Threaded through, fastened together:
with a needle, a safety pin, stitches
that fused the dried and severed knots
once tethering me to each child
that emerged, solid and distinct,
already resisting. Even then,
the lessons of unmooring— I sank
into an exhausted sleep, thighs slick
and unwashed, not knowing whose
hands whisked them away to be cleaned
and weighed, dropped into a labeled
bassinet. Now they are grown or mostly
grown, their mouths saying no or yes
or later, help me, I want, I don’t
know what to do. Out in the yard
raking, I’ve often paused to consider
the endlessness of labor, how there
is always more before the residues
have been used up or gathered. How my
hands can never be enough to contain
what won’t let itself be contained;
and friends say let it be, let it
just compost back into the soil.
Strike
Going to bed betimes last night we waked betimes, and from our people’s being forced to take the key to go out to light a candle, I was very angry and begun to find fault with my wife for not commanding her servants as she ought. Thereupon she giving me some cross answer I did strike her over her left eye such a blow as the poor wretch did cry out and was in great pain, but yet her spirit was such as to endeavour to bite and scratch me. But I cogging with her made her leave crying, and sent for butter and parsley, and friends presently one with another, and I up, vexed at my heart to think what I had done, for she was forced to lay a poultice or something to her eye all day, and is black, and the people of the house observed it.
But I was forced to rise, and up and with Sir J. Minnes to White Hall, and there we waited on the Duke. And among other things Mr. Coventry took occasion to vindicate himself before the Duke and us, being all there, about the choosing of Taylor for Harwich. Upon which the Duke did clear him, and did tell us that he did expect, that, after he had named a man, none of us shall then oppose or find fault with the man; but if we had anything to say, we ought to say it before he had chose him. Sir G. Carteret thought himself concerned, and endeavoured to clear himself: and by and by Sir W. Batten did speak, knowing himself guilty, and did confess, that being pressed by the Council he did say what he did, that he was accounted a fanatique; but did not know that at that time he had been appointed by his Royal Highness. To which the Duke [replied] that it was impossible but he must know that he had appointed him; and so it did appear that the Duke did mean all this while Sir W. Batten. So by and by we parted, and Mr. Coventry did privately tell me that he did this day take this occasion to mention the business to give the Duke an opportunity of speaking his mind to Sir W. Batten in this business, of which I was heartily glad.
Thence home, and not finding Bagwell’s wife as I expected, I to the ‘Change and there walked up and down, and then home, and she being come I bid her go and stay at Mooregate for me, and after going up to my wife (whose eye is very bad, but she is in very good temper to me), and after dinner I to the place and walked round the fields again and again, but not finding her I to the ‘Change, and there found her waiting for me and took her away, and to an alehouse, and there I made much of her, and then away thence and to another and endeavoured to caress her, but ‘elle ne voulait pas’, which did vex me, but I think it was chiefly not having a good easy place to do it upon. So we broke up and parted and I to the office, where we sat hiring of ships an hour or two, and then to my office, and thence (with Captain Taylor home to my house) to give him instructions and some notice of what to his great satisfaction had happened to-day. Which I do because I hope his coming into this office will a little cross Sir W. Batten and may do me good. He gone, I to supper with my wife, very pleasant, and then a little to my office and to bed. My mind, God forgive me, too much running upon what I can ‘ferais avec la femme de Bagwell demain’, having promised to go to Deptford and ‘a aller a sa maison avec son mari’ when I come thither.
we go out on strike
left eye as poor as a cog
heart forced to sing an impossible part
ear a well for the mad
the no-good hips
what faction lit up the mind
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 19 December 1664.
Having met my corpse,
I consider what outfit to dress her in,
and what colors are most becoming. I consider
whether she will need one meal or three;
if she would be more at home in the wilderness
than on the 9th floor of an apartment building.
Since time is after all the most invincible
thing compared to our suffering, what
would be the best use of her time? She knows
the fleeting warmth of a body beside hers in bed,
the yeasty smell of fresh bread; the way a drink
of cool water courses down the throat— as if
it could find its way to each bone’s marrow when one
is restless in the night, unable to go back to sleep.
In response to Via Negativa: Vanity.
Eremetic
(Lord’s day). To church, where, God forgive me! I spent most of my time in looking my new Morena at the other side of the church, an acquaintance of Pegg Pen’s. So home to dinner, and then to my chamber to read Ben Johnson’s Cataline, a very excellent piece, and so to church again, and thence we met at the office to hire ships, being in great haste and having sent for several masters of ships to come to us. Then home, and there Mr. Andrews and Hill come and we sung finely, and by and by Mr. Fuller, the Parson, and supped with me, he and a friend of his, but my musique friends would not stay supper. At and after supper Mr. Fuller and I told many storys of apparitions and delusions thereby, and I out with my storys of Tom Mallard. He gone, I a little to my office, and then to prayers and to bed.
Lord here I am
in a cell
having sung a fuller music
of delusions
I out my stories:
all gone to prayers
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 18 December 1664.
Coexisting 101
We say each other’s names.
—Luisa A. Igloria, “Inhabiting“
that now we can say each other’s names
without shame without yesterday’s shadows
—incognito glasses off!—
without a glance over one’s shoulder
to check if a nosy someone is eavesdropping
that now we can swim into, and naturally claim,
each other’s space without feeling crowded
that now we’ve learned not to outpace
one another but to walk in an unhurried
step by step to somewhere or nowhere
that now we can breathe each other’s scent
and hold on to it with our tongues
absolutely
and most certainly
now we can
Happiness couldn’t possibly eddy completely away
In a long-ago dream I was weightless above a sheet resembling the sea— There was no obvious sound and yet I swear I felt a rippling vibrate through me. Suspended and breathless, and yet the expanse went on and on. I couldn’t tell the time; or if faraway beeps came from the microwave or coffeemaker, or the laundry machine that sings a tune when it is done tumbling the clothes to a nice warm dry. It’s hard to recover that weightless dream anymore though I dearly want to slip it into every lamp in the house. The closest I’ve come was watching the cotton candy man on the street corner throw handfuls of sugar into a heated drum as it spun. How lovely to gather filaments and build a cloud, just with the motion of one’s hands.
In response to Via Negativa: Disproportionate.
Disproportionate
Up and to the office, where we sat all the morning. At noon I to the ‘Change, and there, among others, had my first meeting with Mr. L’Estrange, who hath endeavoured several times to speak with me. It is to get, now and then, some newes of me, which I shall, as I see cause, give him. He is a man of fine conversation, I think, but I am sure most courtly and full of compliments.
Thence home to dinner, and then come the looking-glass man to set up the looking-glass I bought yesterday, in my dining-room, and very handsome it is.
So abroad by coach to White Hall, and there to the Committee of Tangier, and then the Fishing.
Mr. Povy did in discourse give me a rub about my late bill for money that I did get of him, which vexed me and stuck in my mind all this evening, though I know very well how to cleare myself at the worst.
So home and to my office, where late, and then home to bed.
Mighty talke there is of this Comet that is seen a’nights; and the King and Queene did sit up last night to see it, and did, it seems. And to-night I thought to have done so too; but it is cloudy, and so no stars appear. But I will endeavour it.
Mr. Gray did tell me to-night, for certain, that the Dutch, as high as they seem, do begin to buckle; and that one man in this Kingdom did tell the King that he is offered 40,000l. to make a peace, and others have been offered money also. It seems the taking of their Bourdeaux fleete thus, arose from a printed Gazette of the Dutch’s boasting of fighting, and having beaten the English: in confidence whereof (it coming to Bourdeaux), all the fleete comes out, and so falls into our hands.
change and strange times
cause conversation full of glass
some committee is stuck
in my mind all evening
how to clear myself
of late nights
the stars as high as they seem
sting our hands
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 17 December 1664.
Vanity
Up, and by water to Deptford, thinking to have met ‘la femme de’ Bagwell, but failed, and having done some business at the yard, I back again, it being a fine fresh morning to walk. Back again, Mr. Wayth walking with me to Half-Way House talking about Mr. Castle’s fine knees lately delivered in. In which I am well informed that they are not as they should be to make them knees, and I hope shall make good use of it to the King’s service.
Thence home, and having dressed myself, to the ‘Change, and thence home to dinner, and so abroad by coach with my wife, and bought a looking glasse by the Old Exchange, which costs me 5l. 5s. and 6s. for the hooks. A very fair glasse.
So toward my cozen Scott’s, but meeting my Lady Sandwich’s coach, my wife turned back to follow them, thinking they might, as they did, go to visit her, and I ‘light and to Mrs. Harman, and there staid and talked in her shop with her, and much pleased I am with her. We talked about Anthony Joyce’s giving over trade and that he intends to live in lodgings, which is a very mad, foolish thing. She tells me she hears and believes it is because he, being now begun to be called on offices, resolves not to take the new oathe, he having formerly taken the Covenant or Engagement, but I think he do very simply and will endeavour for his wife’s sake to advise him therein.
Thence to my cozen Scott’s, and there met my cozen Roger Pepys, and Mrs. Turner, and The. and Joyce, and prated all the while, and so with the corps to church and heard a very fine sermon of the Parson of the parish, and so homeward with them in their coach, but finding it too late to go home with me, I took another coach and so home, and after a while at my office, home to supper and to bed.
I half live
in the looking glass
fair as sand
I turn to follow the light
that mad thing
having met my corpse
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 16 December 1664.
#NoCensorship #AllWords #Resist
Let’s use those 7 CDC-banned words in poems.
*
Once, ours was a world originally
diverse, originally transgendered— all
different beings fused and whole before
the artificial split: our entitlement to the fruits
of the garden revoked and colonized by false
documents and deeds, the growing fetus
of perverse overseers’ greed, which bloated
into a many-headed beast with many mouths
spewing false and uncouth argument, unwilling
to admit truth is science-based, evidence-based.
They want nothing better than to burn the fields,
fan flames of hate, put idols (themselves) in place
of our sacred monuments. What they want: our wages, rights,
hearts, hopes: what we will never willingly give them.
Law of Opposites
Mother, how do you keep a thing
you don’t want to happen yet
from coming true? Could we shut
the windows and our ears to the dark-
blue song of mourning birds? Could we
ask the sky to stop dividing the hours
exactly into two? Something is calling
me but I don’t want to go. I don’t believe
that whatever’s here must be linked only
to what isn’t. Sometimes, riding up
the hills, through the cracked bus window
I’ve seen how the moon is still faintly
visible above the tree line well past
sunrise. When a song about silver threads
and golden needles comes on the radio, I think
of thin cardboard wings laid across the bodies
of dead infants, to help their souls
make that crossing into the afterworld.