Via Negativa

September 3, 2016 by Dave Bonta

Mendicant

Up betimes, and for an hour at my viall before my people rise. Then up and to the office a while, and then to Sir W. Batten, who is going this day for pleasure down to the Downes. I eat a breakfast with them, and at my Lady’s desire with them by coach to Greenwich, where I went aboard with them on the Charlotte yacht. The wind very fresh, and I believe they will be all sicke enough, besides that she is mighty troublesome on the water. Methinks she makes over much of her husband’s ward, young Mr. Griffin, as if she expected some service from him when he comes to it, being a pretty young boy.
I left them under sayle, and I to Deptford, and, after a word or two with Sir J. Minnes, walked to Redriffe and so home. In my way, it coming into my head, overtaking of a beggar or two on the way that looked like Gypsys, what the Gypsys 8 or 9 days ago had foretold, that somebody that day se’nnight should be with me to borrow money, but I should lend none; and looking, when I came to my office, upon my journall, that my brother John had brought a letter that day from my brother Tom to borrow 20l. more of me, which had vexed me so that I had sent the letter to my father into the country, to acquaint him of it, and how little he is beforehand that he is still forced to borrow. But it pleased me mightily to see how, contrary to my expectations, having so lately lent him 20l., and belief that he had money by him to spare, and that after some days not thinking of it, I should look back and find what the Gypsy had told me to be so true.
After dinner at home to my office, and there till late doing business, being very well pleased with Mr. Cutler’s coming to me about some business, and among other things tells me that they value me as a man of business, which he accounts the best virtuoso, and I know his thinking me so, and speaking where he comes, may be of good use to me.
Home to supper, and to bed.

down down the green wind
troubles the water

makes a pretty beggar
look like a Gypsy

her hand still and spare
as the best virtuoso peak

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 3 September 1663.

September 3, 2016 by Dave Bonta

Riot

Up betimes and to my office, and thence with Sir J. Minnes by coach to White Hall, where met us Sir W. Batten, and there staid by the Council Chamber till the Lords called us in, being appointed four days ago to attend them with an account of the riott among the seamen the other day, when Sir J. Minnes did as like a coxcomb as ever I saw any man speak in my life, and so we were dismissed, they making nothing almost of the matter. We staid long without, till by and by my Lord Mayor comes, who also was commanded to be there, and he having, we not being within with him, an admonition from the Lords to take better care of preserving the peace, we joyned with him, and the Lords having commanded Sir J. Minnes to prosecute the fellows for the riott, we rode along with my Lord Mayor in his coach to the Sessions House in the Old Bayley, where the Sessions are now sitting. Here I heard two or three ordinary tryalls, among others one (which, they say, is very common now-a-days, and therefore in my now taking of mayds I resolve to look to have some body to answer for them) a woman that went and was indicted by four names for entering herself a cookemayde to a gentleman that prosecuted her there, and after 3 days run away with a silver tankard, a porringer of silver, and a couple of spoons, and being now found is found guilty, and likely will be hanged.
By and by up to dinner with my Lord Mayor and the Aldermen, and a very great dinner and most excellent venison, but it almost made me sick by not daring to drink wine. After dinner into a withdrawing room; and there we talked, among other things, of the Lord Mayor’s sword. They tell me this sword, they believe, is at least a hundred or two hundred years old; and another that he hath, which is called the Black Sword, which the Lord Mayor wears when he mournes, but properly is their Lenten sword to wear upon Good Friday and other Lent days, is older than that. Thence I, leaving Sir J. Minnes to look after his indictment drawing up, I home by water, and there found my wife mightily pleased with a present of shells, fine shells given her by Captain Hickes, and so she and I up and look them over, and indeed they are very pleasant ones. By and by in comes Mr. Lewellin, lately come from Ireland, to see me, and he tells me how the English interest falls mightily there, the Irish party being too great, so that most of the old rebells are found innocent, and their lands, which were forfeited and bought or given to the English, are restored to them; which gives great discontent there among the English.
He being gone, I to my office, where late, putting things in order, and so home to supper and to bed. Going through the City, my Lord Mayor told me how the piller set up by Exeter House is only to show where the pipes of water run to the City; and observed that this City is as well watered as any city in the world, and that the bringing the water to the City hath cost it first and last above 300,000l.; but by the new building, and the building of St. James’s by my Lord St. Albans,1 which is now about (and which the City stomach I perceive highly, but dare not oppose it), were it now to be done, it would not be done for a million of money.

called to riot
like any life
no matter no peace

we riot for a self
and a silver spoon

now found guilty
like a raw black word

the rope is older
than the indictment

all lands given to the great
city stomach

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 2 September 1663.

September 2, 2016September 3, 2016 by Luisa A. Igloria

Oysters

The man who used to do
contracting work around the house
once brought us a string bag of oysters
he’d hauled up from the bay— They sat
a day in the refrigerator while we researched
the proper way to insert the tip of the oyster
knife into the hinge of the shell, to shuck
them open on the table then carefully
loosen each briny mouthful to slide
down our throats. I still remember
their buttery texture, the tang
of salt, the faint trace of grit;
the way the empties piled up,
their insides nacre and divested
of their contents. So much work
to get to each small muscle
threaded firmly to its brittle
shell— Like any pleasure,
so rapid in its consumption,
and mostly without regret.

In response to Via Negativa: Above the river.

September 1, 2016September 1, 2016 by Luisa A. Igloria

Letter to doubt

There are days that are difficult
to love, days I don’t think I love
you or any of the things
I thought I used to love,
anymore.

Sometimes, we love only
our solitude. Other times
we despise it
because it will
not leave us.

I think I have felt
the tremor of joy;
I am certain I know
the incomprehensible
helplessness of peering

into the interior.
We waver in the blur
between doubt of self
and doubt of the other,
and conclude

the only certainty
is what we will ourselves
to decide. Who has not
ever felt the desire
to run away from oneself?

But time is as constant
as it is fickle. Truth,
one of many stones
that pave the inky
riverbed.

When I rinse my hands,
I see my face. When I touch
the surface, it clouds over
with the terrible urgency
of my need.

Does it matter we don’t know
in what terms to address
the future? Each thing
we do every day, we do
from wanting to come home.

September 1, 2016 by Dave Bonta

Beachhead

Up pretty betimes, and after a little at my viall to my office, where we sat all the morning, and I got my bill among others for my carved work (which I expected to have paid for myself) signed at the table, and hope to get the money back again, though if the rest had not got it paid by the King, I never intended nor did desire to have him pay for my vanity. At noon to the Exchange, where among many merchants abut provisions for the navy; and so home to dinner, where I met Mr. Hunt, his wife and child, and dined with us very merry. And after dinner I to my office with Captain Hickes, who brought my wife some shells, very pretty. He gives me great informacion against the officers and men at Deptford; I find him a talking fellow, but believe much of what he says is true.
In the evening my brother John coming to me to complain that my wife seems to be discontented at his being here, and shows him great disrespect; so I took and walked with him in the garden, and discoursed long with him about my affairs, and how imprudent it is for my father and mother and him to take exceptions without great cause at my wife, considering how much it concerns them to keep her their friend and for my peace; not that I would ever be led by her to forget or desert them in the main, but yet she deserves to be pleased and complied with a little, considering the manner of life that I keep her to, and how convenient it were for me to have Brampton for her to be sent to when I have a mind or occasion to go abroad to Portsmouth or elsewhere about pleasure or business, when it will not be safe for me to leave her alone. So directed him how to behave himself to her, and gave him other counsel; and so to my office, where late.

the navy captain
brought some shells
to be with him in the desert

he deserves a little ring of life

and how convenient to have
a road to elsewhere leave him here

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 1 September 1663.

August 31, 2016September 1, 2016 by Luisa A. Igloria

Asset management

She didn’t know how much he had in the bank when he died; whether he had any savings, whether he had debts that needed to be paid. Decades after, when she finally arranged to sell the house, I am told there were huge back taxes taken out of the sale amount. The only memories I have involving actual glimpses of money: every morning before he left for work, he pushed a fistful of soft bills across the table— for the market, for groceries. Did anything extra have to be pleaded for? And so the sewing she did on the side makes sense. One morning she took me by the hand and said Don’t tell of our errand today. We took a jeepney to the market where her friend owned a dry goods store. Her friend handed her a paper sack and gave me a treat. I never asked about it, and she never told. I’m haunted by exchanges: what was borrowed, what was returned. What was bought, or sold. Before my eighteenth birthday, she gave me a ring with tiny sapphires, my birth stone. She believed in the power and endurance of gold. Last year, before I left, she plunged her hand into a dilapidated purse and took out a knotted handkerchief; in its folds, a pair of diamond earrings, a matching pendant on a chain. I have them in a box in my drawer. Sometimes I take them out and look at them, touch all their surfaces dented with bits of brilliance.

In response to Via Negativa: Scrip.

August 31, 2016 by Dave Bonta

Scrip

Up and to my office all the morning, where Sir W. Batten and Sir J. Minnes did pay the short allowance money to the East India companies, and by the assistance of the City Marshall and his men, did lay hold of two or three of the chief of the companies that were in the mutiny the other day, and sent them to prison.
This noon came Jane Gentleman to serve my wife as her chamber mayde. I wish she may prove well.
So ends this month, with my mind pretty well in quiett, and in good disposition of health since my drinking at home of a little wine with my beer; but no where else do I drink any wine at all.
My house in a way to be clean again, the Joyners and all having done; but only we lack a Cooke-maid and Jane our chambermaid is but new come to us this day.
The King and Queene and the Court at the Bath. My Lord Sandwich in the country, newly gone, with my doubts concerning him having been debauched by a slut at his lodgings at Chelsy. My brother John with me, but not to my great content, because I do not see him mind his study or give me so good account thereof as I expected.
My Brother embarqued in building, and I fear in no good condition for it, for he sent to me to borrow more money, which I shall not lend him.
Myself in good condition in the office, and I hope in a good way of saving money at home.

money in prison is quiet
a wine with no wine

a way to be clean again
having only sand lodgings

brother give me
my fear money

I shall lend myself
hope money at home

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 31 August 1663.

August 30, 2016August 30, 2016 by Luisa A. Igloria

Letter to ___, in increments

Dear ___, I have not written in years. What made me think of it today, of you? When we came home this evening, small bodies of gnats and moths were outlined against the door. We fumbled for the keys, and in that small beat of time I felt almost embarrassed to see how many had battered themselves against that rectangle of shimmering white. In the garden, the ferns push up, insistent through a skin of plastic and a thin layer of mulch. The August sky is waning. Another year is almost gone.

Dear ___, I started this letter last night in hopes that I would finish it. I looked for a stamp and wanted to use my good pen; I filled it with ink the color of burnt wheat from a half-filled bottle on the shelf. There was a young woman in my classroom whose right thigh was bandaged. She had no crutches, but walked with a limp. She said she was in a motorcycle accident yesterday. A driver speeding up to merge didn’t see her, not even her hair dyed bottle green. Her anger and self-pity still crackled freshly like a halo around her. She pulled a chair from the next row and put up her leg.

Dear ___, when you were my age did you worry about dying? Did you worry about leaving anyone behind? When she called last week, my daughter told me that in her college there is a new one-credit class called “Adulting.” They teach students things about “real life” like how to do their laundry (separate the whites), fill out checks for deposit, how frequently they should change their sheets, how to tell when the milk has gone bad. She couldn’t believe it, she said. Sheets. Milk. Laundry.

Dear ___, do you know how table legs jut out and bump against your knees depending on how the chairs are positioned around it? I tried to change the way the seats were arranged, tried to move them like a compass or a clock hand pushed very slightly out of orbit. In less than two days they were back again where they were originally. I know someone who was given a different office space; she moved everything and laid the objects out exactly the way they were, on her new desk. Do you remember the little purse you gave me when I was a child? the one shaped like a girl’s face under the broad brim of a straw hat? When we were out and I was bored, I’d suck on the little cluster of green rubber grapes adorning the ribbon. I still remember the way they tasted, the way something needless claims obsessive attention.

August 30, 2016 by Dave Bonta

Patient

Lords Day. Lay long, then up; and Will being ill of the tooth-ake, I stayed at home and made up my accounts; which to my great content arise to 750l. clear Creditor, the most I have had yet. Dined alone with my wife, my brother dining abroad at my uncle Wights I think. To church, I alone, in the afternoon; and there saw Pembleton come in and look up, which put me into a sweat, and seeing not my wife there, went out again. But Lord — how I was afeared that he might, seeing me at church, go home to my wife; so much it is out of my power to preserve myself from jealousy — and so sat impatient all the sermon. Home and find all well and no sign of anybody being there, and so with great content playing and dallying with my wife; and so to my office, doing a little business there among my papers, and home to my wife to talk — supper and bed.

toothache
on a clear afternoon

seeing how much
is out of my power

my patient body being
a great ape

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 30 August 1663.

August 29, 2016 by Luisa A. Igloria

on the bridge

they do not loiter
here for long

they say they come
to watch the fish and learn

the ways of water
what it takes to stand

as long as the egret does
doubling the image

on the stilled surface
before it remembers

the length
of its wingspan

but don’t speak
of greatness yet

what is the end
or the beginning

from the middle
which looks both ways

In response to Via Negativa: Above the river.