Poems & poem-like things – Page 947

July 23, 2013July 24, 2013 by Luisa A. Igloria

Mondo Inteirinho

It’s beautiful this way, isn’t it?
Look at how cobalt swirls define

the snapped green outlines of continents,
the red of territories where cities crackle

with intermittent light or gunfire. Line up
the edges of the clear acrylic cage so they

resemble markings on a turtle shell. Set it
on the shelf, or on an antique rolltop desk

inlaid with gold from melted teeth. Ransoms
have been paid for loveliness less than this.

We’ve brought war to countless flea-ridden
villages harboring dark wells of oil, beaches

mottled with the dust of diamonds. In return,
see all the trade that journeys back to us

in ochre and blue container vessels, the bills
of lading penned in more than a dozen foreign

tongues. The diners in the inner room
are cataloguing artifacts before their

disappearance: smoked foam of fungi
gathered in thunderstorms, sleek

bodies of eels entombed in blocks
of marbled tofu, ortolans drowned

in Armagnac… For let it not be said
our love is shabby, or lacking for display.

~ (after Peter Eudenbach)

In response to Via Negativa: The Inward Park.

July 23, 2013May 30, 2016 by Dave Bonta

Lord’s day. All this last night it had rained hard. My brother Tom came this morning the first time to see me, and I paid him all that I owe my father to this day. Afterwards I went out and looked into several churches, and so to my uncle Fenner’s, whither my wife was got before me, and we, my father and mother, and all the Joyces, and my aunt Bell, whom I had not seen many a year before. After dinner to White Hall (my wife to church with K. Joyce), where I find my Lord at home, and walked in the garden with him, he showing me all the respect that can be. I left him and went to walk in the Park, where great endeavouring to get into the inward Park, but could not get in; one man was basted by the keeper, for carrying some people over on his back through the water.
Afterwards to my Lord’s, where I staid and drank with Mr. Sheply, having first sent to get a pair of oars. It was the first time that ever I went by water on the Lord’s day. Home, and at night had a chapter read; and I read prayers out of the Common Prayer Book, the first time that ever I read prayers in this house. So to bed.

I look for joy and find a garden,
walk in the park endeavoring
to get into the inward park,
carry people over
through the common bed.

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 22 July 1660.

July 23, 2013May 30, 2016 by Dave Bonta

Visitant

This morning Mr. Barlow had appointed for me to bring him what form I would have the agreement between him and me to pass, which I did to his lodgings at the Golden Eagle in the new street between Fetter Lane and Shoe Lane, where he liked it very well, and I from him went to get Mr. Spong to engross it in duplicates.
To my Lord and spoke to him about the business of the Privy Seal for me to be sworn, though I got nothing by it, but to do Mr. Moore a kindness, which he did give me a good answer to. Went to the Six Clerks’ office to Mr. Spong for the writings, and dined with him at a club at the next door, where we had three voices to sing catches. So to my house to write letters and so to Whitehall about business of my Lord’s concerning his creation, and so home and to bed.

A golden eagle in the street
between Fetter Lane and Shoe Lane.
Six clerks sing to it about Creation.

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 21 July 1660.

July 23, 2013May 30, 2016 by Dave Bonta

Venison

We sat at the office this morning, Sir W. Batten and Mr. Pett being upon a survey to Chatham. This morning I sent my wife to my father’s and he is to give me 5l. worth of pewter. After we rose at the office, I went to my father’s, where my Uncle Fenner and all his crew and Captain Holland and his wife and my wife were at dinner at a venison pasty of the venison that I did give my mother the other night.
I did this time show so much coldness to W. Joyce that I believe all the table took notice of it.
After that to Westminster about my Lord’s business and so home, my Lord having not been well these two or three days, and I hear that Mr. Barnwell at Hinchinbroke is fallen sick again. Home and to bed.

We chat of fat venison,
of that mother the other table took.
We sin and so fall sick.

~or~

I sent my wife a pewter rose,
a venison pasty—
so much cold joy we fall sick.

Erasure poems derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 20 July 1660.

July 22, 2013 by Luisa A. Igloria

Poem for a Landscape at the End of Time

You don’t know the depths made fierce
by fire and water; you don’t hear

the pillars crumble, the great Tortoise of Heaven
and the sounds she makes as she awakens. Not even

emperors, great statesmen, soldiers, movie stars,
moguls, philosophers, judges and lawmen

can forestall the hour— A gong
sounds, and the echo of that song

floods the hollows of its shell. All
drown and tremble, as old tales foretell.

In response to Via Negativa: Poem for Display in an Inaccessible Location.

July 21, 2013September 17, 2015 by Luisa A. Igloria

[poem removed by author]

In response to Via Negativa: Poem for Display in a Vacant Lot.

July 20, 2013July 21, 2013 by Luisa A. Igloria

Poem for Passing Encounters at the Grocery Checkout Aisle

after D. Bonta’s “Poem for Display at a Police Checkpoint”

The cashier sporting a nose ring and Kiss Everlasting French Fake Nails cracks her gum every few seconds; her high ponytail bobs as she flips through the a three-ring binder and its plastic-covered product list pages. Finally she asks, What’s that?— pointing to the 4 small purple potatoes I’ve placed on the counter. After I tell her and she rings me up, the young man— most likely a high school or college student working through the summer— bags my purchases. Paper or plastic? he asks, and I say Paper to Jihad, for that is what his name tag says. And I know that his name might mean either a holy war or the struggle of believers in Islam to fulfill their religious duties or to make believers out of their enemies. But I do not think there are any mujahideen here, no children running through the frozen food section with homemade bombs strapped under their vests. A couple of men are buying lottery tickets in the corner, and it’s true, no one ever seems to buy any of the exotic imported fruit marked at ridiculous prices. The deeply sun-tanned man in the aisle next to us hefts two six-packs of Dos Equis into his cart, and whistles as he moves to the exit. When he passes I read Alma y Luz tattooed with roses on his right bicep. Behind me, a couple of local firefighters are waiting their turn with a cart full of pork spareribs, lean ground beef, and barbeque sauce. One of them picks out a foil-covered piece of candy from the rack near the gum and magazines. What? he says to his companion; I love Cadbury Creme Eggs. And his friend says Whatever, man and laughs.

In response to Via Negativa: Poem for Display at a Police Checkpoint.

July 19, 2013July 21, 2013 by Luisa A. Igloria

Boy

Flickering in the light of the neighbor’s
surveillance camera, you see this boy

pulling the trash bin away from the curb. He is
thirteen, it is ten in the morning, he is a boy

at home with his mother and brother in a blue
house with a porch and a screen door. This boy

doesn’t say anything I can hear, because I am looking
at the last moments of his life on tape: this boy,

from this distance— from beyond frame after frame and from
beyond his life because now he is dead. Around this boy,

what was the quality of the light that morning? Was it
warm or musky like the silk of corn, was it milky? This boy,

and this other boy who walked to the corner convenience store
for a can of soda and a bag of sweets: under his hood, this boy—

And the boy that, surely, once in his life, the white
man brandishing the gun must have been? Only a boy,

each of them. Black face, sepia-tinted body stepping from
shadow into warm light: how does he become less than a boy?

On camera, two frantic dogs run circles around the man
and the boy; you might hear the voice of the boy

who pleads for his life. Play it again, and still it is the same:
see the man lunge forward, raise his arm, take aim at the boy.

In response to small stone (244).

July 19, 2013May 30, 2016 by Dave Bonta

In/formal

I did lie late a-bed. I and my wife by water, landed her at Whitefriars with her boy with an iron of our new range which is already broke and my wife will have changed, and many other things she has to buy with the help of my father to-day.
I to my Lord and found him in bed. This day I received my commission to swear people the oath of allegiance and supremacy delivered me by my Lord.
After talk with my Lord I went to Westminster Hall, where I took Mr. Michell and his wife, and Mrs. Murford we sent for afterwards, to the Dog Tavern, where I did give them a dish of anchovies and olives and paid for all, and did talk of our old discourse when we did use to talk of the King, in the time of the Rump, privately; after that to the Admiralty Office, in White Hall, where I staid and writ my last observations for these four days last past.
Great talk of the difference between the Episcopal and Presbyterian Clergy, but I believe it will come to nothing. So home and to bed.

I talk with my dog
where I talk to the king:
privately.
Between home and bed.

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 19 July 1660.

July 18, 2013July 18, 2013 by Luisa A. Igloria

By Hand

This was the way we wrought
the thing the moment needed:

wood shaved down to level
under a carpenter’s plane,

tallow thickened around
a plumb line; stitches

running a sail, a pair
of sleeves and pantaloons,

a knitted shape
to parry the wind

to hold or hurry
a body out the door.

In response to Via Negativa: Sic Transit.