Posts

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Replacement worker

Up pretty well again, but my mouth very scabby, my cold being going away, so that I was forced to wear a great black patch, but that would not do much good, but it happens we did not go to the Duke to-day, and so I staid at home busy all the morning. At noon, after dinner, to the ‘Change, and thence home to my office again, where busy, well employed till 10 at night, and so home to supper and to bed, my mind a little troubled that I have not of late kept up myself so briske in business; but mind my ease a little too much and my family upon the coming of Mercer and Tom. So that I have not kept company, nor appeared very active with Mr. Coventry, but now I resolve to settle to it again, not that I have idled all my time, but as to my ease something. So I have looked a little too much after Tangier and the Fishery, and that in the sight of Mr. Coventry, but I have good reason to love myself for serving Tangier, for it is one of the best flowers in my garden.

scab employed till I bled
a little too much

I have no company now
led a little too much

but I love serving the best
flowers in my garden


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 26 September 1664.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

After the flood

After hurricanes sank our tin
and cardboard houses, sucked

them into the creek; after
the Lions’ & Women’s & Rotary

Clubs got tired of bringing relief
goods and water to the gym; after

the renegade sun returned, pretending
nothing happened— we too came back

to the same ground, raked over mud
plots that would harden anew. Who owns

the earth anyway? Who learned to blur
the edges of what having means?

Our bodies furnish these lives. We pick
through what chance and the winds unmoor:

a good doorpost, a window frame, an inner tube.
Any kind of thing to stand for some idea of home.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Endarkenment.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Navigation by horoscope

“You don’t have to understand
your hunger in order to feel it.”
~ Virgo, September 2017

Madame Clairvoyant wants you to know you can move
through the world trusting your bright inner compass,

the needle that flickers toward the faintest shadow
of north even as the tide’s hungry mouth eats up

your shallow footprints, almost as soon as you’ve
left them on the shore. You try to communicate

your intentions as clearly as possible, a skill
absolutely necessary especially when you’re giving

instructions or trying to suggest some course of action
to someone else. The problem is, often the question

bears little resemblance to the answer it seeks;
and in the same manner, often we don’t know what

we think we’re looking for until we find it. Madame
Clairvoyant seems to say we’re already as wise

as the sage we didn’t have to travel too long to find.
It shows in the annoying habit of asking for advice

then going ahead to do what one was planning to do
anyway. In any case, the blue door is chosen, not

the red. The animals are fed in disregard of the warning.
When commentary goes around the room, there’s always

that one kid who looks you in the eye and says
the work is perfect and he never revises, ever.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Lovers’ quarrel

(Lord’s day). Up, and my throat being yet very sore, and, my head out of order, we went not to church, but I spent all the morning reading of “The Madd Lovers,” a very good play, and at noon comes Harman and his wife, whom I sent for to meet the Joyces, but they came not. It seems Will has got a fall off his horse and broke his face.
However, we were as merry as I could in their company, and we had a good chine of beef, but I had no taste nor stomach through my cold, and therefore little pleased with my dinner.
It raining, they sat talking with us all the afternoon. So anon they went away; and then I to read another play, “The Custome of the Country,” which is a very poor one, methinks. Then to supper, prayers, and bed.

sore lovers play at harm
a horse of no stomach

cold as rain talking all afternoon
they try a poor thin supper


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 25 September 1664.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Endarkenment

Up and to the office, where all the morning busy, then home to dinner, and so after dinner comes one Phillips, who is concerned in the Lottery, and from him I collected much concerning that business. I carried him in my way to White Hall and set him down at Somersett House. Among other things he told me that Monsieur Du Puy, that is so great a man at the Duke of Yorke’s, and this man’s great opponent, is a knave and by quality but a tailor.
To the Tangier Committee, and there I opposed Colonell Legg’s estimate of supplies of provisions to be sent to Tangier till all were ashamed of it, and he fain after all his good husbandry and seeming ignorance and joy to have the King’s money saved, yet afterwards he discovered all his design to be to keep the furnishing of these things to the officers of the Ordnance, but Mr. Coventry seconded me, and between us we shall save the King some money in the year. In one business of deales in 520l., I offer to save 172l., and yet purpose getting money, to myself by it.
So home and to my office, and business being done home to supper and so to bed, my head and throat being still out of order mightily.
This night Prior of Brampton came and paid me 40l., and I find this poor painful man is the only thriving and purchasing man in the town almost. We were told to-day of a Dutch ship of 3 or 400 tons, where all the men were dead of the plague, and the ship cast ashore at Gottenburgh.

morning comes white among great
supplies of visions
all seeming to save us

and yet my one head
being out this night
is a thriving ship of the dead


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 24 September 1664.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Abatement

So yeah we’ve survived another end-
of-the-world prediction, the rapture

forestalled, the mother of all apocalypse
scenarios indefinitely postponed. Remember

that Y2K scare eighteen years go? Even so,
no fortress of SPAM could protect us, not

from the force of earthquakes shearing
away at the struts that hold up the roof

of the world; nor underground shelters keep
out toxic fallout or monster floods. How

can I even take pride in the kitchen I’ve made
tidy after last night’s dinner messes, the strip

of grout and the bathroom tiles I’ve made clean
again with bleach? From the window I can see
–
the river’s edge, past which it rises when the tide
is high; when it lowers, the mud flats that emerge,

clotted with refuse; and the whitethroated, long-
legged birds stepping gingerly through them.

 

In response to Via Negativa: O tempora, o mores.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Troll bridge

My cold and pain in my head increasing, and the palate of my mouth falling, I was in great pain all night. My wife also was not well, so that a mayd was fain to sit up by her all night.
Lay long in the morning, at last up, and amongst others comes Mr. Fuller, that was the wit of Cambridge, and Praevaricator in my time, and staid all the morning with me discoursing, and his business to get a man discharged, which I did do for him.
Dined with little heart at noon, in the afternoon against my will to the office, where Sir G. Carteret and we met about an order of the Council for the hiring him a house, giving him 1000l. fine, and 70l. per annum for it. Here Sir J. Minnes took occasion, in the most childish and most unbeseeming manner, to reproach us all, but most himself, that he was not valued as Comptroller among us, nor did anything but only set his hand to paper, which is but too true; and every body had a palace, and he no house to lie in, and wished he had but as much to build him a house with, as we have laid out in carved worke. It was to no end to oppose, but all bore it, and after laughed at him for it.
So home, and late reading “The Siege of Rhodes” to my wife, and then to bed, my head being in great pain and my palate still down.

falling all night on me
that bridge to morning

heart childish as a troll
in a paper palace

a lie is as much to build with
as to laugh down


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 23 September 1664.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Metonymy: quick study

At the drugstore, there’s a row of cigarettes
behind the checkout counter. I never really notice
until I do, and then I’m brought back to sometime

in the ‘sixties when my father still smoked—
His favorite, Lucky Strike or Salem Menthols,
the narrow red strip around the crinkly film

of plastic that he let me pull— the smell
tufted into his clothing, mingling with Old
Spice aftershave. The empty stoppered bottles

he gave me to play with: and I’d pretend
a row of them was a fleet of ships, sails
unfurled, set on the windowsill’s grey,

peeling horizon. Crossing the street, I pass
two restaurant workers on the curb bending
over a lighter… Am I so stricken, then,

that every small trace etched or even just
caught in passing functions as metonymy? Token,
gesture. Part long ago broken off from the whole.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Sketchy.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Grownups

Up and at the office all the morning. To the ‘Change at noon, and among other things discoursed with Sir William Warren what I might do to get a little money by carrying of deales to Tangier, and told him the opportunity I have there of doing it, and he did give me some advice, though not so good as he would have done at any other time of the year, but such as I hope to make good use of, and get a little money by.
So to Sir G. Carteret’s to dinner, and he and I and Captain Cocke all alone, and good discourse, and thence to a Committee of Tangier at White Hall, and so home, where I found my wife not well, and she tells me she thinks she is with child, but I neither believe nor desire it. But God’s will be done!
So to my office late, and home to supper and to bed; having got a strange cold in my head, by flinging off my hat at dinner, and sitting with the wind in my neck.

no other money no other time
to make use of all alone

my wife tells me she thinks
she is with child

flinging off my hat
I sit with the wind


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 22 September 1664.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

How does one begin to speak of things

No one wants to talk about the woman
in the upstairs room, how she saves
every last scrap and item that has

anything to do with her former life;
how she has come down, as they say,
in the world. No one wants to deal

with the tirades, the obsessive
hoarding and impulse buying, her stubborn
insistence that thirty umbrellas on hand

are ideal for emergencies. Does she
remember the year she refused to be
alone in the kitchen, the evening

her friend came to dinner, took a sip
of coffee then fell dead on the floor?
The leathery heart swings around on itself

like a revolving door. Someone’s here to scrub
the tiles and carry out garbage. She can’t understand
exactly how things aren’t the same as before.