Via Negativa

February 23, 2025February 23, 2025 by Luisa A. Igloria

(Lord’s day). My cold being increased, I staid at home all day, pleasing myself with my dining-room, now graced with pictures, and reading of Dr. Fuller’s “Worthys.” So I spent the day, and at night comes Sir W. Pen and supped and talked with me. This day by God’s mercy I am 29 years of age, and in very good health, and like to live and get an estate; and if I have a heart to be contented, I think I may reckon myself as happy a man as any is in the world, for which God be praised. So to prayers and to bed.

I increased myself
in a picture

the night comes
with me like a nest

if I have a heart
I may reckon myself a god

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 23 February 1661/62.

February 22, 2025February 23, 2025 by Luisa A. Igloria

Mare Icarium*

river in November light between bare woods and mountain

"...for him it was not an important failure"
               "Musée des Beaux Arts," W.H. Auden 


They may have never been wrong 
about the indifference of people 
and animals, the banality 
of evil and suffering— but what 
if at all did they know about 
its opposite, joy; of how
it must have felt to leave 
the labyrinth, spread your wings 
and glide through a sky honeyed 
with sunlight? Easy enough to mark 
this only as the site of disaster: 
aircraft falling out of the sky, bodies
tumbling into the river spangled 
with ice. Easy enough to say
nothing to see here now, move  
along— except the water glitters
with the shapes of the newly dead,
and nothing can sail calmly on.     
   
 
*Sea of Icarus

February 22, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Bait and Switch Ritual

This entry is part 10 of 11 in the series Rituals

praise your followers for
their taste in hatreds

they’ll need them when
it’s white knuckle time

for who can say who
is wholly human

skinwalkers all you must
commit to your bits

lose your unshifted shapes
no more being two-faced

fan your flicker of conviction
into a parade of torches

erect memorials to the truth
and charge admission

every bait comes
with a barbed hook

tie the most flagrant flies
to land the leeriest fish

February 22, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Theologic

At the office busy all the morning, and thence to dinner to my Lady Sandwich’s, and thence with Mr. Moore to our Attorney, Wellpoole’s, and there found that Godfry has basely taken out a judgment against us for the 40l., for which I am vexed. And thence to buy a pair of stands and a hanging shelf for my wife’s chamber, and so home, and thither came Mr. Savill with the pictures, and we hung them up in our dining-room. It comes now to appear very handsome with all my pictures.
This evening I wrote letters to my father; among other things acquainting him with the unhappy accident which hath happened lately to my Lord of Dorset’s two oldest sons, who, with two Belasses and one Squire Wentworth, were lately apprehended for killing and robbing of a tanner about Newington on Wednesday last, and are all now in Newgate. I am much troubled for it, and for the grief and disgrace it brings to their familys and friends. After this, having got a very great cold, I got something warm to-night, and so to bed.

we found god
in the air

a hanging pear
a happy accident

done killing and robbing
we are all now new

at the grief
grace brings

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 22 February 1661/62.

February 22, 2025January 4, 2026 by Dave Bonta

Balance

All the morning putting things in my house in order, and packing up glass to send into the country to my father, and books to my brother John, and then to my Lord Crew’s to dinner; and thence to Mr. Lewes Philip’s chamber, and there at noon with him for business, and received 80l. upon Jaspar Trice’s account, and so home with it, and so to my chamber for all this evening, and then to bed.

thin house
in a glass country

books and lips
on a par

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 21 February 1661/62.

February 21, 2025February 21, 2025 by Luisa A. Igloria

Aquifer

All day, her memories rake hard 
ground in search of lost gems, 

in search of veins that might 
lead to a heart of ore. Or 

they cluster like raucous birds 
in the morning and sing off-key, 

like children learning a melody 
by rote. She opens the shoe closet,

hunting for a pair to cover her feet
against the cut of stones. There's no map

to tell her how far she should go, how 
deep to dig. How far under layers of rock

and shale does the water table dwell?
Beneath is the aquifer, groundwater.

February 20, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Meanwhile

crown shyness as they call it
saves the trees
from foreign entanglements

as shrinkwrapped
in ice they glitter
and shed dead limbs

now in my woodstove
a tongue of flame makes
a knot explode

smoke from my chimney
sinks to the ground
and ghosts off into the forest

where i soon follow
over the ice
with chains on my feet

seeking patches of snow
left behind by the wind
for news of spring

chipmunk forays
out of hibernation
the braided tracks of coyotes

bright green
scraps of moss
dug up by a squirrel

February 20, 2025February 21, 2025 by Luisa A. Igloria

If You Know, You Know


 
You know you're only mortal and not a god

           but that doesn't mean you know nothing 

about how language is right now being used 

           to camouflage ignorance as virtue, villainy

as self-control, avarice as acumen. Whole 

           planes collide mid-air or roll over in flames 

on the tarmac. Lawyers stutter I don't know 

           rather than tell the truth. Sure they know. 

Of course we know things. And we know it takes 

           balls to admit the truth of what you said

you didn't see coming, until the shadow of 

           a beach umbrella transforms lickety split,

darkly flaring over your head. Drop your chili

           lime margarita and sunblock— it's cobra hoods 

all the way down. (That's actually the name 

           of a line of garments designed for tactical 

concealment, though I meant the actual viper 

           drawing its head back before the strike.) 

In old tales, not all serpents are sinister. 

           Think of doctor-healer Aesculepius and his 

snake-encircled caduceus: Zeus killed him 

           with thunderbolts, afraid of how his science

brought humans back from the brink of death. 

           If you don't want to be a myth, be a mystery 

—but the kind that doesn't stifle the wonder 

           out of stars and stones and fir-clad 

forests. Don't be a thug or a bully or a dick.

February 20, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Recruit

This morning came Mr. Child to see me, and set me something to my Theorbo, and by and by come letters from Tangier from my Lord, telling me how, upon a great defete given to the Portuguese there by the Moors, he had put in 300 men into the town, and so he is in possession, of which we are very glad, because now the Spaniard’s designs of hindering our getting the place are frustrated. I went with the letter inclosed to my Lord Chancellor to the House of Lords, and did give it him in the House. And thence to the Wardrobe with my Ladys, and there could not stay dinner, but went by promise to Mr. Savill’s, and there sat the first time for my picture in little, which pleaseth me well. So to the office till night and then home.

a child in a town of rust
I went with my chance

to war and no promise
to my little night

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 20 February 1661/62.