Via Negativa

December 1, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Giving Thanks

You can be anything now, I whisper to the corpse — an approximate truth in the approved manner of motivational speeches. Outside, the obnoxious brightness continues, unmitigated by any warmth, pouring through the naked oaks and birches. The news comes on, replacing the golden oldies with dispatches from a world where unlimited growth is possible, and a violent dying empire can only be a force for good. Grandmother sighs and settles deeper into her mystery.

November sun –
an owl-shaped shadow
opening its eyes

December 1, 2024 by Luisa A. Igloria

Seemly

river in November light between bare woods and mountain

 
What is a seemly desire, where
does remorse come from? Did I
want too much, even as I steeled 
and tempered in me those schools 
of reeling birds aching to wheel 
against unimpeded skies?
Every morning I lift the shades.
Something flutters in the weeds
surrounding my heart. 
The wind is always rising.

December 1, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Fault lines

(Lord’s day). In the morning at church and heard Mr. Mills. At home dined and with me by appointment Mr. Sanchy, who should have brought his mistress, Mrs. Mary Archer, of Cambridge, but she could not come, but we had a good dinner for him. And so in the afternoon my wife went to church, and he and I stayed at home and drank and talked, and he stayed with me till night and supped with me, when I expected to have seen Jack Cole and Lem. Wagstaffe, but they did not come.
We this day cut a brave collar of brawn from Winchcombe which proves very good, and also opened the glass of girkins which Captain Cocke did give my wife the other day, which are rare things.
So at night to bed.
There hath lately been great clapping up of some old statesmen, such as Ireton, Moyer, and others, and they say, upon a great plot, but I believe no such thing; but it is but justice that they should be served as they served the poor Cavaliers; and I believe it will oftentimes be so as long as I live, whether there be cause or no.
This evening my brother Tom was with me, and I did talk again to him about Mr. Townsend’s daughter, and I do intend to put the business in hand. I pray God give a good end to it.

who have brought
this day of glass

the old statesmen say a lot
but believe nothing

they serve the poor
another talk about sin

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 1 December 1661.

November 30, 2024December 1, 2024 by Luisa A. Igloria

Boxes

In dreams where we invoke
           the future, we are done
     with the idea of Black Friday sales
and camping on sidewalks overnight
           for the latest gaming glasses or hundred-
     twenty-foot TV screens. We are done with
counting the dead and burying the dead,
           and drowning in the shorter and shorter
      seasons that come between storms and artillery
fire. There's nothing that money could buy to prime 
           the body for the kind of success 
      premised on forgetting everything about
its origins. I am not unfamiliar with the dark,  
           but I admit I've been afraid to look it 
      in the eye. I want to scale it like the blind man 
I read about who climbed Everest, navigating every sheer
           cliff by echolocation. And I want to empty all 
      that I've packed all my life into small, separate 
compartments so they finally lose the power to seal 
           my lips, steal my joy. I am sick of starving 
      my heart, sick of marking my back 
with sticks and crosses.

November 30, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Cold warrior

In the morning to the Temple, Mr. Philips and Dr. Williams about my several law matters, and so to the Wardrobe to dinner, and after dinner stole away, my Lady not dining out of her chamber, and so home and then to the office all the afternoon, and that being done Sir W. Batten and I and Captain Cock got a bottle of sack into the office, and there we sat late and drank and talked, and so home and to bed.
I am this day in very good health, only got a little cold. The Parliament has sat a pretty while. The old condemned judges of the late King have been brought before the Parliament, and like to be hanged. I am deep in Chancery against Tom Trice, God give a good issue; and myself under great trouble for my late great expending of money vainly, which God stop for the future. This is the last day for the old State’s coyne to pass in common payments, but they say it is to pass in publique payments to the King three months still.

in the temple to war
I go to heal

a cold old king
on the state’s coin

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 30 November 1661.

November 29, 2024 by Luisa A. Igloria

Immeasurables

The day after Thanksgiving, skies 
finally clear. One by one, we start

bringing our trash and recycling
to the curb. A light wind sifts

more dry leaves on every house 
plot, every yard. Neighbors 

take out their leafblowers. 
I think of the endlessness of 

our labors, and the greater  
optimism of infinity.

November 29, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Conventional

I lay long in bed, till Sir Williams both sent me word that we were to wait upon the Duke of York to-day; and that they would have me to meet them at Westminster Hall, at noon: so I rose and went thither; and there I understand that they are gone to Mr. Coventry’s lodgings, in the Old Palace Yard, to dinner (the first time I knew he had any); and there I met them two and Sir G. Carteret, and had a very fine dinner, and good welcome, and discourse; and so, by water, after dinner to White Hall to the Duke, who met us in his closet; and there he did discourse to us the business of Holmes, and did desire of us to know what hath been the common practice about making of forrayne ships to strike sail to us, which they did all do as much as they could; but I could say nothing to it, which I was sorry for. So indeed I was forced to study a lie, and so after we were gone from the Duke, I told Mr. Coventry that I had heard Mr. Selden often say, that he could prove that in Henry the 7th’s time, he did give commission to his captains to make the King of Denmark’s ships to strike to him in the Baltique.
From thence Sir W. Pen and I to the Theatre, but it was so full that we could hardly get any room, so he went up to one of the boxes, and I into the 18d. places, and there saw “Love at first sight,” a play of Mr. Killigrew’s, and the first time that it hath been acted since before the troubles, and great expectation there was, but I found the play to be a poor thing, and so I perceive every body else do. So home, calling at Paul’s Churchyard for a “Mare Clausum,” having it in my mind to write a little matter, what I can gather, about the business of striking sayle, and present it to the Duke, which I now think will be a good way to make myself known. So home and to bed.

we wait on a rose
in the discourse of desire

forced into a box
into love at first sight

the poor body calling
to be known

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 29 November 1661.

November 29, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Midnight

At home all the morning; at noon Will brought me from Whitehall, whither I had sent him, some letters from my Lord Sandwich, from Tangier; where he continues still, and hath done some execution upon the Turks, and retaken an Englishman from them, of one Mr. Parker’s, a merchant in Marke-lane.
In the afternoon Mr. Pett and I met at the office; there being none more there than we two I saw there was not the reverence due to us observed, and so I took occasion to break up and took Mr. Gawdon along with me, and he and I (though it rained) were resolved to go, he to my Lord Treasurer’s and I to the Chancellor’s with a letter from my Lord to-day. So to a tavern at the end of Mark Lane, and there we stayed till with much ado we got a coach, and so to my Lord Treasurer’s and lost our labours, then to the Chancellor’s, and there met with Mr. Dugdale, and with him and one Mr. Simons, I think that belongs to my Lord Hatton, and Mr. Kipps and others, to the Fountain tavern, and there stayed till twelve at night drinking and singing, Mr. Simons and one Mr. Agar singing very well. Then Mr. Gawdon being almost drunk had the wit to be gone, and so I took leave too, and it being a fine moonshine night he and I footed it all the way home, but though he was drunk he went such a pace as I did admire how he was able to go. When I came home I found our new maid Sarah come, who is a tall and a very well favoured wench, and one that I think will please us. So to bed.

after the rain
lost in the fountain
a fine moon

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 28 November 1661.

November 28, 2024 by Luisa A. Igloria

Half Empty, Half Full

"Of all good things that mortals lack,
Hope in the soul alone stays back."
       ~ Gabriele Faremo, "Fabulum Centrum," 1563

 
I think of poor Pandora, pawn like us among other 
pawns in all stories of conflict, gamed by those 
gloating with power. Prometheus steals fire 

from the gods, Zeus gives Pandora to Prometheus' 
brother Epimetheus; and she, overcome by curiosity, 
opens the box left in her care. We know the rest 

of this myth—  how every wraith that bolted out 
now sows sickness and death, calamity, misfortune, 
war; every evil in the world. In Odilon Redon's 1912 
 
painting, what she holds to her chest against 
the pastel-flecked hills looks so harmless— no 
larger than a Whitman's sampler, now on sale 

at the drugstore for $5.97 and filled with peanut 
clusters, dark chocolate buttercream, vanilla cream, 
nut fudge. I suppose if you eat too many of these, 

eventually they'll kill you, after first raising 
your A1C numbers. But here, at the end of November, 
I don't want to press the forward button yet; I'm not 

eager to cross into a new year that's already 
frothing at the mouth, threatening to dissolve 
every solid pillar that held us up. 

Only hope remains in the box, which 
either means that humankind still stands a chance; 
or that hope, trapped in there, can't do very much.

November 27, 2024November 28, 2024 by Luisa A. Igloria

Objects in the Mirror are Closer than they Appear

~ after Denise Duhamel, but not exactly



I did marry too young, and didn't stay
in my hometown. But this is just summary;
it didn't happen like poof, with nothing
else in between. Plenty happened. But 
that's another poem, many poems. I thought 
the fastest way to make a life all my own 
was to start a family. Church wedding, 
sponsors, cake (I remember blue 
and white icing, but don't remember 
what flavor); then children, the whole 
shebang. Years in, a life blended 
of mother-work and teacher-work. 
I explained to a friend how, despite 
and instinctively, what I tried to do 
was hold on to a clear sense of myself— 
which meant still becoming. Some women
in the PTA looked pityingly at me, 
touching the pearls around their necks,
discreetly adjusting the pantyhose around
their ankles. There must have been a time 
when I tried to be like them, before I 
gave up. I love my children, and I 
still like cake. I love the depth 
of what I haven't discovered yet 
about the world, which means myself.