Via Negativa

February 19, 2023 by Dave Bonta

The lives of a cell

(Lord’s day).
Early in the morning I set my books that I brought home yesterday up in order in my study. Thence forth to Mr. Harper’s to drink a draft of purle, whither by appointment Monsieur L’Impertinent, who did intend too upon my desire to go along with me to St. Bartholomew’s, to hear one Mr. Sparks, but it raining very hard we went to Mr. Gunning’s and heard an excellent sermon, and speaking of the character that the Scripture gives of Ann the mother of the blessed Virgin, he did there speak largely in commendation of widowhood, and not as we do to marry two or three wives or husbands, one after another. Here I met with Mr. Moore, and went home with him to dinner, where he told me the discourse that happened between the secluded members and the members of the House, before Monk last Friday. How the secluded said, that they did not intend by coming in to express revenge upon these men, but only to meet and dissolve themselves, and only to issue writs for a free Parliament.
He told me how Haselrigge was afraid to have the candle carried before him, for fear that the people seeing him, would do him hurt; and that he is afraid to appear in the City. That there is great likelihood that the secluded members will come in, and so Mr. Crew and my Lord are likely to be great men, at which I was very glad.
After diner there was many secluded members come in to Mr. Crew, which, it being the Lord’s day, did make Mr. Moore believe that there was something extraordinary in the business.
Hence home and brought my wife to Mr. Mossum’s to hear him, and indeed he made a very good sermon, but only too eloquent for a pulpit. Here Mr. L’Impertinent helped me to a seat. After sermon to my father’s; and fell in discourse concerning our going to Cambridge the next week with my brother John.
To Mrs. Turner where her brother, Mr. Edward Pepys, was there, and I sat a great while talking of public business of the times with him. So to supper to my Father’s, all supper talking of John’s going to Cambridge.
So home, and it raining my wife got my mother’s French mantle and my brother John’s hat, and so we went all along home and to bed.

books brought to the cell
of a secluded monk

express themselves
only to the candle

carried like a wand
to some ordinary sin

moss too eloquent
for our brother the rain

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 19 February 1659/60.

February 19, 2023February 19, 2023 by Luisa A. Igloria

Alchemy

~ after Remedios Varo

That's how I feel too, about the useless-
ness sometimes of science; though not 
about alchemy, because clearly, there's 
something else that's made it possible 
for the checkered floorboard to rise up
and offer itself like a blanket for the woman 
bent at her task, spinning. How long has she 
sat there in the broody foyer, while gears 
and pulleys decant energy into a cone 
at the end of a pendulum? The houses 
of progress and industry stand in the rust-
colored mist like abandoned factories. 
As always, they were built to look 
like monuments—but the only labor here 
is fed by her hand. With that kind of devotion, 
she ought to be crowned with laurels, 
rewarded with longed-for rest. But as alchemist 
she can't stop now. What if the wind blowing 
the weather vane stopped too; what if the light 
faded, what if the velvet curtains descended,  
and the only remaining sounds were made
by robots and artificial sheep?

February 18, 2023February 18, 2023 by Dave Bonta

Lunar landing

A great while at my vial and voice, learning to sing “Fly boy, fly boy,” without book. So to my office, where little to do. In the Hall I met with Mr. Eglin and one Looker, a famous gardener, servant to my Lord Salsbury, and among other things the gardener told a strange passage in good earnest how formerly Mr. Eglin did in his company put his finger, which being sore had a black case over it, into a woman’s belly, he named her Nan (which I guess who it is), and left his case within her; which Mr. Eglin blushed but did not deny it. Which truly I was sorry to hear and did think of it a good while afterward. Home to dinner, and then went to my Lord’s lodgings to my turret there and took away most of my books, and sent them home by my maid. Thither came Capt. Holland to me who took me to the Half Moon tavern and Mr. Southorne, Blackburne’s clerk. Thence he took me to the Mitre in Fleet Street, where we heard (in a room over the music room) very plainly through the ceiling. Here we parted and I to Mr. Wotton’s, and with him to an alehouse and drank while he told me a great many stories of comedies that he had formerly seen acted, and the names of the principal actors, and gave me a very good account of it. Thence to Whitehall, where I met with Luellin and in the clerk’s chamber wrote a letter to my Lord. So home and to bed. This day two soldiers were hanged in the Strand for their late mutiny at Somerset-house.

learning to fly
with one finger
over a woman’s belly

the half moon
a horn heard
over the music

we part with former names
good soldiers
for their tin

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 18 February 1659/60.

February 18, 2023February 18, 2023 by Luisa A. Igloria

Injury

I grow more and more convinced
the truths I know to be mine alone

will never attain the status 
accorded everything obvious,

everything taken for granted
and therefore unquestionable.

The compass points north; it is day 
on the other side of the earth. 

Here in the south, wraparound
is the name for porches extending

from one side of the house to another: 
a kind of lie of continuity, a careful 

median from where one might consider 
interior versus exterior while sitting 

in a smooth monobloc chair. Once, 
I too bore lives into the world— 

the minimum of how many times I was
also wounded. How the merest stroke 

from a night-blooming flower suggests
nothing ever dies, or remains unchanged.

February 17, 2023 by Dave Bonta

War Report

from the wind’s house
on a seat of moss

i can almost see the hospital
where Dad died

i watch a pair of ravens hurtle past
turn and hang
nearly motionless

feathers fluttering
like a pianist’s fingers

one briefly meets my gaze
a glint of obsidian

i wander thin-soled
down the thin-soiled ridge

trees chafe and moan
encumbered with their dead

one sugar maple shrieks
like a cat in heat

a cold front has come
to the bare ground
of a too-warm February

i’m standing on the long root
of a black birch
as it bows and straightens

and for a moment i think
it’s the mountain
moving under me

looking down i remember
i’ve got my dad’s bootlaces on

faded brown
as well as his red and black
checkered cap

which is how
the ravens must know me
their most regular botherer

i pile rocks into a seat
a pellet of sleet falls into my tea

the mind-numbing roar
of an a-10 fighter-bomber
here and gone

i open the centennial edition
of Gertrude Stein’s
Tender Buttons

February 17, 2023 by Dave Bonta

Hillbilly

In the morning Tom that was my Lord’s footboy came to see me and had 10s. of me of the money which I have to keep of his. So that now I have but 35s. more of his. Then came Mr. Hills the instrument maker, and I consulted with him about the altering my lute and my viall. After that I went into my study and did up my accounts, and found that I am about; 40l. beforehand in the world, and that is all. So to my office and from thence brought Mr. Hawly home with me to dinner, and after dinner wrote a letter to Mr. Downing about his business and gave it Hawly, and so went to Mr. Gunning’s to his weekly fast, and after sermon, meeting there with Monsieur L’Impertinent, we went and walked in the park till it was dark. I played on my pipe at the Echo, and then drank a cup of ale at Jacob’s. So to Westminster Hall, and he with me, where I heard that some of the members of the House were gone to meet with some of the secluded members and General Monk in the City. Hence we went to White Hall, thinking to hear more news, where I met with Mr. Hunt, who told me how Monk had sent for all his goods that he had here into the City; and yet again he told me, that some of the members of the House had this day laid in firing into their lodgings at White Hall for a good while, so that we are at a great stand to think what will become of things, whether Monk will stand to the Parliament or no. Hence Mons. L’Impertinent and I to Harper’s, and there drank a cup or two to the King, and to his fair sister Frances good health, of whom we had much discourse of her not being much the worse for the small pox, which she had this last summer. So home and to bed. This day we are invited to my uncle Fenner’s wedding feast, but went not, this being the 27th year.

the hills make
and alter me

meeting a dark echo
on some hunt

firing into the air
of a small summer

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 17 February 1659/60.

February 17, 2023February 24, 2025 by Luisa A. Igloria

Cloven

river in November light between bare woods and mountain

After a certain age she starts
receiving mail from funeral 
homes or columbariums. 

But when did the terror begin? 
At night, they lay her down 
to sleep under a tent of stories:

first, a family all together
and wrapped like a present
on Christmas morning.

Then an ice storm takes
one or all of them, or a boat
disappears behind a wall

of high water. The earth
is so alive, murmuring apology
each time it takes or ruins,

each time it coughs up 
rivers of mud. And so, in grief, 
the woman gathers her skirts 

and walks into the wood. 
They speak of her as if 
it was she who took 

the last light from that 
home; as if she could know
how to make the moon

stop pilfering the silver 
in a poor box. Will she live
to see those debts paid off? 

Exile means to be here but
so far away,  stumbling along-
side the animals in the hills.

Sometimes, she can barely see
the outline of her own shadow 
beneath the screen of trees.

February 16, 2023 by Dave Bonta

Getting up

In the morning at my lute. Then came Shaw and Hawly, and I gave them their morning draft at my house. So to my office, where I wrote by the carrier to my Lord and sealed my letter at Will’s, and gave it old East to carry it to the carrier’s, and to take up a box of china oranges and two little barrels of scallops at my house, which Captain Cuttance sent to me for my Lord. Here I met with Osborne and with Shaw and Spicer, and we went to the Sun Tavern in expectation of a dinner, where we had sent us only two trenchers-full of meat, at which we were very merry, while in came Mr. Wade and his friend Capt. Moyse (who told us of his hopes to get an estate merely for his name’s sake), and here we staid till seven at night, I winning a quart of sack of Shaw that one trencherfull that was sent us was all lamb and he that it was veal. I by having but 3d. in my pocket made shift to spend no more, whereas if I had had more I had spent more as the rest did, so that I see it is an advantage to a man to carry little in his pocket.
Home, and after supper, and a little at my flute, I went to bed.

a morning old as China
orange sun
full of meat

night in my pocket
that little flute

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 16 February 1659/60.

February 16, 2023February 15, 2023 by Luisa A. Igloria

Hinge

All it takes
for a car to float away
is three inches of water.

All it takes 
to learn fear of the world
is the sound of gunfire or 
explosions, the shatter of glass. 

You've forgotten 
how many muscles it takes 
to smile versus frown, how long 
it takes for a wound to scab over 
before it heals.

All it takes
to forget is to throw
yourself into work, into activity,
not for a moment letting the mind
sink into that bottom drawer which  
it might not want to leave again.

What does it take
for the mind to relearn 
what it used to joyfully 
carry; what it promised,  
yet somehow did not do?

All it takes
is a doorway, a hinge
that swings it back
the other way, 
or open.

February 15, 2023 by Dave Bonta

Night soil

Called up in the morning by Captain Holland and Captain Cuttance, and with them to Harper’s, thence to my office, thence with Mr. Hill of Worcestershire to Will’s, where I gave him a letter to Nan Pepys, and some merry pamphlets against the Rump to carry to her into the country. So to Mr. Crew’s, where the dining room being full, Mr. Walgrave and I dined below in the buttery by ourselves upon a good dish of buttered salmon. Thence to Hering the merchant about my Lord’s Worcester money and back to Paul’s Churchyard, where I staid reading in Fuller’s History of the Church of England an hour or two, and so to my father’s, where Mr. Hill came to me and I gave him direction what to do at Worcester about the money. Thence to my Lady Wright’s and gave her a letter from my Lord privily. So to Mrs. Jem and sat with her, who dined at Mr. Crew’s to-day, and told me that there was at her coming away at least forty gentlemen (I suppose members that were secluded, for Mr. Walgrave told me that there were about thirty met there the last night) came dropping in one after another thither. Thence home and wrote into the country against to-morrow by the carrier and so to bed. At my father’s I heard how my cousin Kate Joyce had a fall yesterday from her horse and had some hurt thereby. No news to-day, but all quiet to see what the Parliament will do about the issuing of the writs to-morrow for filling up of the House, according to Monk’s desire.

let the rump carry
our back story

our father night
dropping in on us

horse
filling up the house

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 15 February 1659/60.