Are we the kind of people you think we are: law-abiding,
peace-loving, generally not rocking the boat, wanting the same
kinds of opportunities afforded others, speaking such perfect
English learned on the way here— Aren’t we more than lumpia-
and-pancit-eating, more than karaoke-mic-wielding, more
than are-you-a-nurse or are-you-a-doctor, are-you-a-mail-order-
bride or the wife of the Oklahoma bomber; more than the crazy
boxer or the woman with three thousand pairs of shoes; more than
the madman’s boast of how he can rape and kill or cause to be killed
outside of the law; more than the Italian designer’s killer, more
than the maids in Hong Kong who sleep on a makeshift pallet
wedged between refrigerator and stove— Aren’t we the islands
you ceded then annexed after a staged war; that you ordered
turned into a howling wilderness, tamed, then plundered?
Churchyard
My wife not being well, waked in the night, and strange to see how dead sleep our people sleep that she was fain to ring an hour before any body would wake. At last one rose and helped my wife, and so to sleep again.
Up and to my business, and then to White Hall, there to attend the Lords Commissioners, and so directly home and dined with Sir W. Batten and my Lady, and after dinner had much discourse tending to profit with Sir W. Batten, how to get ourselves into the prize office or some other fair way of obliging the King to consider us in our extraordinary pains.
Then to the office, and there all the afternoon very busy, and so till past 12 at night, and so home to bed.
This day my wife went to the burial of a little boy of W. Joyce’s.
a dead rose is tending
some other air
the ordinary pains us
at the burial of a little boy
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 16 November 1664.
The rights of those accused
From curiosity, from unwarranted discipline,
or pressing need— I’ve learned that I too have
the right to speak and ask; and more, expect. That this,
too, is my due. Our second landlord came to check on
“the facilities,” moving from room to room, talking about
the previous tenant, a lady (white) who lived alone but was
“extremely fastidious” about cleanliness. I looked straight
at him but did not then know how to retort, did not say,
Why did we have to scour a quarter inch of dust and oily
residue from the top of the fridge and behind each radiator
if the previous tenant was really all he made her out to be?
When our rent check was late because of a postal holiday, he
sent someone to tape a warning on our door: as though we’d
broken the law, just by being “the kind of people” we were.
Psychonaut
That I might not be too fine for the business I intend this day, I did leave off my fine new cloth suit lined with plush and put on my poor black suit, and after office done (where much business, but little done), I to the ‘Change, and thence Bagwell’s wife with much ado followed me through Moorfields to a blind alehouse, and there I did caress her and eat and drink, and many hard looks and sithes the poor wretch did give me, and I think verily was troubled at what I did, but at last after many protestings by degrees I did arrive at what I would, with great pleasure, and then in the evening, it raining, walked into town to where she knew where she was, and then I took coach and to White Hall to a Committee of Tangier, where, and every where else, I thank God, I find myself growing in repute; and so home, and late, very late, at business, nobody minding it but myself, and so home to bed, weary and full of thoughts. Businesses grow high between the Dutch and us on every side.
I leave my change with a blind man
testing the rain
everywhere a wing
and nobody minding it but me
weary and high
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 15 November 1664.
What we were taught
Without interruption on the surface, our biases work
like invisible engines driving what we do. When you
visited for the first time, alighting from the plane,
you smiled then whispered nervously: I hear there are
many blacks here? Having grown up where we did, far east
in a country that used to be a colony of the one where I
now make my home, I understood this wasn’t something
seeded from cruelty, but rather from an idea we were taught
before we even learned to think: how beauty was everything
white and blond, everything unlike our brown selves
parroting See Jane run! and Look, Dick, look!— their picket
fence and buttoned cardigans alien and fascinating as the two
yellow braids Jennifer Moser wore in grade school. I touched
them out of curiosity: for which I was promptly disciplined.
Life preserver
Up, and with Sir W. Batten to White Hall, to the Lords of the Admiralty, and there did our business betimes. Thence to Sir Philip Warwicke about Navy business: and my Lord Ashly; and afterwards to my Lord Chancellor, who is very well pleased with me, and my carrying of his business. And so to the ‘Change, where mighty busy; and so home to dinner, where Mr. Creed and Moore: and after dinner I to my Lord Treasurer’s, to Sir Philip Warwicke there, and then to White Hall, to the Duke of Albemarle, about Tangier; and then homeward to the Coffee-house to hear newes. And it seems the Dutch, as I afterwards found by Mr. Coventry’s letters, have stopped a ship of masts of Sir W. Warren’s, coming for us in a Swede’s ship, which they will not release upon Sir G. Downing’s claiming her: which appears as the first act of hostility; and is looked upon as so by Mr. Coventry.
The Elias, coming from New England (Captain Hill, commander), is sunk; only the captain and a few men saved. She foundered in the sea.
So home, where infinite busy till 12 at night, and so home to supper and to bed.
who is carrying us to war
to ward off news
I have stopped up ears
as the first act of hostility
the land is sunk
only the captain found a finite bed
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 14 November 1664.
Buzz feeder
(Lord’s day). This morning to church, where mighty sport, to hear our clerke sing out of tune, though his master sits by him that begins and keeps the tune aloud for the parish.
Dined at home very well, and spent all the afternoon with my wife within doors, and getting a speech out of Hamlett, “To bee or not to bee,” without book.
In the evening to sing psalms, and in come Mr. Hill to see me, and then he and I and the boy finely to sing, and so anon broke up after much pleasure, he gone I to supper, and so prayers and to bed.
where to keep the tune indoors
getting a bee to sing psalms
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 13 November 1664.
The Bias
I watched you but never learned to sew facing
and interfacing, while understanding how two
pieces cut from the same fabric could still pull
away from each other, though forcibly joined
at the seam— Just like how you were aways careful
to match the colors of every outfit, finish with scent
and lipstick and jewelry; while I chafed at mohair
twin sets and pantyhose. I’m past your age when you
decided on the dresses of my wedding entourage: yards
of lace and chiffon, pearls. Now I grow increasingly
comfortable wearing jeans to work, though I’ll top them
with a clean-lined jacket, a sweater in fine wool.
Something to do with warp and weft, how to make two
biases work, without visibly interrupting the surface.
When they ask why now, after all these years
What does it mean when someone is speaking,
not asking, yet the sounds they make seem to curl
harmlessly upward like a question mark? I’ve an old
fear of looking too hard beneath the blunt ends of things
—something might break open at last. For a long time
I carried my agate carapace in pieces, proof of
another form, proof of having once been seen, before
something was taken. After, it dangled from my waist
in a sling bag. I wanted to piece them back together:
with red and yellow seeds, an eye-shaped amulet.
I know it’s sometimes hard to tell from looking
what I used to be. There are faint finger marks
going down the middle of the spine, as if to stopper
holes in a flute. That’s how I learned not all
undoing means yes, or I agreed to this. For a long
time it hurt to put the voice back in the throat.
Old mill town
Up, being frighted that Mr. Coventry was come to towne and now at the office, so I run down without eating or drinking or washing to the office and it proved my Lord Berkeley.
There all the morning, at noon to the ‘Change, and so home to dinner, Mr. Wayth with me, and then to the office, where mighty busy till very late, but I bless God I go through with it very well and hope I shall.
in a town
run-down with drink
ashing the ice
Erasure haiku derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 12 November 1664.