Via Negativa

May 19, 2024May 18, 2024 by Luisa A. Igloria

Towards Westminster, from the Towre, by water, and was fain to stand upon one of the piers about the bridge, before the men could drag their boat through the lock, and which they could not do till another was called to help them.
Being through bridge I found the Thames full of boats and gallys, and upon inquiry found that there was a wager to be run this morning. So spying of Payne in a gully, I went into him, and there staid, thinking to have gone to Chelsy with them. But upon, the start, the wager boats fell foul one of another, till at last one of them gives over, pretending foul play, and so the other row away alone, and all our sport lost. So, I went ashore, at Westminster; and to the Hall I went, where it was very pleasant to see the Hall in the condition it is now with the judges on the benches at the further end of it, which I had not seen all this term till now.
Thence with Mr. Spicer, Creed and some others to drink. And so away homewards by water with Mr. Creed, whom I left in London going about business and I home, where I staid all the afternoon in the garden reading “Faber Fortunae” with great pleasure. So home to bed.

water full of boats
we row away alone

lost in the fur
of drink

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 18 May 1661.

May 18, 2024 by Dave Bonta

While you work

All the morning at home. At noon Lieutenant Lambert came to me, and he and I to the Exchange, and thence to an ordinary over against it, where to our dinner we had a fellow play well upon the bagpipes and whistle like a bird exceeding well, and I had a fancy to learn to whistle as he do, and did promise to come some other day and give him an angell to teach me. To the office, and sat there all the afternoon till 9 at night. So home to my musique, and my wife and I sat singing in my chamber a good while together, and then to bed.

morning at home
I whistle like a bird

and promise to come
some other day

to teach the office all
my music

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 17 May 1661.

May 17, 2024 by Luisa A. Igloria

Anxious Haibun

river in November light between bare woods and mountain

In daily life, I exert no clairvoyance though there are some 
who seem perfectly able to do that. The most I do is sniff
the air, try to figure out what emanations there are besides
oily globules suspended in the kitchen atmosphere, sinking
into the used coffee grounds and filter papers, the day-
old trash and crumpled up water bottles in recycling. 
Sometimes I can feel a sigh or the echo of a sigh 
from yesterday, wrapped in petulance or silence. 
Sometimes the distance from my throat to my feet 
is a plumb line shooting through the heart. I don't know 
what to offer the gods that dissipate our inner climates, 
that plant misgiving in the fertile gardens of what 
should only be our simple concern. 

Fly away, worry.
I give you the color blue;
or jade green, serene.

May 16, 2024May 17, 2024 by Luisa A. Igloria

Organics

I was today years old when I learned  
some desserts listing artificial vanilla 
as one of their ingredients may once
have been flavored by castoreum—
a yellow ochre substance produced 
in beavers' castor sacs, located between 
their pelvis and anus. Apparently, castoruem 
once lent sugared strawberry tones to ice cream, 
even a leathery musk to perfume. Emollients
and unguents, all the applications that,
like pheromones, lure the bees to the honey
in the hive and lips to the coolly glistening 
throat—we've always favored the sweet
over the burnt and bitter, the lustrous more 
than the pelted hide. We plunge pupae 
of mulberry silkworms into boiling water 
to unravel their cocoons into thread.

May 16, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Trooper

Up early to see whether the work of my house be quite done, and I found it to my mind. Staid at home all the morning, and about 2 o’clock went in my velvet coat by water to the Savoy, and there, having staid a good while, I was called into the Lords, and there, quite contrary to my expectations, they did treat me very civilly, telling me that what they had done was out of zeal to the King’s service, and that they would joyne with the governors of the chest with all their hearts, since they knew that there was any, which they did not before. I give them very respectful answer and so went away to the Theatre, and there saw the latter end of “The Mayd’s Tragedy,” which I never saw before, and methinks it is too sad and melancholy.
Thence homewards, and meeting Mr. Creed I took him by water to the Wardrobe with me, and there we found my Lord newly gone away with the Duke of Ormond and some others, whom he had had to the collation; and so we, with the rest of the servants in the hall, sat down and eat of the best cold meats that ever I eat on in all my life.
From thence I went home (Mr. Moore with me to the waterside, telling me how kindly he is used by my Lord and my Lady since his coming hither as a servant), and to bed.

early on I found
in the velvet water

of melancholy and war
my one cold life

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 16 May 1661.

May 15, 2024 by Luisa A. Igloria

Moratorium, Between Seasons

Fescue or ryegrass, Bemuda, Bahia? I cannot now find
the little green orbs that you said were the fruit

of grass—I copied the way you plucked and put them 
between your teeth for the audible pop, a tiny note of sour 

that roused the afternoon, made it less bland. Neighbors 
trim and edge their lawns, area rugs in need of constant, precise 

adjustment as spring mows into restive summer. Parched loaves
of earth, water receding from the river's bowl. The mind tries 

to weave its own nets of unsubdued wilderness, places of cool 
refuge for when the unimaginable manifests in an instant 

from shadowy to celluloid clear. In the meantime, 
I need to stop running trailers of the disastrous future 

on loop. I need to sift the hours in the glass instead, once and 
once again, and watch for yeast bubbling up to the surface.

May 15, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Volatile

With my workmen all day till the afternoon, and then to the office, where Mr. Creed’s accounts were passed.
Home and found all my joyner’s work now done, but only a small job or two, which please me very well.
This afternoon there came two men with an order from a Committee of Lords to demand some books of me out of the office, in order to the examining of Mr. Hutchinson’s accounts, but I give them a surly answer, and they went away to complain, which put me into some trouble with myself, but I resolve to go to-morrow myself to these Lords and answer them.
To bed, being in great fear because of the shavings which lay all up and down the house and cellar, for fear of fire.

all my joy now only a job
I am surly with myself

I go down cellar
for fear of fire

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 15 May 1661.

May 14, 2024May 14, 2024 by Luisa A. Igloria

Aurora

Time heals all, but time must also
love to meander— Out of necessity, time takes
a turn sometimes; tiptoes past some forms  
asleep in their beds, rushes headlong

into others, or makes the light linger unexpectedly
as though we were seeing the hand of God. There is no
sweetness/ that doesn't leave a stain— another poet's
words I thought about when, across the globe,

thousands tipped their faces up as if to swallow the purple-
sweet glow of solar particles, colliding with molecules in our
own atmosphere. Other stars are a million times more

luminous than our sun, but this is the light that left its source
eight minutes ago to fall on us. I want to linger in the grace of this
slower arrival—a bead of time in which so much could still happen.

Via Negativa

Posts

Amianan, Abagatan*

From the outside

Boating