Via Negativa

June 3, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Attrition

To the Wardrobe, where discoursing with my Lord, he did instruct me as to the business of the Wardrobe, in case, in his absence, Mr. Townsend should die, and told me that he do intend to joyne me and Mr. Moore with him as to the business, now he is going to sea, and spoke to me many other things, as to one that he do put the greatest confidence in, of which I am proud. Here I had a good occasion to tell him (what I have had long in my mind) that, since it has pleased God to bless me with something, I am desirous to lay out something for my father, and so have pitched upon Mr. Young’s place in the Wardrobe, which I desired he would give order in his absence, if the place should fall that I might have the refusal. Which my Lord did freely promise me, at which I was very glad, he saying that he would do that at the least. So I saw my Lord into the barge going to Whitehall, and I and Mr. Creed home to my house, whither my father and my cozen Scott came to dine with me, and so we dined together very well, and before we had done in comes my father Bowyer and my mother and four daughters, and a young gentleman and his sister, their friends, and there staid all the afternoon, which cost me great store of wine, and were very merry.
By and by I am called to the office, and there staid a little. So home again, and took Mr. Creed and left them, and so he and I to the Towre, to speak for some ammunition for ships for my Lord; and so he and I, with much pleasure, walked quite round the Towre, which I never did before. So home, and after a walk with my wife upon the leads, I and she went to bed.
This morning I and Dr. Peirce went over to the Beare at the Bridge foot, thinking to have met my Lord Hinchinbroke and his brother setting forth for France; but they being not come we went over to the Wardrobe, and there found that my Lord Abbot Montagu being not at Paris, my Lord hath a mind to have them stay a little longer before they go.

in the business of absence
more is less

the war came and left
on a lead foot

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 3 June 1661.

June 3, 2024June 2, 2024 by Luisa A. Igloria

In the second to the last country on earth

river in November light between bare woods and mountain

where divorce is still illegal,
now they are trying to pass a bill
that will allow the married to unshackle
from unhappiness, from pummeling neglect,
from abuse and the thousand other ways
that kind of union dies, with no prospect
of real rehabilitation. Decades ago,
I tried to follow the advice I was given:
hire a lawyer; at least seek an annulment,
pay in order to be taken seriously.
The priests sat in their sanctuaries
drinking rare wines stored in their cellars
and eating dinner prepared by women
they hired from the villages. The lawyer
who was supposed to be working for me
did not hide his annoyance when I was
overcome with tears, which was often.
But he pocketed the fees and even
asked for an adjustment to cover travel,
though we lived in the same city.
At that time, my case did not,
as they say, prosper.

June 2, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Timeless

(Whitsunday). The barber having done with me, I went to church, and there heard a good sermon of Mr. Mills, fit for the day. Then home to dinner, and then to church again, and going home I found Greatorex (whom I expected today at dinner) come to see me, and so he and I in my chamber drinking of wine and eating of anchovies an hour or two, discoursing of many things in mathematics, and among others he showed me how it comes to pass the strength that levers have, and he showed me that what is got as to matter of strength is lost by them as to matter of time.
It rained very hard, as it hath done of late so much that we begin to doubt a famine, and so he was forced to stay longer than I desired.
At night after prayers to bed.

one good day
in the wine of an hour

show me how
it comes to pass

a matter of lost time
that we mine for prayers

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 2 June 1661.

June 2, 2024June 1, 2024 by Luisa A. Igloria

A Fatalism

It's as if every season, she forfeits 
one thing more for the dead

trees' return to life, for the ice to thaw 
so the bluegreen blood of cuttlefish 

can pulse again through their 
three hearts. No one ever asks 

how many times she has had to do it— 
or what's collected as ransom each time, 

a hundred times, no, a thousand or more, 
for the god in the underworld— that bruiser 

and extortioner—to release his claims on 
the daughter. Was she like that once,

herself; and who paid her price? Now  
that she's the one who does the supplicating,  

she would like to disappear where a line bisects 
the sky at the place where the land seems to end.

June 1, 2024 by Luisa A. Igloria

Aura of the Unobtainable

You blush in front of the cash register 
in the split second you forget the numbers 

corresponding to your phone 
and store membership, so you can claim 
the day's special on butter or eggs. 

When you tell this story,  you're consoled:
you don't really call your own 

number. Why would you need to remember?
Who can say whether the soul wants to drift
closer to the heaven it's been taught to believe,

or back down into the river of undifferentiated
life? Flags flutter on the fringes of consciousness

like riddles whose colors signal to a previous life.
The word for jasmine is the same as its scent
is the same as its shadow strung around your neck.

When you are lost, you stay in one place until 
something shimmers to signify the light has changed.

June 1, 2024June 1, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Picnic

in an oak forest whispery
with caterpillar droppings

an ovenbird steps out
on her pink feet

as i drink my pink tea
of sassafras and milk

the sun slides down
a silk thread

whose absent abseiler tracks
a shadow back to its tree

a caterpillar with whiskers
as bristly as a streetcleaner

entering a dark valley
in the bark of a chestnut oak

follows it up the trunk
propelled by its gut pulsing

in sync with the prolegs
from hump to hump

driven almost literally by hunger
a body within the body

that one day will crawl out
with wings and gonads

an overwhelming urge to mate
and no mouth

the female so full of eggs
she will not be able to fly

i finish my lunch
the male ovenbird is singing

a carpenter ant goes past
carrying a splinter

June 1, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Sun-drunk

Having taken our leaves of Sir W. Batten and my Lady, who are gone this morning to keep their Whitsuntide, Sir W. Pen and I and Mr. Gauden by water to Woolwich, and there went from ship to ship to give order for and take notice of their forwardness to go forth, and then to Deptford and did the like, having dined at Woolwich with Captain Poole at the tavern there.
From Deptford we walked to Redriffe, calling at the half-way house, and there come into a room where there was infinite of new cakes placed that are made against Whitsuntide, and there we were very merry.
By water home, and there did businesses of the office. Among others got my Lord’s imprest of 1000l. and Mr. Creed’s of 10,000l. against this voyage their bills signed. Having wrote letters into the country and read some things I went to bed.

leaves in the sun
give and take

like a tavern
or a half-way house

where the infinite gains
another creed

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 1 June 1661.

May 31, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Next-to-last supper

I went to my father’s thinking to have met with my cozen John Holcroft, but he came not, but to my great grief I found my father and mother in a great deal of discontent one with another, and indeed my mother is grown now so pettish that I know not how my father is able to bear with it. I did talk to her so as did not indeed become me, but I could not help it, she being so unsufferably foolish and simple, so that my father, poor man, is become a very unhappy man.
There I dined, and so home and to the office all the afternoon till 9 at night, and then home and to supper and to bed.
Great talk now how the Parliament intend to make a collection of free gifts to the King through the Kingdom; but I think it will not come to much.

my great grief
is an insufferably simple supper

who am I if the kingdom
will not come

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 31 May 1661.

May 31, 2024May 30, 2024 by Luisa A. Igloria

Unspooling Landscape

Along the highway, green-winged cicadas
splayed themselves like fingers on car windows.  

They, too, are working out their own
questions of return. 

What of another life do they remember,
and if they do, what is the brightest point?

Like everyone else, I move not only
at my own pace, but at the pace the world dictates.

LIke everyone else, I have been sometimes
a wanderer, sometimes the ache for a fixed point

which is no longer there. We approach the middle 
of the year, after which we can say, 

look, it is almost winter. In the meantime, I am still 
figuring out the meanings of silence,

what it might take to bargain with 
a future whose nature does not change, 

even if it seems to. I can remember a time
when all I wanted to do was fight it. 

Now I want to be the first one to go,
before other lights are extinguished.

May 30, 2024January 11, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Functionaries

To the Wardrobe and there, with my Lord, went into his new barge to try her, and found her a good boat, and like my Lord’s contrivance of the door to come out round and not square as they used to do. Back to the Wardrobe with my Lord, and then with Mr. Moore to the Temple, and thence to Greatorex, who took me to Arundell-House, and there showed me some fine flowers in his garden, and all the fine statues in the gallery, which I formerly had seen, and is a brave sight, and thence to a blind dark cellar, where we had two bottles of good ale, and so after giving him direction for my silver side-table, I took boat at Arundell stairs, and put in at Milford and there behind the door of the stairs shit, there being a house of office there.
So home and found Sir Williams both and my Lady going to Deptford to christen Captain Rooth’s child, and would have had me with them, but I could not go.
To the office, where Sir R. Slingsby was, and he and I into his and my lodgings to take a view of them, out of a desire he has to have mine of me to join to his, and give me Mr. Turner’s.
To the office again, where Sir G. Carteret came and sat a while, he being angry for Sir Williams making of the maisters of this fleet upon their own heads without a full table. Then the Comptroller and I to the Coffee House, and there sat a great while talking of many things.
So home and to bed.
This day, I hear, the Parliament have ordered a bill to be brought in for the restoring the Bishops to the House of Lords; which they had not done so soon but to spite Mr. Prin, who is every day so bitter against them in his discourse in the House.

like statues in a dark cellar
we took root

heads full of spit
so bitter is our house

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 30 May 1661.