There was a piece in gold and 4l. in silver.
So home to dinner with my father and wife, and after dinner up to my tryangle, where I found that above my expectation Ashwell has very good principles of musique and can take out a lesson herself with very little pains, at which I am very glad. Thence away back again by water to Whitehall, and there to the Tangier Committee, where we find ourselves at a great stand; the establishment being but 70,000l. per annum, and the forces to be kept in the town at the least estimate that my Lord Rutherford can be got to bring it is 53,000l.. The charge of this year’s work of the Mole will be 13,000l.; besides 1000l. a-year to my Lord Peterborough as a pension, and the fortifications and contingencys, which puts us to a great stand, and so unsettled what to do therein we rose, and I to see my Lord Sandwich, whom I found merry at cards, and so by coach home, and after supper a little to my office and so home and to bed.
I find at Court that there is some bad news from Ireland of an insurrection of the Catholiques there, which puts them into an alarm.
I hear also in the City that for certain there is an embargo upon all our ships in Spayne, upon this action of my Lord Windsor’s at Cuba, which signifies little or nothing, but only he hath a mind to say that he hath done something before he comes back again.
Late tonight I sent to invite my uncle Wight and aunt with Mrs. Turner to-morrow.

the old bare Christ
on his rood

against present
tender consciences

should be questioned
about his work for insurrection

before he comes
back again

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 3 April 1663.

April 3, 2026April 2, 2026 by Luisa A. Igloria

I am an immigrant like you

except in all the ways my being
an immigrant are different 
from all the ways you experience 
your being an immigrant 
differently from me.

And yet we are capable 
of the same joy, the same
grieving, the same terrible
capacity to break and be
broken open, to choose rice 
over bread, both salt and sugar, 
soft instead of hard.