Via Negativa

August 11, 2024August 10, 2024 by Luisa A. Igloria

Fairy Tale, with Dreamscapes and Moonlight

river in November light between bare woods and mountain

A chance at success, a propitious ending—
What I wish for, not necessarily called happiness.
Give me rather a quiet house where daughters sit
braiding each other's hair, reading to each other.

What I wish for might not look like happiness.
Under the moonlight, ruins look like dreamscapes
where girls with braided hair feed each other fruit.
What I mean to say is there's no space fully empty.

In  moonlight, ruins look like dreamscapes—
how tempting to wash them only in cold, blue light.
What I mean to say is, look closely at empty space:
the wisps of feeling there, the fragments of selves.

How tempting to think we can only be blue or live in the cold.
The days fill and empty, empty and fill. Doors open and close.
But everywhere are wisps of feeling, fragments of selves.
I wish we all lived under the same roof: forgiven, forgiving.

The days fill and empty, empty and fill. Doors close and open.
Should we always be asking Am I happy? Are you happy? Are we? 
Yet I wish we lived under the same roof, forgiving, forgiven.
That kind of success, that kind of propitious ending—

August 10, 2024January 12, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Factional

This morning came the maid that my wife hath lately hired for a chamber maid. She is very ugly, so that I cannot care for her, but otherwise she seems very good. But however she do come about three weeks hence, when my wife comes back from Brampton, if she go with my father.
By and by came my father to my house, and so he and I went and found out my uncle Wight at the Coffee House, and there did agree with him to meet the next week with my uncle Thomas and read over the Captain’s will before them both for their satisfaction.
Having done with him I went to my Lady’s and dined with her, and after dinner took the two young gentlemen and the two ladies and carried them and Captain Ferrers to the Theatre, and shewed them “The merry Devill of Edmunton,” which is a very merry play, the first time I ever saw it, which pleased me well. And that being done I took them all home by coach to my house and there gave them fruit to eat and wine. So by water home with them, and so home myself.

if red is ugly as a faction
we took to the heat

the devil is the first
fruit to wine

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 10 August 1661.

August 10, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Aporia

To the office, where word is brought me by a son-in-law of Mr. Pierces; the purser, that his father is a dying and that he desires that I would come to him before he dies. So I rose from the table and went, where I found him not so ill as I thought that he had been ill. So I did promise to be a friend to his wife and family if he should die, which was all he desired of me, but I do believe he will recover.
Back again to the office, where I found Sir G. Carteret had a day or two ago invited some of the officers to dinner to-day at Deptford. So at noon, when I heard that he was a-coming, I went out, because I would see whether he would send to me or no to go with them; but he did not, which do a little trouble me till I see how it comes to pass. Although in other things I am glad of it because of my going again to-day to the Privy Seal.
I dined at home, and having dined news is brought by Mr. Hater that his wife is now falling into labour, so he is come for my wife, who presently went with him.
I to White Hall, where, after four o’clock, comes my Lord Privy Seal, and so we went up to his chamber over the gate at White Hall, where he asked me what deputacon I had from My Lord. I told him none; but that I am sworn my Lord’s deputy by both of the Secretarys, which did satisfy him. So he caused Mr. Moore to read over all the bills as is the manner, and all ended very well. So that I see the Lyon is not so fierce as he is painted.
That being done Mons. Eschar (who all this afternoon had been waiting at the Privy Seal for the Warrant for 5,000l. for my Lord of Sandwich’s preparation for Portugal) and I took some wine with us and went to visit la belle Pierce, who we find very big with child, and a pretty lady, one Mrs. Clifford, with her, where we staid and were extraordinary merry. From thence I took coach to my father’s, where I found him come home this day from Brampton (as I expected) very well, and after some discourse about business and it being very late I took coach again home, where I hear by my wife that Mrs. Hater is not yet delivered, but continues in her pains.
So to bed.

the word in which I believe
would not come to me

where I had been waiting
for some child
to be delivered

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 9 August 1661.

August 10, 2024August 10, 2024 by Luisa A. Igloria

On Biopsies

The first biopsy was said to have been performed
by the surgeon and physician Albucasis of Córdoba 
in Moorish Spain, in the Middle Ages— Some of his 
areas of specialization included cauterization 
and the removal of foreign objects from the ear,
throat, and other parts of the body. Considering 
surgery to be the highest form of medical practice, 
he invented hundreds of surgical instruments 
which are illustrated  and described in his thirty-
volume medical encyclopedia, translated into Latin
as Liber Theoricae: clamps and scalpels, raked
retractors, stents and saws. He tells of attending
to a slave girl who had tried to end her life—
he found her bellowing like a sacrifice that has had 
its throat cut, and straightaway worked to suture
the wound. Eventually, the cut healed; the girl 
was restored to health, despite a lowering 
in the timbre of her voice. What amazes me is not 
how many branches of medicine the good doctor 
practiced, but how much of an authority he had in each 
one. Years ago, when my doctor became concerned 
about a rubbery area in my right breast, she sent me 
for a fine needle aspiration; when that did not apparently 
yield anything obvious, I was sent for more scans and tests. 
More recently, my husband had a surgical biopsy for which
he was put under general anesthesia. He spent over 
a week on a soft diet, and could barely mumble words. 
The results came back inconclusive—meaning 
there's no certainty that the excision site harbors 
anything more malevolent than a grainy dullness. Of course 
there was pain, pain being the measure by which we continue 
to be reminded that we are not gods, that we are made of flesh.

August 9, 2024August 7, 2024 by Luisa A. Igloria

Bridegroom

There's a story about a woman who takes
a snake bridegroom. Because it's a folk tale,
we are supposed to understand this is both
literal and allegorical. Somehow she has seen
beyond the length of coiled muscle and dark 
scales, the mouth decorated with fangs. It is 
others who have the venomous tongues: 
she is to them foolish virgin turned sacrifice. 
Then she tamed it, or it tamed her; or somehow 
they were, after all, good for each other— I 
don't how the story resolves or makes itself more
plain.  But isn't it true that this whole life is a beast 
we must take to our breast, the entire mystery 
of it slinking through the grass at our heels?

August 8, 2024August 8, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Flood Watch

This entry is part 44 of 51 in the series Une Semaine de Bonté

Page 47 from Max Ernst’s *Une Semaine de Bonté*

a flood doesn’t come
from the sky alone

it starts as white fungus
bubbling from a stump

a snail out at noon
grazing on lemon-scented horsebalm

and red efts wandering the moss
like dragons errant

the ground is saturated
it oozes fluid wherever i step

and the creek is high
and slurs its words

but a flood doesn’t come
from the earth alone

it starts as a shimmer of mizzle
a slow blur of rain

the farther hills vanish
the closer hills disguise themselves as clouds

when night falls we can drift off
on the white noise of rain

if the flood doesn’t come here
if the storm changes course

in the united states of amnesia
any disaster lasts just 20 minutes

i pull my hat down
and hurry home

August 8, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Beach head

Early in the morning to Whitehall, but my Lord Privy Seal came not all the morning. At noon Mr. Moore and I to the Wardrobe to dinner, where my Lady and all merry and well. Back again to the Privy Seal; but my Lord comes not all the afternoon, which made me mad and gives all the world reason to talk of his delaying of business, as well as of his severity and ill using of the Clerks of the Privy Seal. In the evening I took Mons. Eschar and Mr. Moore and Dr. Pierce’s brother (the souldier) to the tavern next the Savoy, and there staid and drank with them. Here I met with Mr. Mage, and discoursing of musique Mons. Eschar spoke so much against the English and in praise of the French that made him mad, and so he went away. After a stay with them a little longer we parted and I home.

morning war
the hiss of the sea

in the evening another music
in praise of the mad

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 8 August 1661.

August 8, 2024August 7, 2024 by Luisa A. Igloria

Monstera

For propagation, here are some 
methods: soil, root division, water, 

air layering. All involve separating 
new plants from the mother—sterilise 

a blade, cut below the node. Before that, 
how far back did they go? They must 

have been in the first garden, humid 
with moss. Ceilings hung with vines,
 
emerald leaves expanding like hearts, 
even as cells on the same surface 

are always organizing their own death. 
Light comes through these perforations,

touches each aspect of their living-
not-dying, their dying-not-living.

August 7, 2024January 11, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Mariner

Called up at three o’clock, and was a-horseback by four; and as I was eating my breakfast I saw a man riding by that rode a little way upon the road with me last night; and he being going with venison in his pan-yards to London, I called him in and did give him his breakfast with me, and so we went together all the way. At Hatfield we bayted and walked into the great house through all the courts; and I would fain have stolen a pretty dog that followed me, but I could not, which troubled me.
To horse again, and by degrees with much ado got to London, where I found all well at home and at my father’s and my Lady’s, but no news yet from my Lord where he is.
At my Lady’s (whither I went with Dean Fuller, who came to my house to see me just as I was come home) I met with Mr. Moore, who told me at what a loss he was for me, for to-morrow is a Seal day at the Privy Seal, and it being my month, I am to wait upon my Lord Roberts, Lord Privy Seal, at the Seal. Home and to bed.

the road called me
a dog followed me
but the news came to my house

I was old
loss was my sea

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 7 August 1661.

August 7, 2024August 6, 2024 by Luisa A. Igloria

Regeneration

Caught in the trap
                       of a quickly closing door,
the lizard knows to give up 
its tail. I saw  
                    one that was not 
so lucky, plastered half 
on the inside
           of the bathroom window and half
outside, its body 
                            faded to a pale
papyrus-like shade. You'd think
it was a leaf stuck there 
on the glass.
                    In the name of survival 
what  would you give up? The new 
limb is made 
         of cartilage instead of bone.
                      Sunlight falls in patches,
         becoming ghost. The twitch 
in the spine is part
fear, part laughter
scraping raw
gravel.