Via Negativa

October 20, 2024October 20, 2024 by Luisa A. Igloria

Letter to You, Fragranced with Rosemary

river in November light between bare woods and mountain

Do you watch the color of the sky and how it looks 
from the top of the hill where you live, how quietly 

it moves and gathers damson plum and purple
verbena, the grey of doves' breasts, the breathing 

of pine forests at night? I know how much we've 
all suffered, are suffering still, though we barely speak

of it, or of anything else these days. This evening, 
I went into the yard because I wanted to coil 

branches of snipped rosemary into a wreath.
When I finished, night had fallen. I could barely see 

to the end of the road. My fingers were scratched, 
but suffused with such fragrance. Even after 

I washed them in the sink, the haze followed me
beyond sleep, touching everything in its wake.

October 19, 2024October 19, 2024 by Luisa A. Igloria

Shape and Substance

~ after Diane Seuss ("Coda")


The best donut in a box of store-bought donuts
is not glazed but plain, like a plain-spoken poem. 

In the farmer's market, the best donut is the one
which doesn't smell like apple cider or pumpkin 

spice. It's the one that isn't dusted with sanding 
sugar or a cinnamon-cardamom mix. If it's sweet, 

its sweetness lingers like the space where a hole 
has been made in something that used to be 

whole. In other words, whole doesn't always mean 
unbroken, and broken doesn't always mean not good 

anymore or of no further use. Sometimes whole is a body 
that rose and was punched down once, twice, on the counter 

or in a bowl. Whole means strands of gluten broken 
down, souring in fermentation, then knit back together 

to form an elastic structure. Tap it with a knife or your
finger. It's crisp and golden outside, soft on the inside.

October 19, 2024October 19, 2024 by Dave Bonta

At the office all the morning, and at noon Mr. Coventry, who sat with us all the morning, and Sir G. Carteret, Sir W. Pen, and myself, by coach to Captain Marshe’s, at Limehouse, to a house that hath been their ancestors for this 250 years, close by the lime-house which gives the name to the place. Here they have a design to get the King to hire a dock for the herring busses, which is now the great design on foot, to lie up in. We had a very good and handsome dinner, and excellent wine. I not being neat in clothes, which I find a great fault in me, could not be so merry as otherwise, and at all times I am and can be, when I am in good habitt, which makes me remember my father Osborne’s rule for a gentleman to spare in all things rather than in that. So by coach home, and so to write letters by post, and so to bed.

within myself
the ancestors

a name to sign
which is a lie

I could be other-
wise at times

I can be reborn
to all things

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 19 October 1661.

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

Rhetoric

~ Doctrina Christiana en lengua española y tagala, 
1593, Manila


What is it to trust something or
       someone? We learned about empirical 
evidence,  about proof provided through logic 
       and materials, and the ways they've been 
documented to behave in experience. Any 
       departure from what we've come to call 
the norm makes us uncomfortable, even 
       suspicious—For doesn't the sun rise 
in the east and set in the west? And yet 
      there are waterfalls which appear to cascade 
upwards, and hills where vehicles in neutral 
      ascend rather than descend. For centuries,
catechism meant suffer your fate in this vale 
      of tears; collect reward in the afterlife.

October 18, 2024 by Dave Bonta

The Legend of Sleepless Hollow

insomnia is a well
as bright as an October moon

i lower my bucket
it comes back with ground fog

day breaks
over eyelashed horizons

the sleep i didn’t get leads me
on through the morning

like the proverbial donkey
following a dangled stone

day passes in the long
intervals between blinks

fallen leaves curled like fetuses
soon bury my tracks

October 18, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Fall

To White Hall, to Mr. Montagu’s, where I met with Mr. Pierce, the purser, to advise about the things to be sent to my Lord for the Queen’s provision, and was cleared in it, and now there is all haste made, for the fleet’s going.
At noon to my Lord’s to dinner, and in the afternoon, leaving my wife there, Mr. Moore and I to Mrs. Goldsborough, who sent for a friend to meet with us, and so we were talking about the difference between us till 10 at night. I find it very troublesome, and have brought it into some hopes of an agreement, I offering to forgive her 10l. that is yet due according to my uncle’s accounts to us. So we left her friend to advise about it, and I hope to hear of her, for I would not by any means go to law with a woman of so devilish a tongue as she has.
So to my Lady’s, where I left my wife to lie with Mademoiselle all night, and I by link home and to bed. This night lying alone, and the weather cold, and having this last 7 or 8 days been troubled with a tumor in one of my stones which is now abated by a poultice of a good handful of bran with half a pint of vinegar and a pint of water boiled till it be thick, and then a spoonful of honey put to it and so spread in a cloth and laid to it, I first put on my waistcoat to lie in all night this year, and do not intend to put it off again till spring. I met with complaints at home that my wife left no victuals for them all this day.

my vision is going
I hear a devilish tongue

all night lying
cold as a stone

I put on a coat and do not
put it off again till spring

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 18 October 1661.

October 17, 2024October 17, 2024 by Luisa A. Igloria

To Zafra

~ after Nick Carbó



All I know of Zafra is that it is a small 
town in the province of Badajoz, about two 

hours away from Seville, snuggled deep 
in southern Extremadura. My fierce, paternal 

grandmother Irene, whose maiden name was Zafra, 
liked to boast of how her family's roots go back

to this place. Whether or not that claim was true,
she and my father had the same cool, grey-blue eyes, 

in a country where everyone else had brown skin, 
dark hair, dark eyes. On its tourism pages, scenes

look straight out of history books on the Spanish 
colonial period in the Philippines—balconajes 

overlooking cobblestone squares, churches adorned
with gold and murals; a palace and fortress, a prison, 

a convent, a school. On what street did my grandfather 
and great-grandfather live, and where did they roam 

in this town of olives and cheese, oxtail stew, tinto 
de Verano? If someday I make my way to Zafra, 

maybe I'll comb through yellowed pages of registry 
books and try to search for their names. Maybe I'll let 

the wind tuck me into an envelope of anonymity, 
and remain there for another hundred years.

October 17, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Divorcee

At the office all the morning, at noon my wife being gone to my coz Snow’s with Dr. Thomas Pepys and my brother Tom to a venison pasty (which proved a pasty of salted pork); by appointment I went with Captain David Lambert to the Exchequer, and from thence by appointment he and I were to meet at a cook’s shop to dine. But before I went to him Captain Cock, a merchant I had not long known, took me to the Sun tavern and gave me a glass of sack, and being a man of great observation and repute, did tell me that he was confident that the Parliament, when it comes the next month to sit again, would bring trouble with it, and enquire how the King had disposed of offices and money, before they will raise more; which, I fear, will bring all things to ruin again. Thence to the Cook’s and there dined with Captain Lambert and his father-in-law, and had much talk of Portugall; from whence he is lately come, and he tells me it is a very poor dirty place; I mean the City and Court of Lisbon; that the King is a very rude and simple fellow; and, for reviling of somebody a little while ago, and calling of him cuckold, was run into the cods with a sword and had been killed, had he not told them that he was their king. That there are there no glass windows, nor will they have any; which makes sport among our merchants there to talk of an English factor that, being newly come thither, writ into England that glass would be a good commodity to send thither, &c. That the King has his meat sent up by a dozen of lazy guards and in pipkins, sometimes, to his own table; and sometimes nothing but fruits, and, now and then, half a hen. And now that the Infanta is become our Queen, she is come to have a whole hen or goose to her table, which is not ordinary. So home and to look over my papers that concern the difference between Mrs. Goldsborough and us; which cost me much pains, but contented me much after it was done. So at home all the evening and to supper and to bed.

a noon of salt and sun
a glass of ruin

poor simple body
killed by nothing

but ordinary paper
the difference between us

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 17 October 1661.

October 16, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Fleeting

In bed till 12 o’clock. This morning came several maids to my wife to be hired, and at last she pitched upon one Nell, whose mother, an old woman, came along with her, but would not be hired under half a year, which I am pleased at their drollness. This day dined by appointment with me, Dr. Thos. Pepys and my Coz: Snow, and my brother Tom, upon a fin of ling and some sounds, neither of which did I ever know before, but most excellent meat they are both, that in all my life I never eat the like fish. So after dinner came in W. Joyce and eat and drank and were merry. So up to my chamber, and put all my papers, at rights, and in the evening our maid Mary (who was with us upon trial for a month) did take leave of us, going as we suppose to be married, for the maid liked us and we her, but all she said was that she had a mind to live in a tradesman’s house where there was but one maid. So to supper and to bed.

a red moth
came with the snow

I know they are
both life-like

is joy a right
like sand
to use up

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 16 October 1661.

October 16, 2024October 16, 2024 by Luisa A. Igloria

Wealth

Sometimes, when you're turning 
coats or pants pockets inside out
before doing the laundry, you find

change—even small wads of bills
creased and folded from whatever
original errand they were used for

at the store. It's like receiving un-
expected windfall, though you might 
also look around furtively to make sure 

no one thinks you're taking what isn't 
yours. See, you're the type who's never 
had the privilege of being able to play 

with the intricacies of this thing 
called investment. How easy some
people make it sound: Oh you just 

put a little extra money away into your 
portfolio, and next time you look, it's 
doubled or tripled. When your insurance 

agent asks if you know how much your
retirement account must be worth today, 
you stammer. Your grandfather, in the last

years of his life, could at least say he owned 
one carabao, a yard full of roosters and hens,  
some mango and coconut trees, a little 

plot of farmland. You wonder what 
he'd say if asked how much his field 
would yield this year, next year, 

the next. What his hand sowed, 
his hand reaped unless the wind 
and rain took more than their share.