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Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Death March

Bataan, 1942

Small, dark pucker in the skin at the end of his left
pinky finger— Growing up, I never knew the details,

did not associate that cleft shaped like a dry
asterisk in my father’s hand with the long

march in April: hundreds of men in the aftermath
of Pearl Harbor, stumbling toward prisoner-of-war

camps, prodded by bayonets. He never said anything
about how he came to be singled out, how some

blade must have sang high before plucking the nail
out of his flesh; how the pulp fresh in the scar

made him swoon. All wars, I remember him saying,
are most of all the deprivation of spirit. Animals

roamed the countryside, unloosed from the plow, evicted
from barns; or caught, they dripped and turned on a spit.

Through fitful sleep the prisoners heard roosters,
their raucous crow orange in the breaking dawn.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Routine.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

No Hero

The shadow veils itself
as it goes to do its evil,

sneaking the putrid shell
of a despot into the ground at noon.

No ancient gods could bless that soil,
no long pull of forgiveness. But now

the secretive cortege arrives to tamp
and cover the derelict body—

Real martyrs lie in that burial-place:
the best of their years drained

from fighting tyranny; their bones
cracked and dented; many with missing

organs. The body is a hollow vessel.
It is not what swims through cracks

in shale, not what flames out
like flowers above the grass.

Not the world’s weight in plundered
gold and diamonds could ransom it

from time. Not even a plot on hallowed
ground could change the record of a nation’s

unhealed suffering. Let the mind remember, then.
Let the heart’s documents be the last to go.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Routine

Up, and while I am dressing myself, Mr. Deane of Woolwich came to me, and I did tell him what had happened to him last Saturday in the office, but did encourage him to make no matter of it, for that I did not fear but he would in a little time be master of his enemies as much as they think to master him, and so he did tell me many instances of the abominable dealings of Mr. Pett of Woolwich towards him. So we broke up, and I to the office, where we sat all the forenoon doing several businesses, and at noon I to the ‘Change where Mr. Moore came to me, and by and by Tom Trice and my uncle Wight, and so we out to a taverne (the New Exchange taverne over against the ‘Change where I never was before, and I found my old playfellow Ben Stanley master of it), and thence to a scrivener to draw up a bond, and to another tavern (the King’s Head) we went, and calling on my cozen Angier at the India House there we eat a bit of pork from a cookes together, and after dinner did seal the bond, and I did take up the old bond of my uncle’s to my aunt, and here T. Trice before them do own all matters in difference between us is clear as to this business, and that he will in six days give me it under the hand of his attorney that there is no judgment against the bond that may give me any future trouble, and also a copy of their letters of his Administration to Godfrey, as much of it as concerns me to have.
All this being done towards night we broke up, and so I home and with Mr. Moore to my office, and there I read to him the letter I have wrote to send to my Lord to give him an account how the world, both city and court, do talk of him and his living as he do there in such a poor and bad house so much to his disgrace. Which Mr. Moore do conclude so well drawn: that he would not have me by any means to neglect sending it, assuring me in the best of his judgment that it cannot but endear me to my Lord instead of what I fear of getting his offence, and did offer to take the same words and send them as from, him with his hand to him, which I am not unwilling should come (if they are at all fit to go) from any body but myself, and so, he being gone, I did take a copy of it to keep by me in shorthand, and sealed them up to send to-morrow by my Will. So home, Mr. Hollyard being come to my wife, and there she being in bed, he and I alone to look again upon her parts, and there he do find that, though it would not be much pain, yet she is so fearful, and the thing will be somewhat painful in the tending, which I shall not be able to look after, but must require a nurse and people about her; so that upon second thoughts he believes that a fomentation will do as well, and though it will be troublesome yet no pain, and what her mayd will be able to do without knowing directly what it is for, but only that it may be for the piles. For though it be nothing but what is fiery honest, yet my wife is loth to give occasion of discourse concerning it. By this my mind and my wife’s is much eased, for I confess I should have been troubled to have had my wife cut before my face, I could not have borne to have seen it. I had great discourse with him about my disease. He tells me again that I must eat in a morning some loosening gruel, and at night roasted apples, that I must drink now and then ale with my wine, and eat bread and butter and honey, and rye bread if I can endure it, it being loosening. I must also take once a week a clyster of his last prescription, only honey now and then instead of butter, which things I am now resolved to apply myself to. He being gone I to my office again to a little business, and then home to supper and to bed, being in, a little pain by drinking of cold small beer to-day and being in a cold room at the Taverne I believe.

I dress myself in rage
at abominable dealings

I eat a bad apple a day
in a cold tavern


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 17 November 1663.

Posted on by J Likha Yatco

Snow Falling on a Nation

I love the sound of snow… You can hear it even if you are only standing on a balcony. [The sound] is only minimal, not even a real noise: a breath, a trifle of a sound. You have the same thing in music: if in the score there is a pianissimo marked that ends in nothing. Up there you can feel this ‘nothing’. With an orchestra it is very difficult to achieve it. The Berlin Philharmonic manage(s) it sometimes.
Claudio Abbado

how can i love that which
has not been fully experienced
like the sight of snow falling on trees
stripped of leaves in the fall?

but fully imagined
i see snow falling and
shrouding bloodied corpses,
washing clean and clear of suspicions
these snuffed out lives

in a country that knows of
seasons of dust and of wet on wet,
i desire the benediction of snow,
a rest from the burst of bullets
and cusses

the arbitrary blankness,
the nothingness of
whitened landscapes
with a hint of resurrection
pushing out of sorrow’s
inhospitable ground

Manila, Philippines
Nov. 17, 2016

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Tipping point

God will not keep to the outside of the skin: what we call holy lives beyond sight, in letters forming the unpronounceable name of the child who fled her birth country, her home on a street lined with dove wings and olive trees, to be pulled into a boat in the middle of the night. The craft was full of strangers, but in the center of their own anguish they made space for her and those like her for whom the world could no longer be explained or soothed with sleep. Critics say it is irrelevant, that it has nothing to do with the plastic and fiberglass forms of bodies that line the downtown glass displays: identical wrists and hands swiveled in the same direction, insteps arched and bolted to the floor. But it lives in the eye of the doctor standing in line at a coffee shop, who feels the wet offending sling of spit land on his brown face, at the beginning or end of a rain of epithets; and in the trembling of the girl whose hijab is pulled off her head as she walks to school, as the man who steps in her path flicks his lighter open and threatens to burn her. Go back, hisses the parent of the child to the high school teacher who can do mathematics in more than one language. Sometimes my hands are hot, my hands are cold. They’ve counted and counted and now they’ve run out of lives to give away for free. Through it all the moon keeps coming closer, blooming larger: wineskin filled with bullets or poems or hail. Something is coming. Or something is here. We are told this is the best time to sing.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Seeker.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Seeker

Up, and being ready then abroad by coach to White Hall, and there with the Duke, where Mr. Coventry did a second time go to vindicate himself against reports and prove by many testimonies that he brought, that he did nothing but what had been done by the Lord Admiral’s secretaries heretofore, though he do not approve of it, nor since he had any rule from the Duke hath he exceeded what he is there directed to take, and the thing I think is very clear that they always did take and that now he do take less than ever they did heretofore.
Thence away, and Sir G. Carteret did call me to him and discourse with me about my letter yesterday, and did seem to take it unkindly that I should doubt of his satisfaction in the bargain of masts, and did promise me that hereafter whatever he do hear to my prejudice he would tell me before he would believe it, and that this was only Sir W. Batten’s report in this business, which he says he did ever approve of, in which I know he lies.
Thence to my Lord’s lodgings thinking to find Mr. Moore, in order to the sending away my letter of reproof to my Lord, but I do not find him, but contrary do find my Lord come to Court, which I am glad to hear and should be more glad to hear that he do follow his business that I may not have occasion to venture upon his good nature by such a provocation as my letter will be to him.
So by coach home, to the Exchange, where I talked about several businesses with several people, and so home to dinner with my wife, and then in the afternoon to my office, and there late, and in the evening Mr. Hollyard came, and he and I about our great work to look upon my wife’s malady, which he did, and it seems her great conflux of humours, heretofore that did use to swell there, did in breaking leave a hollow which has since gone in further and further; till now it is near three inches deep, but as God will have it do not run into the bodyward, but keeps to the outside of the skin, and so he must be forced to cut it open all along, and which my heart I doubt will not serve for me to see done, and yet she will not have any body else to see it done, no, not her own mayds, and so I must do it, poor wretch, for her. To-morrow night he is to do it.
He being gone, I to my office again a little while, and so home to supper and to bed.

where in the clear hereafter
is the Lord’s lodging

I do not find him in nature or malady
flux or break

God will not keep
to the outside of the skin

forced to open a heart
to see anybody else


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 16 November 1663.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Crusaders

(Lord’s day). Lay very long in bed with my wife and then up and to my office there to copy fair my letter to Sir G. Carteret, which I did, and by and by most opportunely a footman of his came to me about other business, and so I sent it him by his own servant. I wish good luck with it. At noon home to dinner, my wife not being up, she lying to expect Mr. Holyard the surgeon. So I dined by myself, and in the afternoon to my office again, and there drew up a letter to my Lord, stating to him what the world talks concerning him, and leaving it to him and myself to be thought of by him as he pleases, but I have done but my duty in it. I wait Mr. Moore’s coming for his advice about sending it. So home to supper to my wife, myself finding myself by cold got last night beginning to have some pain, which grieves me much in my mind to see to what a weakness I am come. This day being our Queene’s birthday, the guns of the Tower went all off; and in the evening the Lord Mayor sent from church to church to order the constables to cause bonfires to be made in every streete, which methinks is a poor thing to be forced to be commanded.
After a good supper with my wife, and hearing of the mayds read in the Bible, we to prayers, and to bed.

business is a holy urge
no thought or weakness

our guns went all off
and from church to church
bonfires made of prayer


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 15 November 1663.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Fade

“…how one feels a small life’s shortness.” ~ Rilke, “Blue Hydrangea”

Yet in this minuscule, this easily
overlooked space, we held the packed
wardrobes of those who’ve left

their previous lives— Little to carry
in the coming across: a coat, trousers,
two good shirts, a pair of handkerchiefs,

a pocket watch. Good shoes, a skirt,
a dress for Sunday best, hooped earrings
fashioned from a melted-down inheritance.

For wasn’t the world made of its materials?
And in our letters, we catalogued the parks,
and somewhere in the drifting in-between

the keen salt-note of the sea. Astonishment
of trees that shed change like wealth,
sure of return in so many ways we

could never be. While we, like misers,
hoarded every small bloom against uncertain
futures, until they faded or shrank away.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

In bad faith

Up and to the office, where we sat, and after we had almost done, Sir W. Batten desired to have the room cleared, and there he did acquaint the board how he was obliged to answer to something lately said which did reflect upon the Comptroller and him, and to that purpose told how the bargain for Winter’s timber did not prove so bad as I had reported to the board it would. After he had done I cleared the matter that I did not mention the business as a thing designed by me against them, but was led to it by Sir J. Minnes, and that I said nothing but what I was told by Mayers the surveyor as much as by Deane upon whom they laid all the fault, which I must confess did and do still trouble me, for they report him to be a fellow not fit to be employed, when in my conscience he deserves better than any officer in the yard. I thought it not convenient to vindicate him much now, but time will serve when I will do it, and I am bound to do it. I offered to proceed to examine and prove what I said if they please, but Mr. Coventry most discreetly advised not, it being to no purpose, and that he did believe that what I said did not by my manner of speaking it proceed from any design of reproaching them, and so it ended. But my great trouble is for poor Deane.
At noon home and dined with my wife, and after dinner Will told me if I pleased he was ready to remove his things, and so before my wife I did give him good counsel, and that his going should not abate my kindnesse for him, if he carried himself well, and so bid “God bless him,” and left him to remove his things, the poor lad weeping, but I am apt to think matters will be the better both for him and us.
So to the office and there late busy. In the evening Mr. Moore came to tell me that he had no opportunity of speaking his mind to my Lord yesterday, and so I am resolved to write to him very suddenly.
So after my business done I home, I having staid till 12 o’clock at night almost, making an end of a letter to Sir G. Carteret about the late contract for masts, wherein I have done myself right, and no wrong to Sir W. Batten.
This night I think is the first that I have lain without ever a man in my house besides myself, since I came to keep any. Will being this night gone to his lodging, and by the way I hear to-day that my boy Waynman has behaved himself so with Mr. Davis that they have got him put into a Barbadoes ship to be sent away, and though he sends to me to get a release for him I will not out of love to the boy, for I doubt to keep him here were to bring him to the gallows.

we are obliged to answer a troll
told how winter did not prove
so bad as reported

or that he had no opportunity
of speaking his mind

till 12 o’clock at night
making an end of right and wrong
out of love for the gallows


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 14 November 1663.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Landscape in an afterlife

Someone was running at night
and someone was being picked up.
The dunes glowed in the distance,
from one end of the world to the other,
like a border. We knew there were others
on the other side. We could hear
their chants, see the smudge-lines
of smoke from their fires. Every step
filled our shoes with sand. We were always
trying to run toward each other. The air
smelled of sulfur and the granular residues
suspended in the air after cities had burned
into ghosts. Why did we even want to look
for signs of stars and planets gone
into hiding in the dark?