Via Negativa

May 5, 2018May 5, 2018 by Luisa A. Igloria

Learning to live alone

Ask for a toy-size pan
in which exactly one egg

might be fried. Stop testing
the air for rain or the milky

steam from a rice cooker which
isn’t there. Hunger can be scaled

down to two onions and a whole
loaf of bread: abundance. You go

out to do work in the world,
for which you are thankful.

Cedarwood and juniper, grave
note from a wand of rosemary.

The telephone reminds you
of obligations and appointments.

In between, your mind rehearses
for some calamity or ultimatum.

Silence is a portrait the moon
may have left in the well.

Your hands make so many gestures
for what they want to contain.

A friend writes about swans.
Another sends pictures

of palaces and bombed-out
villages. At random street

corners, the startling blue
of bearded irises. Every morning,

birds in the dogwood. Every night,
a precise geometry of cricket cries.

May 5, 2018 by Dave Bonta

Up betimes, and by water to Westminster, there to speak the first time with Sir Robert Long, to give him my Privy Seal and my Lord Treasurer’s order for Tangier Tallys; he received me kindly enough. Thence home by water, and presently down to Woolwich and back to Blackewall, and there, viewed the Breach, in order to a Mast Docke, and so to Deptford to the Globe, where my Lord Brunkard, Sir J. Minnes, Sir W. Batten, and Commissioner Pett were at dinner, having been at the Breach also, but they find it will be too great charge to make use of it. After dinner to Mr. Evelyn’s; he being abroad, we walked in his garden, and a lovely noble ground he hath indeed. And among other rarities, a hive of bees, so as being hived in glass, you may see the bees making their honey and combs mighty pleasantly. Thence home, and I by and by to Mr. Povy’s to see him, who is yet in his chamber not well, and thence by his advice to one Lovett’s, a varnisher, to see his manner of new varnish, but found not him at home, but his wife, a very beautiful woman, who shewed me much variety of admirable work, and is in order to my having of some papers fitted with his lines for my use for tables and the like. I know not whether I was more pleased with the thing, or that I was shewed it by her, but resolved I am to have some made. So home to my office late, and then to supper and to bed. My wife tells me that she hears that my poor aunt James hath had her breast cut off here in town, her breast having long been out of order.
This day, after I had suffered my owne hayre to grow long, in order to wearing it, I find the convenience of periwiggs is so great, that I have cut off all short again, and will keep to periwiggs.

time is too great
to make use of

hived in glass
you may be making honey
not love

a beautiful woman
cut off her own breast
out of convenience

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 5 May 1665.

May 4, 2018 by Dave Bonta

Abuzz

Up, and to the office, where we sat busy all the morning. At noon home to dinner, and then to the office again all day till almost midnight, and then, weary, home to supper and to bed.

busy morning
at home in the almost
midnight ear

Erasure haiku derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 4 May 1665.

May 4, 2018May 4, 2018 by Luisa A. Igloria

Historically

some exiles and immigrants
have been more welcome
than others

some have been excellent hires
but only for cane and corn
and garlic fields

some are thought to be hard
working and if wealthy a good catch
but not for your daughters

and in other fields there is
that same pecking order— light
on top gradations of black below

~ “…Filipinos, they’re like
the Blacks of Asians” (Issa Rae)

May 3, 2018May 3, 2018 by Luisa A. Igloria

Essay: On luck and beauty

Through the years I’ve received
those white envelopes of disappointment
in the mail: not our girl, not quite
enough, not this time, we wish you luck
in placing elsewhere. And among the audience,
smug in the front row, the ones who’ve come
convinced there’s nothing that could impress.
They leave before evening’s end. They don’t
talk to you, they don’t on principle buy
that kind of book. Cats perched high
on windowsills lick their paws, also
oblivious to it all; or slink around
the alley with other cats. Fruit falls
to the sidewalk from the market bag
of the woman hurrying home before dark.
One or a few of the pears will later bear
a bruise. It’s likely those are the ones
they’ll wash and eat first. They’ll save
the clear-skinned beauties for last, just
for the way they look so perfect in a bowl.

May 3, 2018May 3, 2018 by Dave Bonta

Travel Anxiety

Page 19 from Max Ernst’s Une Semaine de Bonté

This entry is part 19 of 51 in the series Une Semaine de Bonté

If travel were just
the open road, I might
take to it. Not this
labored labyrinth,
this intestinal clench
of visas tickets security screenings long lines wrong seats bad restrooms too much luggage no-fly lists takeoff turbulence recirculated air cramped legroom boredom soreness limbo purgatory sleepless wondering will they let us in turn us back demand proof of our identity confiscate our umbilical cords make us wait wait wait wait,
wherever we are bound.

May 3, 2018 by Dave Bonta

Plus ça change

Up betimes and walked to Sir Ph. Warwicke’s, where a long time with him in his chamber alone talking of Sir G. Carteret’s business, and the abuses he puts on the nation by his bad payments to both our vexations, but no hope of remedy for ought I see. Thence to my Lord Ashly to a Committee of Tangier for my Lord Rutherford’s accounts, and that done we to my Lord Treasurer’s, where I did receive my Lord’s warrant to Sir R. Long for drawing a warrant for my striking of tallys. So to the Inne again by Cripplegate, expecting my mother’s coming to towne, but she is not come this weeke neither, the coach being too full. So to the ‘Change and thence home to dinner, and so out to Gresham College, and saw a cat killed with the Duke of Florence’s poyson, and saw it proved that the oyle of tobacco drawn by one of the Society do the same effect, and is judged to be the same thing with the poyson both in colour and smell, and effect. I saw also an abortive child preserved fresh in spirits of salt. Thence parted, and to White Hall to the Councilchamber about an order touching the Navy (our being empowered to commit seamen or Masters that do not, being hired or pressed, follow their worke), but they could give us none. So a little vexed at that, because I put in the memorial to the Duke of Albemarle alone under my own hand, home, and after some time at the office home to bed.
My Lord Chief Justice Hide did die suddenly this week, a day or two ago, of an apoplexy.

our vexation at expecting change in society
an abortive child preserved
fresh in salt

we press the little ex-hand
and after some time at the office
die of apoplexy

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 3 May 1665.

May 2, 2018May 25, 2018 by Luisa A. Igloria

Slivers

[The] Japanese kanji “Chinese character” 間 graphically combines 門 “door” and 日 “sun.” The earlier variant character 閒 was written with 月 “moon” rather than “sun”, depicting “A 門 door through the crevice of which the 月 moonshine peeps in.” ~ Wikipedia quote of Bernhard Karlgren, Analytic Dictionary of Chinese and Sino-Japanese, Paul Geunthner, 1923

What am I heartsick for
that every shape
forms into a well?

The healer sealed my hand
in a fiber of warmth and all
I could think of was roots.

Everything I eke out
seems always like
beginning.

Every walk traces
a first running away,
bridges of salt burning.

Mother, do you remember
threatening to return me
to the womb?

At night I drink chamomile tea
and build houses on the table
with sugar cubes.

I have turned into
a Listening post: my ear,
filled with a residue of moths.

My pillow at night
records the sounds I don’t
hear my breathing make.

May 2, 2018 by Dave Bonta

Where all the flowers have gone

Up and to the office all day, where sat late, and then to the office again, and by and by Sir W. Batten and my Lady and my wife and I by appointment yesterday (my Lady Pen failed us, who ought to have been with us) to the Rhenish winehouse at the Steelyard, and there eat a couple of lobsters and some prawns, and pretty merry, especially to see us four together, while my wife and my Lady did never intend ever to be together again after a year’s distance between one another. Hither by and by come Sir Richard Ford and also Mrs. Esther, that lived formerly with my Lady Batten, now well married to a priest, come to see my Lady.
Thence toward evening home, and to my office, where late, and then home to supper and to bed.

the ought-to-have-been couple
raw and pretty to see together
gain a year’s distance

he hit her
that former wit
now well married to a war

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 2 May 1665.

May 1, 2018 by Luisa A. Igloria

Quaint

Faint scent like jasmine
coming over the walk.
But I haven’t heard
the sound of church bells,
the din of trains.

By the steps at the entrance
to every building: boot
scrapers in the shape
of scrolls. In the hallway,
portraits of men in waistcoats.

The woman in the art
gallery pointed to a row
of landscapes on the wall.
I like to flatten them, she said;
to make the old look new.

The press of lines
on brick after brick.
Red clay from another town.
Imagine them first as loose
wet clumps between hands.

In the mirrored surface
of storefront windows,
my doubled image: almost
another face the same
shade as my brown.

A woman tells me
of a temple fifteen
minutes away. It’s as if
she’d said forest or cave,
oasis, watering hole