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Posted on by Dave Bonta

Thorny

Sam Pepys and me

This morning my uncle Fenner by appointment came and drank his morning draft with me, and from thence he and I go to see my aunt Kite (my wife holding her resolution to go this morning as she resolved yesterday, and though there could not be much hurt in it, yet my own jealousy put a hundred things into my mind, which did much trouble me all day), whom we found in bed and not like to live as we think, and she told us her mind was that if she should die she should give all she had to her daughter, only 5l. apiece to her second husband’s children, in case they live to come out of their apprenticeships, and that if her daughter should die before marrying, then 10l. to be divided between Sarah Kite’s children and the rest as her own daughter shall dispose of it, and this I set down that I may be able to swear in case there should be occasion.
From thence to an alehouse while it rained, which kept us there I think above two hours, and at last we were fain to go through the rainy street home, calling on his sister Utbert and drank there. Then I home to dinner all alone, and thence my mind being for my wife’s going abroad much troubled and unfit for business, I went to the Theatre, and saw “Elder Brother” ill acted; that done, meeting here with Sir G. Askew, Sir Theophilus Jones, and another Knight, with Sir W. Pen, we to the Ship tavern, and there staid and were merry till late at night, and so got a coach, and Sir Wm. and I home, where my wife had been long come home, but I seemed very angry, as indeed I am, and did not all night show her any countenance, neither before nor in bed, and so slept and rose discontented.

this morning I am
holding on to hurt

a hundred thin children
in the hips of a rose


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 6 September 1661.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Purge

river in November light between bare woods and mountain 
She touches the tip of her left index finger on which 
a wart once grew. It isn't there now, but she knows it was there
when she was a child. She did not imagine it, did not imagine 
the various  attempts different people in her family took to 
excise it—small, searing dabs from a Q-tip dipped in muriatic 
acid; frog piss (or so she was told) brushed on its surface; some 
passes from a sanitized razor blade. Who knows now what was true 
and what was made up? In that world, you could burn a tonic from 
reptile scales. You could sleep on pillows of ash or ice or break a raw 
egg into a bowl of water to read messages from the dead. How 
did it finally vanish, melt away into simple skin? She can't explain
how she has no memory of this—no memory except a white
flash, then the blue ceiling; a dribble of water, then its evaporating.
Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Accounts of Reason

river in November light between bare woods and mountain 
The histories of modern thought and philosophy have always 
been described as progressive, their main defining features 

being the preoccupation with epistemology, and the privileging of reason
in constructing accounts of experience and the world. It all sounds so orderly, 

like you could command all the flares of your feelings or obsessions, angers 
or doubts, and they'd line up and snap to attention like good little soldiers 

under the orders of their superior.  Sometimes, like when I see the results 
of scans on the online portal but haven't discussed them yet with my doctor, 

my mind will spiral toward the worst-case scenario. And then, convinced 
This is it, the end is near, I'm reminded I haven't reviewed my will or put 

my affairs in order. I'm told I become unreasonably sad, unreasonably 
worried, certain I'm being punished for all the happiness I took, or took 

for granted—until someone gently steers me away from images 
of death, pushing  a cup of coffee or a bowl of soup in front of me.
Posted on by Dave Bonta

New Icarus

Sam Pepys and me

To the Privy Seal this morning about business, in my way taking leave of my mother, who goes to Brampton to-day. But doing my business at the Privy Seal pretty soon, I took boat and went to my uncle Fenner’s, and there I found my mother and my wife and Pall (of whom I had this morning at my own house taken leave, and given her 20s. and good counsel how to carry herself to my father and mother), and so I took them, it being late, to Beard’s, where they were staid for, and so I put them into the waggon, and saw them going presently, Pall crying exceedingly. Then in with my wife, my aunt Bell and Charles Pepys, whom we met there, and drank, and so to my uncle Fenner’s to dinner (in the way meeting a French footman with feathers, who was in quest of my wife, and spoke with her privately, but I could not tell what it was, only my wife promised to go to some place to-morrow morning, which do trouble my mind how to know whither it was), where both his sons and daughters were, and there we were merry and dined.
After dinner news was brought that my aunt Kite, the butcher’s widow in London, is sick ready to die and sends for my uncle and me to come to take charge of things, and to be entrusted with the care of her daughter. But I through want of time to undertake such a business, I was taken up by Antony Joyce, which came at last to very high words, which made me very angry, and I did not think that he would ever have been such a fool to meddle with other people’s business, but I saw he spoke worse to his father than to me and therefore I bore it the better, but all the company was offended with him, so we parted angry he and I, and so my wife and I to the fair, and I showed her the Italians dancing the ropes, and the women that do strange tumbling tricks and so by foot home vexed in my mind about Antony Joyce.

I put on my feathers
in quest of some tomorrow

no butchers ready
to clean things up

high words dancing
in my mind


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 5 September 1661.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Anointing

river in November light between bare woods and mountain 
After the ceremony for my naming, my father plucked
the tongue out of the mouth of the roasted pig and held it

close to my own mouth. Of course my instinct was to suck
on it, unable to tell how this rough skin differed from that 

of the woman who took me to her breast after I was born.
He was exultant—believing my capacity to so eagerly root,

seek salt from flesh, sustenance from a leathery form,  a story 
from something pierced and singed and shorn then turned on a spit, 

meant I would command not only language but circumstance. 
I've wondered: is this why we ask our stories to wear meat 

on their bones, to drip with the lard and sauce of their origins, come
apart where they should at the seams or joints? More than once 

after this instance, I have been anointed. I have been intimate with 
a thing that was at first not my body, until it became part of me.
Posted on by Dave Bonta

Collection

Sam Pepys and me

In the morning to the Privy Seal to do some things of the last month, my Lord Privy Seal having been some time out of town. Then my wife came to me to Whitehall, and we went and walked a good while in St. James’s Park to see the brave alterations, and so to Wilkinson’s, the Cook’s, to dinner, where we sent for Mrs. Sarah and there dined and had oysters, the first I have eat this year, and were pretty good. After dinner by agreement to visit Mrs. Symonds, but she is abroad, which I wonder at, and so missing her my wife again to my mother’s (calling at Mrs. Pierce’s, who we found brought to bed of a girl last night) and there staid and drank, and she resolves to be going to-morrow without fail. Many friends come in to take their leave of her, but a great deal of stir I had again tonight about getting her to go to see my Lady Sandwich before she goes, which she says she will do tomorrow. So I home.

having time to alter
in an oyster

the wonder we found
out of sand


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 4 September 1661.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Emptying

river in November light between bare woods and mountain 
Before the pocket, a newborn kangaroo 
           is only the size of a lima bean. After birth, 
it climbs by itself, untutored, handhold by 
           handhold, up the hilly crest of its mother's 
body and into the pouch where somehow
           it knows the milk is waiting. Instinct can be
explained like this, I suppose—otherwise, how
          could anyone know where the edge
of the blind forest ends and where you might
         stumble along a trail to be found, find 
your way to a warm bed, have your mouth 
          filled with something warm and sweet? 
Have I always been the mother whose kind
          of love wants to tuft every pillow in the room,  
slide furniture into place before anyone announces
          arrival? My heart hides in voluminous folds
of skin, wipes the creases clean. Deep in the night,
          it hears the sound of its own slow beating,
echoes bouncing off the walls in empty space.
Posted on by Dave Bonta

Veterans

Sam Pepys and me

This day some of us Commissioners went down to Deptford to pay off some ships, but I could not go, but staid at home all the morning setting papers to rights, and this morning Mr. Howell, our turner, sent me two things to file papers on, very handsome. Dined at home, and then with my wife to the Wardrobe, where my Lady’s child was christened (my Lord Crew and his Lady, and my Lady Montagu, my Lord’s mother-in-law, were the witnesses), and named Katherine (the Queen elect’s name); but to my and all our trouble, the Parson of the parish christened her, and did not sign the child with the sign of the cross. After that was done, we had a very fine banquet, the best I ever was at, and so (there being very little company) we by and by broke up, and my wife and I to my mother, who I took a liberty to advise about her getting things ready to go this week into the country to my father, and she (being become now-a-days very simple) took it very ill, and we had a great deal of noise and wrangling about it. So home by coach.

some of us miss the war
my crew and I

witnesses to a christened child
with her simple noise


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 3 September 1661.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Solving for X

Sam Pepys and me

In the morning to my cozen Thos. Pepys, executor, and there talked with him about my uncle Thomas, his being in the country, but he could not advise me to anything therein, not knowing what the other has done in the country, and so we parted.
And so to Whitehall, and there my Lord Privy Seal, who has been out of town this week, not being yet come, we can have no seal, and therefore meeting with Mr. Battersby the apothecary in Fenchurch Street to the King’s Apothecary’s chamber in Whitehall, and there drank a bottle or two of wine, and so he and I by water towards London. I landed at Blackfriars and so to the Wardrobe and dined, and then back to Whitehall with Captain Ferrers, and there walked, and thence to Westminster Hall, where we met with Mr. Pickering, and so all of us to the Rhenish wine house (Prior’s), where the master of the house is laying out some money in making a cellar with an arch in his yard, which is very convenient for him. Here we staid a good while, and so Mr. Pickering and I to Westminster Hall again, and there walked an hour or two talking, and though he be a fool, yet he keeps much company, and will tell all he sees or hears, and so a man may understand what the common talk of the town is, and I find by him that there are endeavours to get my Lord out of play at sea, which I believe Mr. Coventry and the Duke do think will make them more absolute; but I hope, for all this, they will not be able to do it. He tells me plainly of the vices of the Court, and how the pox is so common there, and so I hear on all hands that it is as common as eating and swearing. From him by water to the bridge, and thence to the Mitre, where I met my uncle and aunt Wight come to see Mrs. Rawlinson (in her husband’s absence out of town), and so I staid with them and Mr. Lucas and other company, very merry, and so home, where my wife has been busy all the day making of pies, and had been abroad and bought things for herself, and tells that she met at the Change with my young ladies of the Wardrobe and there helped them to buy things, and also with Mr. Somerset, who did give her a bracelet of rings, which did a little trouble me, though I know there is no hurt yet in it, but only for fear of further acquaintance.
So to bed. This night I sent another letter to Sir W. Pen to offer him the return of his tankard upon his leaving of 30s. at a place where it should be brought. The issue of which I am to expect.

in a country of black and white
a man may understand what X is

hands wearing the raw
absence of it

day making the night
another place


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 2 September 1661.