Via Negativa

March 17, 2025 by Dave Bonta

White supremacy

All the morning at the office by myself about setting things in order there, and so at noon to the Exchange to see and be seen, and so home to dinner and then to the office again till night, and then home and after supper and reading a while to bed.
Last night the Blackmore pink brought the three prisoners, Barkestead, Okey, and Corbet, to the Tower, being taken at Delfe in Holland; where, the Captain tells me, the Dutch were a good while before they could be persuaded to let them go, they being taken prisoners in their land. But Sir G. Downing would not be answered so: though all the world takes notice of him for a most ungrateful villain for his pains.

in myself
no change of night

the black land
taken prisoner

and all the world
takes pains

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 17 March 1661/62.

March 16, 2025March 16, 2025 by Luisa A. Igloria

Still in the Labyrinth

river in November light between bare woods and mountain

Labyrinthitis is caused by the inflammation 
of the labyrinth, a maze of fluid-filled 
channels in the inner ear. 


I threw up into a plastic bag
all the way down the mountain 
road, six hours from the city.
When I was done, my insides  

felt completely wrung. Not only
was I lightheaded— also, I thought
the light glancing off the car's
side window was a sword or

the finger of God. Now I know
that the tingling in my palms was
probably from dehydration, and not  
some fearful prelude to a rapturing. 

Imagine the body rattling in the air, 
in the throes of its disintegration— 
though we're told the soul can neither 
be created nor destroyed.

March 16, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Nightfall

(Lord’s day). This morning, till churches were done, I spent going from one church to another and hearing a bit here and a bit there. So to the Wardrobe to dinner with the young Ladies, and then into my Lady’s chamber and talked with her a good while, and so walked to White Hall, an hour or two in the Park, which is now very pleasant. Here the King and Duke came to see their fowl play. The Duke took very civil notice of me. So walked home, calling at Tom’s, giving him my resolution about my boy’s livery. Here I spent an hour walking in the garden with Sir W. Pen, and then my wife and I thither to supper, where his son William is at home not well. But all things, I fear, do not go well with them; they look discontentedly, but I know not what ails them. Drinking of cold small beer here I fell ill, and was forced to go out and vomit, and so was well again and went home by and by to bed. Fearing that Sarah would continue ill, wife and I removed this night to our matted chamber and lay there.

I hear here and there
an owl calling

out walking
with my cold small fear

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 16 March 1661/62.

March 15, 2025March 15, 2025 by Luisa A. Igloria

Memory of a Tree

~ after Mercedes López

I've come to love the milky taste 
of tea with no actual milk in it, 

and the tang of salt in the air on dry days
in the mountains. What are the scaffolds 

on which we build if not the ghosts 
of magnificent cities, whose blueprints

sycophants and tyrants tried but failed
to obliterate? Here is a lattice studded

with diamond points of light, an oceanic 
generation of forests. I want to see 

not monuments but grids conducting  
the hum of a different electricity, lanes

and highways overlaid with cool moisture;
every pewter cell of night cast open.

March 15, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Student

With Sir G. Carteret and both the Sir Williams at Whitehall to wait on the Duke in his chamber, which we did about getting money for the Navy and other things. So back again to the office all the morning. Thence to the Exchange to hire a ship for the Maderas, but could get none. Then home to dinner, and Sir G. Carteret and I all the afternoon by ourselves upon business in the office till late at night. So to write letters and home to bed. Troubled at my maid’s being ill.

art to hang
ash for dinner

tea to write letters
home to trouble

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 15 March 1661/62.

March 14, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Optimistic

At the office all the morning. At noon Sir W. Pen and I making a bargain with the workmen about his house, at which I did see things not so well contracted for as I would have, and I was vexed and made him so too to see me so critical in the agreement. Home to dinner. In the afternoon came the German Dr. Kuffler, to discourse with us about his engine to blow up ships. We doubted not the matter of fact, it being tried in Cromwell’s time, but the safety of carrying them in ships; but he do tell us, that when he comes to tell the King his secret (for none but the Kings, successively, and their heirs must know it), it will appear to be of no danger at all.
We concluded nothing; but shall discourse with the Duke of York to-morrow about it.
In the afternoon, after we had done with him, I went to speak with my uncle Wight and found my aunt to have been ill a good while of a miscarriage, I staid and talked with her a good while.
Thence home, where I found that Sarah the maid had been very ill all day, and my wife fears that she will have an ague, which I am much troubled for.
Thence to my lute, upon which I have not played a week or two, and trying over the two songs of “Nulla, nulla,” &c., and “Gaze not on Swans,” which Mr. Berkenshaw set for me a little while ago, I find them most incomparable songs as he has set them, of which I am not a little proud, because I am sure none in the world has them but myself, not so much as he himself that set them. So to bed.

the pen and I
making things up

we doubt the time
that comes in secret

for a miscarriage
or the song of a swan

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 14 March 1661/62.

March 14, 2025March 13, 2025 by Luisa A. Igloria

Elegy for the Human, with Extradition Standoff

Human: mid-15c., humain, humaigne, "human," from  
Old French humain, umain (adj.) "of or belonging 
to man" (12c.), from Latin humanus "of man, human," 
also "humane, philanthropic, kind, gentle, polite; 
... in part from PIE *(dh)ghomon-, literally 
"earthling, earthly being," as opposed to 
the gods (from root *dhghem- "earth") 
                               - etymonline.com



Given a choice to do the right 
thing, what is it that people do? 
At Villamor air base before the former 

president is flown to face the music 
at the international criminal court, his wife
and daughter scream "Humane, humane,"

stalling for time. He's an octogenarian 
now; his health is poor, he's waiting for 
his children, because because because—
 
Police close ranks and bodies form a shield 
but not a weapon clicks in place. His rights 
are read to him, unlike the thousands 

he ordered shot because "Human rights, 
son of a bitch." A milky fog, a kind of gauze 
bandage, drapes over this ordinary day. A dog

limps down the alley. A partly disemboweled
squirrel's plastered on the road, syrupy
rot beneath the traffic stop.

March 13, 2025March 13, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Morsel

All day, either at the office or at home, busy about business till late at night, I having lately followed my business much, I find great pleasure in it, and a growing content.

a rat out at night
I eat a wing

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 13 March 1661/62.

March 13, 2025March 13, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Psalm Ending with a Howl

This entry is part 6 of 6 in the series Psalms

open the knives
of my heart to rust
blooming like a sunset

the earth’s stillborn twin
glows with purloined light
dimming the stars

and the midnight creek
has one or two things to say
it shimmers as it should

a freight train
labors up the valley
wailing at every crossroads

I feel a howl
uncurling like a leaf
from its shrink-wrapped fist

almost full will do
for an almost fool
to raise his coyote muzzle

March 13, 2025March 13, 2025 by Luisa A. Igloria

Poem with Extradition, Ace of Swords, and Five of Coins

Fortune can be a fickle lover, 
can be a beggar standing outside 
the gate in blood-stained rags, 

waiting to turn the tables on you. 
It can be a miser who keeps an eye, 
two feet, two hands on his hoard 

of coins because he thinks the world 
is only out to impoverish him. The sun 
shines on his back and on the bustling 

city, but he won't be allowed to buy a stick 
of cotton candy on the beach or a golden 
bullet for the gun in his secret pocket. 

Fortune this week is the despot shuffled
off a plane and into a cell, there to await 
trial; while in the hallway, his wife 

pleads for mercy. Fortune pulls a sword 
out of a gleaming cloud as if to smite 
the mountains and part the sea and all

else in its path. Every blade has two edges,
every sky a moon and sun. Fortune slaps  
one cheek then asks you to turn the other— 

a game it never seems to tire of. Fortune says
this is one way to rid yourself of illusion, 
and prepare for the breakthrough just ahead.