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Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Otherworld

What map unrolls at the touch of water,
or when a shadow crosses the street

ahead of its owner? Be careful
not to pluck a flower from the hedge,

not to put a stone in your pocket
just because it gleams like gold

in a tooth. The birds bring news
of the loneliness of angels.

Did you think they have no history,
no longing comparable to yours?

Fingers press up against the glass
to meet your own. Their weight

is barely noticeable, an eyelash
smudge left on the surface.

Time takes the harp of the moon away:
brings back islands, unfinished bridges.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Introspectator.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Salat

Up and to church alone and so home to dinner with my wife very pleasant and pleased with one another’s company, and in our general enjoyment one of another, better we think than most other couples do. So after dinner to the French church, but came too late, and so back to our owne church, where I slept all the sermon the Scott preaching, and so home, and in the evening Sir J. Minnes and I met at Sir W. Pen’s about ordering some business of the Navy, and so I home to supper, discourse, prayers, and bed.

one and one other
and one other other
evening prayers


Erasure haiku derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 27 December 1663.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Introspectator

Up and walked forth first to the Minerys to Brown’s, and there with great pleasure saw and bespoke several instruments, and so to Cornhill to Mr. Cades, and there went up into his warehouse to look for a map or two, and there finding great plenty of good pictures, God forgive me! how my mind run upon them, and bought a little one for my wife’s closett presently, and concluded presently of buying 10l. worth, upon condition he would give me the buying of them. Now it is true I did still within me resolve to make the King one way or other pay for them, though I saved it to him another way, yet I find myself too forward to fix upon the expense, and came away with a resolution of buying them, but do hope that I shall not upon second thoughts do it without a way made out before I buy them to myself how to do [it] without charge to my main stock. Thence to the Coffee-house, and sat long in good discourse with some gentlemen concerning the Roman Empire. So home and found Mr. Hollyard there, and he stayed and dined with us, we having a pheasant to dinner. He gone, I all the afternoon with my wife to cards, and, God forgive me! to see how the very discourse of plays, which I shall be at liberty to see after New Year’s Day next, do set my mind upon them, but I must be forced to stint myself very strictly before I begin, or else I fear I shall spoil all.
In the evening came my aunt Wight’s kinswoman to see how my wife do, with a compliment from my aunt, which I take kindly as it is unusual for her to do it, but I do perceive my uncle is very kind to me of late.
So to my office writing letters, and then to read and make an end of Rushworth, which I did, and do say that it is a book the most worth reading for a man of my condition or any man that hopes to come to any publique condition in the world that I do know.
So home to supper and to bed.

there is a map of my mind

I resolve to find myself on it
but no second thoughts

my coffee is an empire
my car the very end

of the world that I know


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 26 December 1663.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Before the Hit, They Removed my Leash

~ after “Right Before The Hit, They Removed My Leash,” acrylic on paper by Ulysses Duterte Jr. (2016); scroll midway down the linked page to view an image of this painting.

~ especially for every child victim in Philippine extrajudicial killings/the “drug war”

An ordinary sky is the hypothesis
at the edge of a blue window riddled
with holes. I am every child that crawled

unassuming into a bandanna of light,
seeing only the smooth beveled heel
of a slingshot, a trampoline of mud

mixed with runoff from the gutter.
I did not fear the mastiff transfixed
on its leather halter, the marble glaze

in its eyes. How should we put the rest
of the equation together— the M-16’s
watery shadow as though affixed

to no hands, the tank idling on the corner?
Still we rise to the foreground, whom you
have the audacity to call innocents.

Let me undo every expectation of what’s meant
as a target. Watch me explode again and again
through each scene’s tearable fabric,

the milk around my mouth not yet dry:
unseen forces tethering me in the crosshairs,
taut as a laser pointed directly at my heart.

*

Posted on by Kristin Berkey-Abbott

Endings

Let us not spend
these remaining days being experimental
and eating nothing
Luisa A. Igloria, “If these are the last days”

Is this the end of days
or simply the end of the year?
Either way, we behave
the same: for breakfast, we eat
cookies full of butter and nuts.
We begin home repair projects unlikely
to be finished. We eat salad
for lunch, because we may survive
and need some nutrients.
In the afternoon, we meet friends
for tea and conversations that deepen
in the gathering dusk. During the evening lit
only by the table-top trees, we eat
the last of the cookies and await
the final answers.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Review

(Christmas day). Lay long talking pleasantly with my wife, but among other things she begun, I know not whether by design or chance, to enquire what she should do if I should by any accident die, to which I did give her some slight answer; but shall make good use of it to bring myself to some settlement for her sake, by making a will as soon as I can.
Up and to church, where Mr. Mills made an ordinary sermon, and so home and dined with great pleasure with my wife, and all the afternoon first looking out at window and seeing the boys playing at many several sports in our back yard by Sir W. Pen’s, which reminded me of my own former times, and then I began to read to my wife upon the globes with great pleasure and to good purpose, for it will be pleasant to her and to me to have her understand these things.
In the evening at the office, where I staid late reading Rushworth, which is a most excellent collection of the beginning of the late quarrels in this kingdom, and so home to supper and to bed, with good content of mind.

if I should die I shall use it
as an ordinary window

seeing the boys playing
in our back yard

on a pleasant evening
at the beginning of a quarrel


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 25 December 1663.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Day of Grace

My friend bags oranges and bananas,
adds a couple of bottles of water

whenever she heads out the door to work.
Sometimes a muffin, sometimes half

a loaf of bread— She’ll give this
to the man who stands with a sign

often at the intersection, begging
for work, for anything to tide

him over. The tide is high, and it
keeps rising. How many of us

will it take to keep it from coming
and obliterating us all? Meanwhile

the dumpsters fill with residue
of wrapping paper, boxes, gift

tags, ribbons. It is the day of grace
or the day after. On the sidewalk,

a tree lies on its side, dry, brown,
needling the air for lost ornaments.

A dog sniffs at the branches. A street away,
two fire trucks pull up to a yellow house.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

From darkness

We go through the days, their
cracked bowls and coffee cups,
parades of them from table to sink
to cupboard and back again. We eat
the bread before it grows stale,
we peel and slice the precious fruit
before it blackens, rots, or turns
to mush. Forgive our little economies,
our hard to break habits from living
so long without. We want to see
that day bereft of suffering,
a night spangled with the bearable
light of stars, no longer made
long by sacrifice or sorrow.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Solace

Up betimes; and though it was a most foggy morning, and cold, yet with a gally down to Eriffe, several times being at a loss whither we went. There I mustered two ships of the King’s, lent by him to the Guiny Company, which are manned better than ours at far less wages. Thence on board two of the King’s, one of them the “Leopard,” Captain Beech, who I find an able and serious man. He received me civilly, and his wife was there, a very well bred and knowing woman, born at Antwerp, but speaks as good English as myself, and an ingenious woman. Here was also Sir G. Carteret’s son, who I find a pretty, but very talking man, but good humour.
Thence back again, entertaining myself upon my sliding rule with great content, and called at Woolwich, where Mr. Chr. Pett having an opportunity of being alone did tell me his mind about several things he thought I was offended with him in, and told me of my kindness to his assistant. I did give him such an answer as I thought was fit and left him well satisfied, he offering to do me all the service, either by draughts or modells that I should desire. Thence straight home, being very cold, but yet well, I thank God, and at home found my wife making mince pies, and by and by comes in Captain Ferrers to see us, and, among other talke, tells us of the goodness of the new play of “Henry VIII.,” which makes me think [it] long till my time is out; but I hope before I go I shall set myself such a stint as I may not forget myself as I have hitherto done till I was forced for these months last past wholly to forbid myself the seeing of one.
He gone I to my office and there late writing and reading, and so home to bed.

foggy morning
I find myself alone
with a cold pie


Erasure haiku derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 24 December 1663.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

To a hammer, everything looks like a nail—

It wants to pound out demands
for answers, to drive a point
into the wood’s knotted core.

Facets of stone may be blistered,
a force delivered in one blow or
in several. A sheet of metal

may be peened. But who wants
to be at the receiving end
of only one motion, to catch

the downstroke after the swing?
There are those who’ve learned
the art of mortising joints together

without metal, those who’ve mastered
a hundred ways to fold paper, to ink
with a brush the equivalent of a blow.