Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
I am too tired for amazement
at the way I’ve been played:
once lionized as a prize ram,
now cracked as old leather.
On a board stippled with pins,
the only move is all fall down.
They’ve pinned a six-pointed
star to my chest. If it’s the first
you’ve seen so far, make a wish!
The googly-eyed olives
in the hors d’oeuvres tray
are tracking your every move.
What was it like when the donkey cart bearing the once
powerful to their execution by hanging, by garrote or
beheading, made its way through crowds pelting spit or stones
or eggs which, when they broke open, dripped like viscous
mucus down the once impeccably powdered face of the woman
who scornfully wanted to throw pastry at these peasant
tormentors? I wasn't there, but I remember the EDSA Revolution
of 1986: thousands poured into the streets—nuns and civil
servants, holding hands with activists at the frontline. For days,
my literature teacher made hundreds of sandwiches
to hand out to all, including armed and mute-faced soldiers:
soggy tuna salad on white bread, fakely pink rounds of
salami and cheese sweating in their cellophane wrappers
in the electric heat of that day. While crowds scaled
the palace walls, the dictator and his family scrambled
into helicopters to be airlifted to Hawai'i; exiled.
People poured into their previous fortress, losing
themselves in wardrobes and closets; a horde of bees
stunned inside a forest made of thousands of shoes, hung
with useless tapestries of gossamer and pearl.
(Lord’s day). But no purser coming in the morning for them, and I hear that the Duke went last night, and so I am at a great loss what to do; and so this day (though the Lord’s day) staid at home, sending Will up and down to know what to do. Sometimes thinking to continue my resolution of sending by the carrier to be at Deal on Wednesday next, sometimes to send them by sea by a vessel on purpose, but am not yet come to a resolution, but am at a very great loss and trouble in mind what in the world to do herein. The afternoon (while Will was abroad) I spent in reading “The Spanish Gypsey,” a play not very good, though commended much. At night resolved to hire a Margate Hoy, who would go away to-morrow morning, which I did, and sent the things all by him, and put them on board about 12 this night, hoping to have them as the wind now serves in the Downs to-morrow night.
To-bed with some quiet of mind, having sent the things away.
day coming in the night
I am up and down
sometimes at sea
a trouble in mind
would go away on the wind
in the quiet of things
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 16 June 1661.
Everyone is in a bubble
but me—a toast!
To more of the bubbly elixir.
Because here at Bubble, Incorporated,
our main product is you: your trove
of data. Your special snow globe
waiting to be disrupted.
Every thought bubble
from your comic strippers.
But as king of the beasts, I’m afraid
I must insist on my prerogative
of the first pinprick.
What is forever, when we live
near the water? Sand-shifting dunes,
cords of seagrass. More inland, the soil
beneath is latticed with roots. Dampness
and heat give way to spores. When was it
that planets aligned like beads on a chain?
At the hinge of the year, we're eager again
to look for portents. A decades-old ban on
psychic readings has just been repealed in Norfolk.
Now I can look for someone who will run her finger
along the lines of my palm and tell me something
I don't already know. She'll turn my hand sideways
to count the ripples along its edge. She'll pull an oracle
card and light candles that smell of salt and driftwood.
My father came and drank his morning draft with me, and sat with me till I was ready, and so he and I about the business of the cloth. By and by I left him and went and dined with my Lady, who, now my Lord is gone, is come to her poor housekeeping again. Then to my father’s, who tells me what he has done, and we resolved upon two pieces of scarlet, two of purple, and two of black, and 50l. in linen.
I home, taking 300l. with me home from Alderman Backwell’s. After writing to my Lord to let him know what I had done I was going to bed, but there coming the purser of the King’s yacht for victualls presently, for the Duke of York is to go down to-morrow, I got him to promise stowage for these things there, and so I went to bed, bidding Will go and fetch the things from the carrier’s hither, which about 12 o’clock were brought to my house and laid there all night.
in the poorhouse
who tells what he has
one scar of purple
and two of black
a line in writing
a promise to go
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 15 June 1661.
A cat with a bone does not
mindlessly gnaw; he masticates.
A bone can be a mastiff,
a mascot, a masquerade. A bone
outside the body might be lonelier
than God, that gelded erection.
If so, salute! In the life of a soldier
there are many companions, but
no one so intimate
as the enemy. Your heart has
a special way it catches
just for him. Bulldozing
his burial ground shows
your undying passion.
Whose bone is it now?
How lucky that they grow despite our seeming lack of effort:
the lush fig tree in the yard, a stand of hydrangea pushing out
planet after planet of deepest blue. Beside the front steps,
gardenia—rosal—unfurl and perfume our recent comings and
goings. Children are like that too, though we try to be more
faithful to their care. I remember how, before he was two,
my grandson didn’t know what sugar was—the kind you spoon
out of a jar and sprinkle on cereal or toast, though fruit
was fine. In their own childhoods, I watched out for my daughters’
every elbow scrape, every tumble; tended their fevers with cool
cloths. Isn’t a certain steadfastness asked of mothers? That we make
of ourselves a home to always return to. That we keep
our hands on the rudder, bear them through the narrow channels
so at the end, they might open up to embrace the sky.
To Whitehall to my Lord’s, where I found Mr. Edward Montagu and his family come to lie during my Lord’s absence. I sent to my house by my Lord’s order his shipp and triangle virginall. So to my father’s, and did give him order about the buying of this cloth to send to my Lord. But I could not stay with him myself, for having got a great cold by my playing the fool in the water yesterday I was in great pain, and so went home by coach to bed, and went not to the office at all, and by keeping myself warm, I broke wind and so came to some ease. Rose and eat some supper, and so to bed again.
o white lie
my house is virginal
the sand could not stay
cold water went home to ice
warm wind to a rose bed
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 14 June 1661.
Whatever got slipped in my drink, it isn’t working. My pen has come to life just to tell me this, all wild-eyed and red. Its feather still won’t fly. I am a prisoner of time, as are we all, and a citizen of France, as every deposed despot must eventually become. My interpreter balks at the mystery undressing itself in my head: so much untying and unlacing! It’s enervating. No wonder he prefers straight talk. As if the dancers he follows so avidly aren’t also speaking with every twist and sway. They are saying hell yes to some heaven that barely exists, shiny as a soap bubble in the sun. I have never seen more clearly than in artificial light.