Posts

Posted on by Dave Bonta

New Model Army

At the office all the morning. At noon dined, and then to, the ‘Change, and there walked two hours or more with Sir W. Warren, who after much discourse in general of Sir W. Batten’s dealings, he fell to talk how every body must live by their places, and that he was willing, if I desired it, that I should go shares with him in anything that he deals in. He told me again and again, too, that he confesses himself my debtor too for my service and friendship to him in his present great contract of masts, and that between this and Christmas he shall be in stocke and will pay it me. This I like well, but do not desire to become a merchant, and, therefore, put it off, but desired time to think of it.
Thence to the King’s play-house, and there saw “Bartholomew Fayre,” which do still please me; and is, as it is acted, the best comedy in the world, I believe. I chanced to sit by Tom Killigrew, who tells me that he is setting up a Nursery; that is, is going to build a house in Moorefields, wherein he will have common plays acted. But four operas it shall have in the year, to act six weeks at a time; where we shall have the best scenes and machines, the best musique, and every thing as magnificent as is in Christendome; and to that end hath sent for voices and painters and other persons from Italy.
Thence homeward called upon my Lord Marlborough, and so home and to my office, and then to Sir W. Pen, and with him and our fellow officers and servants of the house and none else to Church to lay his brother in the ground, wherein nothing handsome at all, but that he lays him under the Communion table in the chancel, about nine at night? So home and to bed.

war is how everybody must live
in service to Christ
not to think but to act

we shall have machines for voices
and our brother the ground
under the communion table


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 2 August 1664.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Replay

Up, my mind very light from my last night’s accounts, and so up and with Sir J. Minnes, Sir W. Batten, and Sir W. Pen to St. James’s, where among other things having prepared with some industry every man a part this morning and no sooner (for fear they should either consider of it or discourse of it one to another) Mr. Coventry did move the Duke and obtain it that one of the clerkes of the Clerke of the Acts should have an addition of 30l. a year, as Mr. Turner hath, which I am glad of, that I may give T. Hater 20l. and keep 10l. towards a boy’s keeping.
Thence Mr. Coventry and I to the Attorney’s chamber at the Temple, but not being there we parted, and I home, and there with great joy told T. Hater what I had done, with which the poor wretch was very glad, though his modesty would not suffer him to say much.
So to the Coffee-house, and there all the house full of the victory Generall Soushe (who is a Frenchman, a soldier of fortune, commanding part of the German army) hath had against the Turke; killing 4,000 men, and taking most extraordinary spoil. Thence taking up Harman and his wife, carried them to Anthony Joyce’s, where we had my venison in a pasty well done; but, Lord! to see how much they made of it, as if they had never eat any before, and very merry we were, but Will most troublesomely so, and I find he and his wife have a most wretched life one with another, but we took no notice, but were very merry as I could be in such company. But Mrs. Harman is a very pretty-humoured wretch, whom I could love with all my heart, being so good and innocent company. Thence to Westminster to Mr. Blagrave’s, and there, after singing a thing or two over, I spoke to him about a woman for my wife, and he offered me his kinswoman, which I was glad of, but she is not at present well, but however I hope to have her. Thence to my Lord Chancellor’s, and thence with Mr. Coventry, who appointed to meet me there, and with him to the Attorney General, and there with Sir Ph. Warwicke consulted of a new commission to be had through the Broad Seale to enable us to make this contract for Tangier victualling. So home, and there talked long with Will about the young woman of his family which he spoke of for to live with my wife, but though she hath very many good qualitys, yet being a neighbour’s child and young and not very staid, I dare not venture of having her, because of her being able to spread any report of our family upon any discontent among the heart of our neighbours.
So that my dependance is upon Mr. Blagrave, and so home to supper and to bed.
Last night, at 12 o’clock, I was waked with knocking at Sir W. Pen’s door; and what was it but people’s running up and down to bring him word that his brother, who hath been a good while, it seems, sicke, is dead.

night’s industry is all
for an extraordinary past

see how much of it we have
but took no notice of

we who miss not having any heart
and wake up dead


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 1 August 1664.

Posted on by Jean Morris

Slave one summer

The men were lithe, dark-eyed and curly-haired, stepped out
of a Roman mosaic, the women massive, with sea-green medusa hair
and soup-stained bosoms. An ancient, noble family used for centuries,
in their palazzo high above the Bay of Naples, to owning servants,
this new one a lost girl, spewed out from education
with no notion of who to be, still shaken by the death of a father
I didn’t love enough.
Yelled at for not understanding, you learn a language fast: sporco,
dirty, presto, hurry, you, now, no! No doubt about the no: no free time
except grudgingly on Sundays, no breakfast not even a cup of coffee
before washing dirty nappies, no sleep with a little one wailing all night
and who could blame him, plucked from his mother’s breast to be dumped
on this girl with a bottle and no clue. You learn fast, too, about babies,
even more about myself, all the love, patience and nurturance
I never knew were inside me.
And Napoli, encircling vision of grandeur, with its secrets,
poverty and crumbling art and the blue, blue bay to be seen from
every ivy-shaded window of the ducal mansion? Truly, I was too tired
to pay attention. Life narrowed to slow-motion endurance of routine,
the fog of longing for rest, grateful for the baby nodding off
or for a good meal – and meals, prepared by Lola the malevolent,
were huge: the sweating beef and luminous tomatoes, pasta piled
and steaming above sticky kitchen oilcloth.
So I grew a belly for the first time, watched it with growing dismay
but continued eating, even when the fat tubes hot with angry chillies
grew cold before I was allowed a moment to fall to. And once or twice,
on Sundays off, quick, groping sex in the woods or in the back of his car
with a man who looked a little like my dad, succumbing half-ashamed,
this too a way to feel my body, briefly know myself as less diminished,
more than foreign skivvy.
Now like a far-off dream, that season of cavernous apartments,
harpy voices and cowed failure to tell the dreaded duchess vaffanculo!
Only a tiny taste of servitude, never destined to last more than
a few months, but it left scars and, familiar to women everywhere
who care for other people’s babies, a bittersweet remembered love.
Forty years later I spell out the long, absurdly grandiose family names
and there he is – my bambino’s middle-aged face
on the Internet.


In response to Luisa A. Igloria: Help.

Vaffanculo = fuck off in Italian

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Counting

Ransacking closets, I come up only
with legacies of questionable value.

How are such things to be written into
a will? Dried sprig; five leather buttons

with a lattice pattern, saved from father’s
sweater. A necklace of tiny colored beads;

its pendant of etched carabao horn affixed
with brass bells. I used to know with certainty

where I’d kept the dried stumps of my babies’
cords. Who is watching over my shoulder as I trace

the faces of the long dead in photographs?
Smell of all perishables; a seed rattling

in the heart of green fruit on the tree.
Here are paper flowers with mouths wide enough

to hold votives— They can drift for a time on a blue
surface: forgive me for such little stores of light.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Epigraph

(Lord’s day). Up, and to church, where I have not been these many weeks. So home, and thither, inviting him yesterday, comes Mr. Hill, at which I was a little troubled, but made up all very well, carrying him with me to Sir J. Minnes, where I was invited and all our families to a venison pasty. Here good cheer and good discourse. After dinner Mr. Hill and I to my house, and there to musique all the afternoon. He being gone, in the evening I to my accounts, and to my great joy and with great thanks to Almighty God, I do find myself most clearly worth 1014l., the first time that ever I was worth 1000l. before, which is the height of all that ever I have for a long time pretended to. But by the blessing of God upon my care I hope to lay up something more in a little time, if this business of the victualling of Tangier goes on as I hope it will.
So with praise to God for this state of fortune that I am brought to as to wealth, and my condition being as I have at large set it down two days ago in this book, I home to supper and to bed, desiring God to give me the grace to make good use of what I have and continue my care and diligence to gain more.

I have bled good cheer
I have pretended to hope
I have set down in this book the grace of what
I have


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 31 July 1664.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Roshambo

All the morning at the office; at noon to the ‘Change, where great talke of a rich present brought by an East India ship from some of the Princes of India, worth to the King 70,000l. in two precious stones. After dinner to the office, and there all the afternoon making an end of several things against the end of the month, that I may clear all my reckonings tomorrow; also this afternoon, with great content, I finished the contracts for victualling of Tangier with Mr. Lanyon and the rest, and to my comfort got him and Andrews to sign to the giving me 300l. per annum, by which, at least, I hope to be a 100l. or two the better.
Wrote many letters by the post to ease my mind of business and to clear my paper of minutes, as I did lately oblige myself to clear every thing against the end of the month. So at night with my mind quiet and contented to bed. This day I sent a side of venison and six bottles of wine to Kate Joyce.

stone got
the better of paper

as I oblige myself with six
bottles of wine


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 30 July 1664.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Vegetation

At the office all the morning dispatching of business, at noon to the ‘Change after dinner, and thence to Tom Trice about Dr. Pepys’s business, and thence it raining turned into Fleet Alley, and there was with Cocke an hour or so. The jade, whether I would not give her money or not enough; she would not offer to invite to do anything, but on the contrary saying she had no time, which I was glad of, for I had no mind to meddle with her, but had my end to see what a cunning jade she was, to see her impudent tricks and ways of getting money and raising the reckoning by still calling for things, that it come to 6 or 7 shillings presently. So away home, glad I escaped without any inconvenience, and there came Mr. Hill, Andrews and Seignor Pedro, and great store of musique we had, but I begin to be weary of having a master with us, for it spoils, methinks, the ingenuity of our practice.
After they were gone comes Mr. Bland to me, sat till 11 at night with me, talking of the garrison of Tangier and serving them with pieces of eight. A mind he hath to be employed there, but dares not desire any courtesy of me, and yet would fain engage me to be for him, for I perceive they do all find that I am the busy man to see the King have right done him by inquiring out other bidders. Being quite tired with him, I got him gone, and so to bed.

rain turned into jade
cunning as a way of raising things

but I begin to be weary
of having spoil

the land in pieces
would be a busy bed


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 29 July 1664.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Contemplation

At the office all the morning, dined, after ‘Change, at home, and then abroad, and seeing “The Bondman” upon the posts, I consulted my oaths and find I may go safely this time without breaking it; I went thither, notwithstanding my great desire to have gone to Fleet Alley, God forgive me, again. There I saw it acted. It is true, for want of practice, they had many of them forgot their parts a little; but Betterton and my poor Ianthe outdo all the world. There is nothing more taking in the world with me than that play.
Thence to Westminster to my barber’s, and strange to think how when I find that Jervas himself did intend to bring home my periwigg, and not Jane his maid, I did desire not to have it at all, for I had a mind to have her bring it home. I also went to Mr. Blagrave’s about speaking to him for his kinswoman to come live with my wife, but they are not come to town, and so I home by coach and to my office, and then to supper and to bed.
My present posture is thus: my wife in the country and my mayde Besse with her and all quiett there. I am endeavouring to find a woman for her to my mind, and above all one that understands musique, especially singing. I am the willinger to keepe one because I am in good hopes to get 2 or 300l. per annum extraordinary by the business of the victualling of Tangier, and yet Mr. Alsopp, my chief hopes, is dead since my looking after it, and now Mr. Lanyon, I fear, is, falling sicke too. I am pretty well in health, only subject to wind upon any cold, and then immediate and great pains.
All our discourse is of a Dutch warr and I find it is likely to come to it, for they are very high and desire not to compliment us at all, as far as I hear, but to send a good fleete to Guinny to oppose us there. My Lord Sandwich newly gone to sea, and I, I think, fallen into his very good opinion again, at least he did before his going, and by his letter since, show me all manner of respect and confidence.
I am over-joyed in hopes that upon this month’s account I shall find myself worth 1000l., besides the rich present of two silver and gilt flaggons which Mr. Gauden did give me the other day.
I do now live very prettily at home, being most seriously, quietly, and neatly served by my two mayds Jane and the girle Su, with both of whom I am mightily well pleased.
My greatest trouble is the settling of Brampton Estate, that I may know what to expect, and how to be able to leave it when I die, so as to be just to my promise to my uncle Thomas and his son. The next thing is this cursed trouble my brother Tom is likely to put us to by his death, forcing us to law with his creditors, among others Dr. Tom Pepys, and that with some shame as trouble, and the last how to know in what manner as to saving or spending my father lives, lest they should run me in debt as one of my uncle’s executors, and I never the wiser nor better for it. But in all this I hope shortly to be at leisure to consider and inform myself well.

seeing without breaking
I practice for nothing more
than the present

like a sea fallen quiet
with the settling of other lives


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 28 July 1664.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Self-portrait as laboratory report

The link appears early morning
in her email inbox: Welcome

to the patient portal. The test
result report has only three words—

Finding: [ __ ] mass. Outside, crepe
myrtles weigh down the branches.

Their ends, untrimmed, could brush
the heads of passersby on the sidewalk.

After rain, the streets look like studies
in pointillism. As in: what is the point

to all this loosened beauty, the crumpled
asterisks illuminating asphalt? Contrast

and elaboration. A chain of incidents
interrupted by digressions. Somewhere,

a reader worked to decode the possible meanings
trapped by light in a frame, on film, under glass.
`

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Geography lesson

Rank and overripe smell in the air after rain,
maybe from an open sewer. I think of where

we went to elementary school, how we learned
to drink little if not at all from Tupperware

tumblers with water from home or sodas bought
from the school canteen, poured into plastic

bags: a straw stuck into the open end
before the top was pulled close

with a rubber band. I learned the hard
way after wetting myself on the first day

and suffering the embarrassment of having
the office call my mother, who brought a change

of underwear and clothes. If we needed to go
at all, we learned to hold our breath

as we scanned the open stalls on the ground
floor or in the annex at the edge of the yard,

for the least offensive latrine. There was no
running water— only metal drums just outside,

open to the copious rain. Something was always
getting stuck or overflowing. No wonder,

since even the teachers said: You can rip
a sheet out of your writing pad to use

as toilet paper. Sometimes the nuns
also had small stacks of colorful paper,

ads from old magazine pages: the kind
where you might glimpse pieces torn

from a brilliant world— quaint villages
along the Rhine, ramparts on the hills;

for seven nights and eight days, a cruise
on a boat from which to view the setting

sun and rising moon. 2799+ per person,
land tours and gratuities not included.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Proving the rule.