Via Negativa

November 18, 2024November 18, 2024 by Luisa A. Igloria

Muscle Memory

river in November light between bare woods and mountain

When you are born of immigrants, 
the memories that live 

in your mind and gut aren't just 
your own. Damp t-shirts and towels 

dry in the sun on the balcony 
railing— these too are flags 

of the country of your first 
education, reminding you 

of your ancestors and kin 
who knew how to bend to the soil 

and bow to the rivers, when
to stand up with others and when

to bide time; when to slip, watchful,
into the simmering background.

Their hands know how to wield 
the hoe and transplant the fragile

seedling, how to guide the gleaming
scalpel in the operating theatre

with precision as it enters 
subcutaneous tissue to start

the work of regeneration.  
You will try to keep this

knowledge alive in your own hands:
memory of touch, firm memory of when

it is necessary to quarter and loosen;
memory of how to keep life alive.

November 17, 2024November 18, 2024 by Luisa A. Igloria

(Lord’s day). To our own church, and at noon, by invitation, Sir W. Pen dined with me, and I took Mrs. Hester, my Lady Batten’s kinswoman, to dinner from church with me, and we were very merry. So to church again, and heard a simple fellow upon the praise of Church musique, and exclaiming against men’s wearing their hats on in the church, but I slept part of the sermon, till latter prayer and blessing and all was done without waking which I never did in my life. So home, and by and by comes my uncle Wight and my aunt and Mr. Norbury and his lady, and we drank hard and were very merry till supper time, and then we parted, my wife and I being invited to Sir W. Pen’s, where we also were very merry, and so home to prayers and to bed.

too simple a music
in swearing and blessing

do hard time and then
invite a prayer

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 17 November 1661.

November 16, 2024 by Luisa A. Igloria

Ode to the Tidal Bore

Tonight, I am on a Zoom call with my old friend 
from graduate school. She tells me about wanting

to move, in the New Year, to Canada. She wants to know 
if I've ever heard of the tidal bore at the Bay of Fundy 

and how, as the tide comes in, outflowing rivers 
rush back upstream in a forty-foot swell. What I 

want to know is, if going against the current 
is a thing that exists in nature, couldn't such 

a force also reside in us? In other places 
at the juncture of rivers and bays, waterfalls 

seem to reverse at high tide, pushing back inland 
through narrow passages that led to the sea, rocking 

back and forth at least twice a day as the moon pushes
and pulls, a rhythm older than any of us understands.

November 16, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Temptation

At the office all the morning. Dined at home, and so about my business in the afternoon to the Temple, where I found my Chancery bill drawn against T. Trice, which I read and like it, and so home.

all about sin
in the afternoon temple

where I found Chance
drawn like a home

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 16 November 1661.

November 15, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Constrained

At home all the morning, and at noon with my wife to the Wardrobe to dinner, and there, did shew herself to my Lady in the handkercher that she bought the lace for the other day, and indeed it is very handsome. Here I left my wife and went to my Lord Privy Seal to Whitehall, and there did give him a copy of the Fees of the office as I have received them, and he was well pleased with it. So to the Opera, where I met my wife and Captain Ferrers and Madamoiselle Le Blanc, and there did see the second part of “The Siege of Rhodes” very well done; and so by coach set her home, and the coach driving down the hill through Thames Street, which I think never any coach did before from that place to the bridge-foot, but going up Fish Street Hill his horses were so tired, that they could not be got to go up the hill, though all the street boys and men did beat and whip them. At last I was fain to send my boy for a link, and so light out of the coach till we got to another at the corner of Fenchurch Street, and so home, and to bed.

morning in her hands
a sea with one fish

so red the light
out of a church

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 15 November 1661.

November 15, 2024November 16, 2024 by Luisa A. Igloria

Will

 
     The banners we tacked on the wall
are still there from the last
     celebration. What is time 
anymore? We thought that in the end, 
     we'd choose the desire for good 
over the desire for cold assertion. Oh 
     to touch a future that could break 
in no other way but blossom. What 
     will we do, I ask my daughter.  
We will go on, she says.

November 14, 2024November 14, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Aspirational

At the office all the morning. At noon I went by appointment to the Sun in Fish Street to a dinner of young Mr. Bernard’s for myself, Mr. Phillips, Davenport, Weaver, &c., where we had a most excellent dinner, but a pie of such pleasant variety of good things, as in all my life I never tasted. Hither came to me Captain Lambert to take his leave of me, he being this day to set sail for the Straights. We drank his farewell and a health to all our friends, and were very merry, and drank wine enough. Hence to the Temple to Mr. Turner about drawing up my bill in Chancery against T. Trice, and so to Salisbury Court, where Mrs. Turner is come to town to-night, but very ill still of an ague, which I was sorry to see. So to the Wardrobe and talked with my Lady, and so home and to bed.

all the sun for myself
a pie I never tasted

I am captain of this day
enough to wing it

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 14 November 1661.

November 14, 2024November 14, 2024 by Luisa A. Igloria

Complexity

“All that has dark sounds has duende.”
                 ~ Manuel Torre, via Federico Garcia Lorca


It is cold and the windows rattle.
On their surface, reflections of indoor plants—
those heart-shaped leaves with holes 
through which the old questions leak,
and they wait to see what you might do
with these old-new sorrows. 

I want to pump my fists and yell 
into the air I don't know, why do you 
think I should know what to do,  then
collapse in a heap like my mothers 
when spent, at the height 
of their own upheavals.

Then someone might come 
to help them into bed or feed them
a drink of water, stroke their hair,
hold their hands; after which
their sobs might gentle
into fitful sleep. 

And still they knew they would need
to wake, gather the fragments of old-
new wounds into a knot, pat their hair 
back into place; wield the kitchen knife 
over the scarred back of a wooden 
chopping board, so a mosaic of mutilated 
onions would tinge our stews.

November 13, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Change agent

By appointment, we all went this morning to wait upon the Duke of York, which we did in his chamber, as he was dressing himself in his riding suit to go this day by sea to the Downs. He is in mourning for his wife’s grandmother, which is thought a great piece of fondness. After we had given him our letter relating the bad condition of the Navy for want of money, he referred it to his coming back and so parted, and I to Whitehall and to see la belle Pierce, and so on foot to my Lord Crew’s, where I found him come to his new house, which is next to that he lived in last; here I was well received by my Lord and Sir Thomas, with whom I had great talk: and he tells me in good earnest that he do believe the Parliament (which comes to sit again the next week), will be troublesome to the Court and Clergy, which God forbid! But they see things carried so by my Lord Chancellor and some others, that get money themselves, that they will not endure it. From thence to the Theatre, and there saw “Father’s own Son” again, and so it raining very hard I went home by coach, with my mind very heavy for this my expensefull life, which will undo me, I fear, after all my hopes, if I do not take up, for now I am coming to lay out a great deal of money in clothes for my wife, I must forbear other expenses.
To bed, and this night began to lie in the little green chamber, where the maids lie, but we could not a great while get Nell to lie there, because I lie there and my wife, but at last, when she saw she must lie there or sit up, she, with much ado, came to bed.

dressing in mourning
I live as I believe

in some thin chance
and the rain coming
to green us up

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 13 November 1661.