Via Negativa

May 14, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Impecunious

Up early and by water to Whitehall to my Lord, and there had much talk with him about getting some money for him. He told me of his intention to get the Muster Master’s place for Mr. Pierce, the purser, who he has a mind to carry to sea with him, and spoke very slightingly of Mr. Creed, as that he had no opinion at all of him, but only he was forced to make use of him because of his present accounts. Thence to drink with Mr. Shepley and Mr. Pinkny, and so home and among my workmen all day. In the evening Mr. Shepley came to me for some money, and so he and I to the Mitre, and there we had good wine and a gammon of bacon. My uncle Wight, Mr. Talbot, and others were with us, and we were pretty merry. So at night home and to bed. Finding my head grow weak now-a-days if I come to drink wine, and therefore hope that I shall leave it off of myself, which I pray God I could do.

I must master
the purse I carry

lightly into
the pink evening

a gammon of bacon
if I come to drink

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 14 May 1661.

May 14, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Lonesome Holler

Sometimes I think the loneliness would be unbearable if I weren’t surrounded by ghosts. But seeing fireflies this early in May gives me an eerie feeling. The crescent moon is nearly alone in the sky, glimmering through a scrim of clouds. The aurora got rained out, and now the night is loud with all the voices of water as it runs off a mountain.

It occurred to me recently that in hilly country, those who are afraid of heights like me might often end up on mountaintops, because going straight up a steep hillside usually feels safest. Going sideways is scary, and downhill too perilous to contemplate. So onward means upward simply to avoid the abyss.

making the stars quake mountaintop peeper

May 13, 2024 by Luisa A. Igloria

Moment, with Notes of Chlorine Bleach

river in November light between bare woods and mountain

With a whole cupful of bleach and an old
kitchen towel, I scrubbed mold from the top-

most tiles of the shower stall. Millions of homes 
across America use cleaning solutions infused 

with sodium hypochlorite—meaning, mostly women,  
who make up 70% of all household labor; or 3.4 million 

cleaning workers, of which women comprise nearly 
88.6%. And of this number, 73% percent are people 

of color: immigrants  from Latin America, the Caribbean, 
China, Africa, the Philippines, and more—like the woman

whose cleaning trolley I heard every morning outside 
my room at university hall when I was in Hawai'i 

for a conference. We passed each other, me going off 
to a reading or workshop, she going into each room on that 

floor to lay out fresh sheets and towels, scrape soap scum 
off tile, arrange little bottles of shampoo, conditioner, and lotion 

on the sink. The fumes from chlorine bleach can make you 
dizzy, can make your head hurt, your eyes and lungs burn; 

could even cause reproductive harm. On my second 
to last day, I asked Manang to help me with the zipper 

stuck in the back of my dress. In the space of working it
loose from the bottom to close the fabric at the top,

she'd managed to tell me a little of her life story:
the town she was from, the language we discovered 

we shared, as chlorinated smells braided with humid
air and the call of gray francolin in the trees.

May 13, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Working classic

All the morning at home among my workmen. At noon Mr. Creed and I went to the ordinary behind the Exchange, where we lately were, but I do not like it so well as I did. So home with him and to the office, where we sat late, and he did deliver his accounts to us.
The office being done I went home and took pleasure to see my work draw to an end.

all morning among men
ordinary as ice

where we live to see work
draw to an end

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 13 May 1661.

May 13, 2024May 13, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Poetry Blog Digest 2024, Week 19

A personal selection of posts from the Poetry Blogging Network and beyond. Although I tend to quote my favorite bits, please do click through and read the whole posts. You can also browse the blog digest archive at Via Negativa or, if you’d like it in your inbox, subscribe on Substack (where the posts might be truncated by some email providers).

This week: mothers and mothering, silence and mental noise, wonder and wreckage. Enjoy.

May 12, 2024May 13, 2024 by Luisa A. Igloria

Self-Portrait, Partly in Manila

There's a song that's an ode to it, made popular by
a '70s band with the name of a sausage brought over
in the 1800s by German immigrants to the new
world.
The wife of an older cousin on my father's side
was given that name at birth; that's why her nickname
was City. If you learned to drive there, you should
be able to drive anywhere in the world.
By which I mean, in a city
where six lanes of traffic
cram into three and where it might take nearly half
a day to commute to school or your place of work,
unless you leave
your house at four AM.
Though I was from a different city seven hours
away by bus, I took a job there for nearly two years.
This was the time I'd become a newly single mother
trying to raise three children on a single paycheck
without
the benefit of a formal divorce—which is
nonexistent in that country. In fact, it's the last country
in the world besides Vatican City where divorce is illegal.
For a while I rented
a miserable little room next to
a Seven-Eleven selling bao buns and instant ramen,
in a gated compound close to the university on Taft.
All other residents were women. It felt safe, I suppose,
until I wondered why all my comings and goings
seemed under surveillance. Perhaps
in a city with
currently 1.7 million inhabitants, privacy is practically
impossible. I didn't miss any of that when I left.
I've always loved my solitude,
trying
to hold even the tiniest silvered moth of it
in the clumsy space I form with my hands.

May 12, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Pointed

My wife had a very troublesome night this night and in great pain, but about the morning her swelling broke, and she was in great ease presently as she useth to be. So I put in a tent (which Dr. Williams sent me yesterday) into the hole to keep it open till all the matter be come out, and so I question not that she will soon be well again.
I staid at home all this morning, being the Lord’s day, making up my private accounts and setting papers in order. At noon went with my Lady Montagu at the Wardrobe, but I found it so late that I came back again, and so dined with my wife in her chamber.
After dinner I went awhile to my chamber to set my papers right.
Then I walked forth towards Westminster and at the Savoy heard Dr. Fuller preach upon David’s words, “I will wait with patience all the days of my appointed time until my change comes;” but methought it was a poor dry sermon. And I am afeard my former high esteem of his preaching was more out of opinion than judgment.
From thence homewards, but met with Mr. Creed, with whom I went and walked in Grayes-Inn-walks, and from thence to Islington, and there eat and drank at the house my father and we were wont of old to go to; and after that walked homeward, and parted in Smithfield: and so I home, much wondering to see how things are altered with Mr. Creed, who, twelve months ago, might have been got to hang himself almost as soon as go to a drinking-house on a Sunday.

night welling up at noon
with the war in my words

I will wait with my point
until change comes

poor as a reed
in the old field

wondering how thin
a reed might go

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 12 May 1661.

May 12, 2024March 13, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Mothers’ Day Psalm

This entry is part 5 of 6 in the series Psalms

yours is the thorn that suckles us
the marsupial pouch in which we play king of the hill

yours is the rare orchid appointed
to a moth no one has ever seen

yours the corals whose cities shone
like nothing from a planning committee

and yours the epidemics the cancers the blights
a creativity as limitless as time and space

oh Nature soften the hearts
of all your little pharoahs
so we don’t have to overthrow them

and let those who insist you must be male
give birth through their penises

May 11, 2024 by Luisa A. Igloria

On Gratefulness

The label is Italian. I haven't worn it once, ever. 
It's called a tent dress because once you slip it 
over your head, the shape is an upside-down V. 
It's supposed to be "forgiving:" no waistline, 
loose around the hips, stopping just at the knees. 
Some  kind of costly pink fabric, just hanging 
in the back of my closet. A friend I no longer 
speak to (she stopped speaking to me first) 
sent it as a Christmas present some years ago. 
She bought it during one of her many trips 
all over Europe. It came in a box filled with other 
expensive items for the family: designer purses, 
luxurious leather; Russian bonbons, trinkets 
from other far reaches of the earth. From the time 
we sported the same inverted bowl haircuts, we lived 
and grew up in the same small teacup of a city, went 
to the same grade school where the bathrooms had 
no running water or toilet paper. Now, as they say, 
she's made it. But what is it with generosity and 
indebtedness, about how it can also turn the one
receiving a gift into a kind of vassal? Actions
never quite measure up to the benefactor's
yardstick. You wonder if you've really been so
ungrateful, or if after all this time, you were simply  
judged as not good enough at anything you did.

May 11, 2024 by Dave Bonta

The old block

This morning I went by water with Payne (Mr. Moore being with me) to my Lord Chamberlain at Whitehall, and there spoke with my Lord, and he did accept of Payne for his waterman, as I had lately endeavoured to get him to be. After that Mr. Cooling did give Payne an order to be entertained, and so I left him and Mr. Moore, and I went to Graye’s Inne, and there to a barber’s, where I was trimmed, and had my haire cut, in which I am lately become a little curious, finding that the length of it do become me very much.
So, calling at my father’s, I went home, and there staid and saw my workmen follow their work, which this night is brought to a very good condition.
This afternoon Mr. Shepley, Moore, and Creed came to me all about their several accounts with me, and we did something with them all, and so they went away. This evening Mr. Hater brought my last quarter’s salary, of which I was very glad, because I have lost my first bill for it, and so this morning was forced to get another signed by three of my fellow officers for it.
All this evening till late setting my accounts and papers in order, and so to bed.

in my white hair
I am my father

on his last lost morning
the evening paper

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 11 May 1661.