Poems & poem-like things – Page 8

May 5, 2026 by Dave Bonta

Jihadi

Up betimes and to my office, and there busy all the morning, among other things walked a good while up and down with Sir J. Minnes, he telling many old stories of the Navy, and of the state of the Navy at the beginning of the late troubles, and I am troubled at my heart to think, and shall hereafter cease to wonder, at the bad success of the King’s cause, when such a knave as he (if it be true what he says) had the whole management of the fleet, and the design of putting out of my Lord Warwick, and carrying the fleet to the King, wherein he failed most fatally to the King’s ruin.
Dined at home, and after dinner up to try my dance, and so to the office again, where we sat all the afternoon. In the evening Deane of Woolwich went home with me and showed me the use of a little sliding ruler, less than that I bought the other day, which is the same with that, but more portable; however I did not seem to understand or even to have seen anything of it before, but I find him an ingenious fellow, and a good servant in his place to the King.
Thence to my office busy writing letters, and then came Sir W. Warren, staying for a letter in his business by the post, and while that was writing he and I talked about merchandise, trade, and getting of money. I made it my business to enquire what way there is for a man bred like me to come to understand anything of trade. He did most discretely answer me in all things, shewing me the danger for me to meddle either in ships or merchandise of any sort or common stocks, but what I have to keep at interest, which is a good, quiett, and easy profit, and once in a little while something offers that with ready money you may make use of money to good profit. Wherein I concur much with him, and parted late with great pleasure and content in his discourse, and so home to supper and to bed. It has been this afternoon very hot and this evening also, and about 11 at night going to bed it fell a-thundering and lightening, the greatest flashes enlightening the whole body of the yard, that ever I saw in my life.

in the old stories
a king’s true war

fatal to the dance
of a little ruler

is to understand his place
and stay out of it

like danger enlightening
the whole body

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 5 May 1663.

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

Two Sides

river in November light between bare woods and mountain

I just learned about bilateral
tapping— crossed arms, fingers
drumming a light rhythm on each

shoulder. My therapist says this
is a way to signal both hemispheres
of the brain to lower the volume

on the frantic, on the panic, as if
anxiety is a kind of bad engineering
(which I guess it is) that's set off

smoke alarms in the chest. This is
also because the mind can be in many
places at once: red lights at different

intersections, the runway shimmering,
the indeterminate depth of the drop at 
its end. All these years my first impulse 

was to run from any building ripple, any 
hint of an undertow. In my head I was 
always rehearsing evacuation routes, 

considering where to pile sandbags. This 
exercise is supposed to remind me what I keep 
forgetting: I am right here, I am not drowning. 

A wave rises, breaks, scatters. I try 
to imagine a different scenario— a cellist 
on the beach, his wire-rimmed spectacles 

catching the fading light, his coat-
tails in the foam. His hand, bowing long, 
sure notes into the evening. Music almost 

thick enough to wade through. A crowd 
of pelicans tilting their heads to one side, 
listening not for danger but for beauty.

May 5, 2026 by Dave Bonta

Bare necessities

Up betimes and to setting my Brampton papers in order and looking over my wardrobe against summer, and laying things in order to send to my brother to alter. By and by took boat intending to have gone down to Woolwich, but seeing I could not get back time enough to dinner, I returned and home. Whither by and by the dancing-master came, whom standing by, seeing him instructing my wife, when he had done with her, he would needs have me try the steps of a coranto, and what with his desire and my wife’s importunity, I did begin, and then was obliged to give him entry-money 10s., and am become his scholler. The truth is, I think it a thing very useful for a gentleman, and sometimes I may have occasion of using it, and though it cost me what I am heartily sorry it should, besides that I must by my oath give half as much more to the poor, yet I am resolved to get it up some other way, and then it will not be above a month or two in a year. So though it be against my stomach yet I will try it a little while; if I see it comes to any great inconvenience or charge I will fling it off.
After I had begun with the steps of half a coranto, which I think I shall learn well enough, he went away, and we to dinner.
And by and by out by coach, and set my wife down at my Lord Crew’s, going to see my Lady Jem. Montagu, who is lately come to town, and I to St. James’s; where Mr. Coventry, Sir W. Pen and I staid a good while for the Duke’s coming in, but not coming, we walked to White Hall; and meeting the King, we followed him into the Park, where Mr. Coventry and he talked of building a new yacht, which the King is resolved to have built out of his privy purse, he having some contrivance of his own. The talk being done, we fell off to White Hall, leaving the King in the Park, and going back, met the Duke going towards St. James’s to meet us. So he turned back again, and to his closett at White Hall; and there, my Lord Sandwich present, we did our weekly errand, and so broke up; and I down into the garden with my Lord Sandwich (after we had sat an hour at the Tangier Committee); and after talking largely of his own businesses, we begun to talk how matters are at Court: and though he did not flatly tell me any such thing, yet I do suspect that all is not kind between the King and the Duke, and that the King’s fondness to the little Duke do occasion it; and it may be that there is some fear of his being made heir to the Crown. But this my Lord did not tell me, but is my guess only; and that my Lord Chancellor is without doubt falling past hopes. He being gone to Chelsey by coach I to his lodgings, where my wife staid for me, and she from thence to see Mrs. Pierce and called me at Whitehall stairs (where I went before by land to know whether there was any play at Court to-night) and there being none she and I to Mr. Creed to the Exchange, where she bought something, and from thence by water to White Fryars, and wife to see Mrs. Turner, and then came to me at my brother’s, where I did give him order about my summer clothes, and so home by coach, and after supper to bed to my wife, with whom I have not lain since I used to lie with my father till to-night.

time to summer
time to turn on

or have half off
in an oven of white sand

a garden large as a guess
where water used to lie

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 4 May 1663.

May 4, 2026May 4, 2026 by Luisa A. Igloria

The Color of Longing

The color of my longing is mineral: obsidian 
sheen in the time it takes for language to surface,

the compass points of intention hardening 
in the sun. I am saturated with the intensity 

of its darkness. Such depth renders 
cave-like spaces inside me— I turn them 

into grottoes, gathering bits of wreckage 
and lighting them as fires, so the blue 

of my longing can burn. Imagine a ship 
laden with memory and salt, setting out 

with full sails of intention, then 
drifting in circles from the sheer 

magnitude of desire— the kind of ocean 
that keeps widening even when nothing moves. 

But this too is abundance: so much blue, 
a whole sky seems to have fallen into the water.

May 4, 2026 by Dave Bonta

Reconfiguration

(Lord’s day). Up before 5 o’clock and alone at setting my Brampton papers to rights according to my father’s and my computation and resolution the other day to my good content, I finding that there will be clear saved to us 50l. per annum, only a debt of it may be 100l.
So made myself ready and to church, where Sir W. Pen showed me the young lady which young Dawes, that sits in the new corner-pew in the church, hath stole away from Sir Andrew Rickard, her guardian, worth 1000l. per annum present, good land, and some money, and a very well-bred and handsome lady: he, I doubt, but a simple fellow. However, he got this good luck to get her, which methinks I could envy him with all my heart. Home to dinner with my wife, who not being very well did not dress herself but staid at home all day, and so I to church in the afternoon and so home again, and up to teach Ashwell the grounds of time and other things on the tryangle, and made her take out a Psalm very well, she having a good ear and hand. And so a while to my office, and then home to supper and prayers, to bed, my wife and I having a little falling out because I would not leave my discourse below with her and Ashwell to go up and talk with her alone upon something she has to say. She reproached me but I had rather talk with any body than her, by which I find I think she is jealous of my freedom with Ashwell, which I must avoid giving occasion of.

on paper I find a new
and simple heart

with my home ground
having a good ear

having a falling body
find it well

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 3 May 1663.

May 3, 2026May 3, 2026 by Luisa A. Igloria

Life-writing, with Crows

Crows land with a thud on the eave
above the front step, in view just outside 
my writing window. I keep still so I can watch 

feathers like rain shedders of glossy black, 
before they shake their shoulders and fly
off again. Last night at the café, 

our friend the linguistics professor 
now retired since she turned 77, told us 
she'd started on her memoirs: hard going 

sometimes. I can imagine it might be,
wading back into the currents of a life 
after congratulating yourself on heaving

back to land, after the treacherous 
parts. Dates are hard to remember, names 
come back to you in the shower, then fade 

somewhere in the folds of towels. 
That kind of life-writing isn't just 
bookkeeping. If I write quickly, 

perhaps the page will snag what I want 
to keep, but also what I want to avoid. 
This body wants to rest, stop 

rationing energy and money 
so they don't run out, stop running 
to pull back those it loves from 

the brink. But if I don't move, 
will the eddies settle into calm? 
Something startles the bird— a shadow 

larger than itself, human noise 
in the street— and tips it 
back out into the sky.

May 2, 2026 by Dave Bonta

Hothouse flower

Being weary last night, I slept till almost seven o’clock, a thing I have not done many a day. So up and to my office (being come to some angry words with my wife about neglecting the keeping of the house clean, I calling her beggar, and she me pricklouse, which vexed me) and there all the morning. So to the Exchange and then home to dinner, and very merry and well pleased with my wife, and so to the office again, where we met extraordinary upon drawing up the debts of the Navy to my Lord Treasurer.
So rose and up to Sir W. Pen to drink a glass of bad syder in his new far low dining room, which is very noble, and so home, where Captain Ferrers and his lady are come to see my wife, he being to go the beginning of next week to France to sea and I think to fetch over my young Lord Hinchinbroke. They being gone I to my office to write letters by the post, and so home to supper and to bed.

I slept on some angry words
calling us to change

so I draw up debts
a rose in a glass

to see the beginning of a sea
in you my ice

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 2 May 1663.

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

Some Labor

I don't have much to boast of in the way
of clocking in at dawn and out at midnight,
grease in kitchens and bathrooms to clean,
chickens to pack into crates and trucks
or patients into gurneys. For a spell,
long ago, I taught toddlers and budding
ballerinas in the basement of a local hotel,
where mirrors ran along one wall and barres
along three. Small fingers clung to the wood
trying first and second position and plié,
except one day when one of the girls licked
the whole length out of boredom. And once,
for a summer, I sketched dresses for a seamstress 
who wanted more than hems and alterations: imagine 
women with hair swept up high in the style of the day,
their swan-like throats emerging from scooped or
plunging necklines. Cocktail skirts, beadwork
reflecting the light, some fantasy world where
no one had to worry about sweat or traffic
or overdue bills. There were times I wished 
I'd apprenticed to a sushi chef and learned 
to wield a sharp, clean blade, and times I wanted 
only to walk the marbled length of museum galleries, 
opening window after window on the centuries. 
What I know now came mostly from learning 
to sit still, opening books and letting language
take me out of myself and back again until I 
could find my way to some shore resembling 
knowledge, and there at last make my own fire.

May 1, 2026May 1, 2026 by Dave Bonta

Hobby horses

Up betimes and my father with me, and he and I all the morning and Will Stankes private, in my wife’s closet above, settling our matters concerning our Brampton estate, &c., and I find that there will be, after all debts paid within 100l., 50l. per annum clear coming towards my father’s maintenance, besides 25l. per annum annuities to my Uncle Thomas and Aunt Perkins. Of which, though I was in my mind glad, yet thought it not fit to let my father know it thoroughly, but after he had gone out to visit my uncle Thomas and brought him to dinner with him, and after dinner I got my father, brother Tom, and myself together, I did make the business worse to them, and did promise 20l. out of my own purse to make it 50l. a year to my father, propounding that Stortlow may be sold to pay 200l. for his satisfaction therein and the rest to go towards payment of debts and legacies. The truth is I am fearful lest my father should die before debts are paid, and then the land goes to Tom and the burden of paying all debts will fall upon the rest of the land. Not that I would do my brother any real hurt. I advised my father to good husbandry and to living within the compass of 50l. a year, and all in such kind words, as not only made, them but myself to weep, and I hope it will have a good effect. That being done, and all things agreed on, we went down, and after a glass of wine we all took horse, and I, upon a horse hired of Mr. Game, saw him out of London, at the end of Bishopsgate Street, and so I turned and rode, with some trouble, through the fields, and then Holborn, &c., towards Hide Park, whither all the world, I think, are going, and in my going, almost thither, met W. Howe coming galloping upon a little crop black nag; it seems one that was taken in some ground of my Lord’s, by some mischance being left by his master, a thief; this horse being found with black cloth ears on, and a false mayne, having none of his own; and I back again with him to the Chequer, at Charing Cross, and there put up my own dull jade, and by his advice saddled a delicate stone-horse of Captain Ferrers’s, and with that rid in state to the Park, where none better mounted than I almost, but being in a throng of horses, seeing the King’s riders showing tricks with their managed horses, which were very strange, my stone-horse was very troublesome, and begun to fight with other horses, to the dangering him and myself, and with much ado I got out, and kept myself out of harm’s way.
Here I saw nothing good, neither the King, nor my Lady Castlemaine, nor any great ladies or beauties being there, there being more pleasure a great deal at an ordinary day; or else those few good faces that there were choked up with the many bad ones, there being people of all sorts in coaches there, to some thousands, I think.
Going thither in the highway, just by the Park gate, I met a boy in a sculler boat, carried by a dozen people at least, rowing as hard as he could drive, it seems upon some wager.
By and by, about seven or eight o’clock, homeward; and changing my horse again, I rode home, coaches going in great crowds to the further end of the town almost. In my way, in Leadenhall Street, there was morris-dancing which I have not seen a great while. So set my horse up at Game’s, paying 5s. for him. And so home to see Sir J. Minnes, who is well again, and after staying talking with him awhile, I took leave and went to hear Mrs. Turner’s daughter, at whose house Sir J. Minnes lies, play on the harpsicon; but, Lord! it was enough to make any man sick to hear her; yet I was forced to commend her highly.
So home to supper and to bed, Ashwell playing upon the tryangle very well before I went to bed.
This day Captain Grove sent me a side of pork, which was the oddest present, sure, that was ever made any man; and the next, I remember I told my wife, I believe would be a pound of candles, or a shoulder of mutton; but the fellow do it in kindness, and is one I am beholden to.
So to bed very weary, and a little galled for lack of riding, praying to God for a good journey to my father, of whom I am afeard, he being so lately ill of his pain.

I make my own burden of hurt
into a glass horse

and all the world are galloping
on some mischance

a horse of jade is better
than a throng of stone horses

in harm’s way ordinary people
go hard on a horse of lead

my horse is high but I am beholden
to it for lack of fear

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 1 May 1663.

May 1, 2026May 1, 2026 by Luisa A. Igloria

Kissing the Saints

You've kissed the marble cheeks of martyrs, 
the foot of God at least twice in your life
and afterward wiped the painted wound 
in the palm of his right hand with a hanky. 
You do as you're told, though you know 
the body on the bier off to one side 
of the nave isn’t a body but a plaster 
replica, more than a foot longer 
than actual human height and draped
with a loincloth of velvet. This is a time 
when people don’t carry little plastic bottles 
of hand sanitizer in their purses or seem to care 
very much about germs. Certainly, no one wears
face masks or has obsessive thoughts, hours 
after such encounters, even after learning 
that a single milliliter of saliva carries
anywhere from a hundred thousand to a million 
microbes. What do such shows of devotion 
give the faithful, besides unblinking belief 
that ritual works in a world where doggedness 
might be stronger than fate or faith? What happens, 
happens mostly because something else did— a prior 
cause. A switch flipped in the upper registers 
tips dominoes and marbles down and down and down. 
Shouldn't you have been rewarded by now for your 
endurance, for bending toward what kept asking 
for your love though it didn't think it necessary 
to answer back? Before public fountains shaped
like lions or country girls, you stop to watch 
water scatter gold-edged coins, and move on.