You can tell the third worlders
by the number of trays of discount
chicken they load in their cart
and their propensity to hoard
for that proverbial rainy day.
Why not the 25 pound sack
of rice at discount, rather than
the 8 pound bag? Is this why,
growing up, we had a dozen
blue boxes filled with toothpicks
dreaming in the cupboard of the school
projects they would become? A navy
blue uniform skirt with a hidden
button tab in the waistband and a hem
sewed two inches below the knee—
not just for modesty but to make sure
it would last another year. Even now,
those habits stick: I have a giant
box of beautiful gift wrap paper,
a mandolin with 3 missing strings
and a loose fretboard. I can’t
bear to throw it away: even
the plucked remainders can still
clearly sound their given note.
Hypomnema 2
~ There is apparently no Philippine law for protection of elders from abuse.
The time between one stage of life and the next
seems to shrink most rapidly in the evening.
Here are the dishes that pile up
and no one to clean them.
Here are colonies of discarded clothes
that create an interior topography lined with mold.
When was the last time anyone heard
a leisurely sound under this roof?
When was the last time a room
was a chlorinated vacuum, museum of objects-as-wishes?
Who kept and ate your last grocery rations
then belatedly remembered to leave you a small bowl of rice?
Who took your phone then claimed you lost it?
Who holds your keys and passbooks?
Who asks for your signature on withdrawal
slips, knowing you won’t remember?
Barberous
(Lord’s day). Up; and put on my coloured silk suit very fine, and my new periwigg, bought a good while since, but durst not wear, because the plague was in Westminster when I bought it; and it is a wonder what will be the fashion after the plague is done, as to periwiggs, for nobody will dare to buy any haire, for fear of the infection, that it had been cut off of the heads of people dead of the plague.
Before church time comes Mr. Hill (Mr. Andrews failing because he was to receive the Sacrament), and to church, where a sorry dull parson, and so home and most excellent company with Mr. Hill and discourse of musique. I took my Lady Pen home, and her daughter Pegg, and merry we were; and after dinner I made my wife show them her pictures, which did mad Pegg Pen, who learns of the same man and cannot do so well. After dinner left them and I by water to Greenwich, where much ado to be suffered to come into the towne because of the sicknesse, for fear I should come from London, till I told them who I was. So up to the church, where at the door I find Captain Cocke in my Lord Brunker’s coach, and he come out and walked with me in the church-yarde till the church was done, talking of the ill government of our Kingdom, nobody setting to heart the business of the Kingdom, but every body minding their particular profit or pleasures, the King himself minding nothing but his ease, and so we let things go to wracke. This arose upon considering what we shall do for money when the fleete comes in, and more if the fleete should not meet with the Dutch, which will put a disgrace upon the King’s actions, so as the Parliament and Kingdom will have the less mind to give more money, besides so bad an account of the last money, we fear, will be given, not half of it being spent, as it ought to be, upon the Navy. Besides, it is said that at this day our Lord Treasurer cannot tell what the profit of Chimney money is, what it comes to per annum, nor looks whether that or any other part of the revenue be duly gathered as it ought; the very money that should pay the City the 200,000l. they lent the King, being all gathered and in the hands of the Receiver and hath been long and yet not brought up to pay the City, whereas we are coming to borrow 4 or 500,000l. more of the City, which will never be lent as is to be feared.
Church being done, my Lord Bruncker, Sir J. Minnes, and I up to the Vestry at the desire of the justices of the Peace, Sir Theo. Biddulph and Sir W. Boreman and Alderman Hooker, in order to the doing something for the keeping of the plague from growing; but Lord! to consider the madness of the people of the town, who will (because they are forbid) come in crowds along with the dead corps to see them buried; but we agreed on some orders for the prevention thereof. Among other stories, one was very passionate, methought, of a complaint brought against a man in the towne for taking a child from London from an infected house. Alderman Hooker told us it was the child of a very able citizen in Gracious Street, a saddler, who had buried all the rest of his children of the plague, and himself and wife now being shut up and in despair of escaping, did desire only to save the life of this little child; and so prevailed to have it received stark-naked into the arms of a friend, who brought it (having put it into new fresh clothes) to Greenwich; where upon hearing the story, we did agree it should be permitted to be received and kept in the towne. Thence with my Lord Bruncker to Captain Cocke’s, where we mighty merry and supped, and very late I by water to Woolwich, in great apprehensions of an ague. Here was my Lord Bruncker’s lady of pleasure, who, I perceive, goes every where with him; and he, I find, is obliged to carry her, and make all the courtship to her that can be.
hair cut off
the heads of dead kings
cannot be gathered as it ought
to pay for keeping the madness
of crowds buried
stories as naked and late
as every court
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 3 September 1665.
Hypomnema 1
It has been brought to my attention that one weekend in August, you fainted or collapsed at the waiting shed and rolled down the hill.
It has been brought to my attention that your neighbors took you to the emergency room, where you were kept all night and the doctor on duty filled out the intake form, misspelling your name.
You are still possibly the only woman I know whose name begins with a Z.
I cannot picture how you fell that long way, cannot believe you have no broken ribs or bruises other than a few scrape marks along your knees.
Cannot believe the people with whom you’ve shared your roof for decades could not be bothered to look in on you or take you home.
The neighborhood council representative takes pictures: you in a wheelchair in the hospital corridor, your thin frame lost in a faded suit jacket; underneath that, a shirt and trousers, each one a different print.
More pictures from when they take you home, because they are concerned and alarmed: trash in the hallway, in the middle of the living room, in every corner. No one around to answer for any of it.
Moss on stones, rain every afternoon. How much electricity can one old woman use in a month? But either the light bulbs are out, or someone has been turning off the power at its source.
Haze
This morning I wrote letters to Mr. Hill and Andrews to come to dine with me to-morrow, and then I to the office, where busy, and thence to dine with Sir J. Minnes, where merry, but only that Sir J. Minnes who hath lately lost two coach horses, dead in the stable, has a third now a dying. After dinner I to Deptford, and there took occasion to ‘entrar a la casa de la gunaica de ma Minusier’, and did what I had a mind a hazer con [ella], and volvió. To Greenwich, where wrote some letters, and home in pretty good time.
busy with dying
in her mind a haze
green and pretty
Erasure haiku derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 2 September 1665.
Portrait, with fasting or hunger
There are those who press their faces to the prayer
mat at designated times in the same way monks
go around the villages to collect their one meal
for the day. Something about the body being
a temple needing upkeep. Or a temple needing
supplicants in order to be more than a room
with marble fittings. I listened to a radio
program in which a cultural anthropologist
hypothesized manna in the desert was a kind
of hoarfrost that dried into spongy fragments,
porous like bread crust. Everything that can
be warmed up or poured into a bowl, a stance
against death such that going without
could be construed as a lack of desire
for communion. At noon and in the evening,
neighbors hear the cries of an old woman
who has been left by herself. The moon
makes her remember the jewels she believes
have been stolen from her purse. She turns it
inside out, shakes: only spiders and dust
fall out. They don’t discriminate either.
They slip easily through any crack in the door.
In response to Via Negativa: The great equalizer.
Oaths
Up, and to visit my Lady Pen and her daughter at the Ropeyarde where I did breakfast with them and sat chatting a good while. Then to my lodging at Mr. Shelden’s, where I met Captain Cocke and eat a little bit of dinner, and with him to Greenwich by water, having good discourse with him by the way. After being at Greenwich a little while, I to London, to my house, there put many more things in order for my totall remove, sending away my girle Susan and other goods down to Woolwich, and I by water to the Duke of Albemarle, and thence home late by water.
At the Duke of Albemarle’s I overheard some examinations of the late plot that is discoursed of and a great deale of do there is about it. Among other discourses, I heard read, in the presence of the Duke, an examination and discourse of Sir Philip Howard’s, with one of the plotting party. In many places these words being, “Then,” said Sir P. Howard, “if you so come over to the King, and be faithfull to him, you shall be maintained, and be set up with a horse and armes,” and I know not what. And then said such a one, “Yes, I will be true to the King.” “But, damn me,” said Sir Philip, “will you so and so?” And thus I believe twelve times Sir P. Howard answered him a “damn me,” which was a fine way of rhetorique to persuade a Quaker or Anabaptist from his persuasion. And this was read in the hearing of Sir P. Howard, before the Duke and twenty more officers, and they make sport of it, only without any reproach, or he being anything ashamed of it! But it ended, I remember, at last, “But such a one (the plotter) did at last bid them remember that he had not told them what King he would be faithfull to.”
water of many places
these words come with arms
and damn us to remember
but not to be faithful
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 1 September 1665.
on the scale, how far away is wild from crazy
~ “Wild Filipino brunch and expertly seared scallops at the new Nouvelle in Norfolk,” Aug 31, 2018 Updated Sep 5, 2018 [name of Mount Mayon changed to Mount Pinatubo]; The Virginian Pilot
when the rich asians in Crazy Rich
Asians do their crazy rich things like sit
for private viewings of jewels in some
hushed and exclusive location then go home
with a dozen shopping bags and tell the maids
to hide them in the kitchen drawers under
wraps under the pile of plain but serviceable
dishcloths and the hinged velvet box with three
bajillion singaporean dollars’ worth of emeralds
or rubies or diamonds set in filigreed gold
is set nonchalantly on the edge of a mirror
who wouldn’t go a little crazy themselves
like goh peik lin/akwafina whose eyes pop
when she scores a last minute invitation
to the crazy rich party pardon me should we say
soiree and especially when all that eye candy
starts parading across the screen buff male
torsos emerging from the shower or sprawled
in beach chairs all casual you know these guys
have never hefted a shovel or dug a ditch in all
their lives and the people in the audience go damn
and why aren’t there ever any bodies like those
working out at the y when you’re there
on the treadmill only old white men in too
tight weird colored athletic shorts like powder
blue pulling on the rowing machine with over
exaggerated grunts and a lady who puts in
a religious hour of stair master but with her
torso in exactly the same position of a towel
draped over the handlebars at the end
of the film boy gets girl or girl gets boy
because don’t you forget she’s ace at game
theory even if she grew up lower middle
class so there is potential there for making
a case for their suitability for each other
but yes of course everything they also say
is true not every asian is rich like that
and singapore is more mixed so how come
the only brown asians are cameos like uncle
who runs a food stall and how much singlish
is actually spoken throughout one of my
students says so typical not to find any
real portrayals of other types of asians
the so-called jungle asians or when any
mention at all is made like in a recent
food review in the local paper of filipino
cuisine it’s always exotic always a little
off always just at that needle pointing
toward wild and one volcano is pretty
indistinguishable from another
The great equalizer
Up and, after putting several things in order to my removal, to Woolwich; the plague having a great encrease this week, beyond all expectation of almost 2,000, making the general Bill 7,000, odd 100; and the plague above 6,000. I down by appointment to Greenwich, to our office, where I did some business, and there dined with our company and Sir W. Boreman, and Sir The. Biddulph, at Mr. Boreman’s, where a good venison pasty, and after a good merry dinner I to my office, and there late writing letters, and then to Woolwich by water, where pleasant with my wife and people, and after supper to bed.
Thus this month ends with great sadness upon the publick, through the greatness of the plague every where through the kingdom almost. Every day sadder and sadder news of its encrease. In the City died this week 7,496 and of them 6,102 of the plague. But it is feared that the true number of the dead, this week is near 10,000; partly from the poor that cannot be taken notice of, through the greatness of the number, and partly from the Quakers and others that will not have any bell ring for them.
Our fleete gone out to find the Dutch, we having about 100 sail in our fleete, and in them the Soveraigne one; so that it is a better fleete than the former with the Duke was. All our fear is that the Dutch should be got in before them; which would be a very great sorrow to the publick, and to me particularly, for my Lord Sandwich’s sake. A great deal of money being spent, and the kingdom not in a condition to spare, nor a parliament without much difficulty to meet to give more. And to that; to have it said, what hath been done by our late fleetes?
As to myself I am very well, only in fear of the plague, and as much of an ague by being forced to go early and late to Woolwich, and my family to lie there continually.
My late gettings have been very great to my great content, and am likely to have yet a few more profitable jobbs in a little while; for which Tangier, and Sir W. Warren I am wholly obliged to.
in the city of the dead
the poor cannot have any bell
ring for them
we fear that public sand
fear being forced to lie there
like a little warren
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 31 August 1665.
We Are Closer To Each Other Than We’ve Ever Been
“The sea can’t heal the way it used to.” ~ Leonidas Perez, Coetupu tribal leader
There are metaphors comparing people to sardines packed tight in tins, with only a little oil or briny water to lubricate the idea of spaces between. At tapas places, I don’t quite know what to think of boquerones laid out in a wheel next to a little bowl of olives.
For most of my life, I knew sardines only in this form— decapitated herring or mackerel bodies pressure-cooked in batches, whose nearly macerated flesh we could eat without needing to pick out the bones. We ate them mostly in the rainy season, doused with vinegar and black pepper and chopped red onions.
When the power went out, we hauled plastic and metal drums into the yard to collect rain, and shredded old newspapers to start the fire in a makeshift stove. After we steamed a pot of white rice, we could make a game of pulling out in one piece the spines to lay on the side of the plate, the notochord one fine hair stringing tiny ivory-colored shingles. Their chalkiness mingled with the odor of damp mattresses.
I don’t know if I have the right to think of myself as a good person. And I don’t know how to begin to address the question: what is your greatest fear? On the one hand: seasons out of sync; the wide skirts of a hurricane whirling over the sea of Japan, swallowing lorries and airports. Necklaces of fallen bees. Whales ferrying their own dead, reluctant to relinquish them to nowhere. On the other: looking through glut in the produce and canned food aisles at a warehouse club; oil and sugar the smell of an overwhelming despair.