Posts

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Active voice

(Lord’s day). Up betimes, and fell to reading my Latin grammar, which I perceive I have great need of, having lately found it by my calling Will to the reading of a chapter in Latin, and I am resolved to go through it.
After being trimmed, I by water to White Hall, and so over the Park, it raining hard, to Mr. Coventry’s chamber, where I spent two hours with him about business of the Navy, and how by his absence things are like to go with us, and with good content from my being with him he carried me by coach and set me down at Whitehall, and thence to right home by water.
He shewed me a list, which he hath prepared for the Parliament’s view, if the business of his selling of offices should be brought to further hearing, wherein he reckons up, as I remember, 236 offices of ships which have been disposed of without his taking one farthing. This, of his own accord, he opened his cabinet on purpose to shew me, meaning, I suppose, that I should discourse abroad of it, and vindicate him therein, which I shall with all my power do.
At home, being wet, shifted my band and things, and then to dinner, and after dinner went up and tried a little upon my tryangle, which I understand fully, and with a little use I believe could bring myself to do something.
So to church, and slept all the sermon, the Scot, to whose voice I am not to be reconciled, preaching.
Thence with Sir J. Minnes (who poor man had forgot that he carried me the other day to the painter’s to see some pictures which he has since bought and are brought home) to his lodgings to see some base things he calls them of great masters of painting. So I said nothing that he had shown me them already, but commended them, and I think they are indeed good enough.
Thence to see Sir W. Pen, who continues ill of the gout still. Here we staid a good while, and then I to my office, and read my vows seriously and with content, and so home to supper, to prayers, and to bed.

a grammar of rain
is like the open road
a full thing whose voice
I am nothing to


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 21 June 1663.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Fascinator

This entry is part 1 of 9 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Summer 2016

Today this old-
fashioned word in a novel
I’m reading trembles

into view— fascinator—
and immediately I remember
how my fingers fashioned

years ago from feel,
from scraps of ecru brocade
and lace, a little pillbox

of a hat with a hint
of veil, for my cousin
Cristy. She wore it pinned

to one side of her head,
to top off a modest skirt
and suit of plain beige.

It was a rushed wedding,
before her papers cleared
for her transfer to a hospital

in Saudi, before the seams
of her white nurse’s uniform
started to strain

at the seams around her belly;
before we learned the man
she thought she married

was already someone
else’s spouse. All she’d ever
wanted was a life outside

her mother’s tiny two-
room flat a street away
from where we lived,

a life for which she’d saved
every last coin toward that
plane ticket out.

It was she who’d taught me
how to wrap the blood
pressure cuff around

my father’s arm, pump
the bulb, slowly loosen
the valve then wait

to read the two
points where the needle
came to fitful rest

on the manometer’s face—
Systolic pressure in the arteries
when the heart muscle contracts,

diastolic pressure between beats
as the chamber fills with blood.
Two syllables separated

by barely the space of a sigh;
head slightly tilted to one
side as if already weighted

with ornament. If she
who was so good at listening
had not been able to catch

all that lay
beneath the surface,
how could I have hoped in my

own time to intercept the messages
that spun in circles, that would seem
to scintillate for me and me alone?

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Open

We look at charts and graphs set before us, the residues of testing. Here is the line that shows where we struggle through a wilderness of feelings we can’t yet name, where nights splinter from the metal aftertastes of worry. Outside, it is fully and ripeningly summer. The ache in the bud gives way to the shaken bloom. We have words for things we cannot guarantee, and jars in one corner of the shelf for catching change. So heavy with the green of its fruits, the tree in the yard bends beyond the scope of what it’s consigned to give. Look at how its flanks are so open: as if a hand running a closed fist back along the branch were all it would take to strip it of all it has.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Testament.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Testament

Up and to my office, where all the morning, and dined at home, Mr. Deane, of Woolwich, with me, and he and I all the afternoon down by water, and in a timber yard, measuring of timber, which I now understand thoroughly, and shall be able in a little time to do the King great service.
Home in the evening, and after Will’s reading a little in the Latin Testament, to bed.

in wool
the down

in timber
time

in a will
a testament


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 20 June 1663.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Divination

You soothed my fears best with words—
strung them into parables, taught me
to look inside stacked forms

for clues, broke them down into
individual parts so I could trace
their threads back to some

ground of origin. As it is,
I’ve learned of depths
beyond which none of us

can go unless the going
is complete. Like happiness,
I suppose; or like that kind

of surrender. Deepest shadow
beyond blue shadows lapping
at the sill, deeper pulse

goading the compass needle.
What is fortune? When it’s time,
you said, you’ll know.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Waterfront

Lay till 6 o’clock, and then up and to my office, where all the morning, and at noon to the Exchange, and coming home met Mr. Creed, and took him back, and he dined with me, and by and by came Mr. Moore, whom I supplied with 30l., and then abroad with them by water to Lambeth, expecting to have seen the Archbishop lie in state; but it seems he is not laid out yet. And so over to White Hall, and at the Privy Seal Office examined the books, and found the grant of increase of salary to the principall officers in the year 1639, 300l. among the Controller, Surveyor, and Clerk of the Shippes. Thence to Wilkinson’s after a good walk in the Park, where we met on horseback Captain Ferrers; who tells us that the King of France is well again, and that he saw him train his Guards, all brave men, at Paris; and that when he goes to his mistress, Madame la Valiere, a pretty little woman, now with child by him, he goes with his guards with him publiquely, and his trumpets and kettle-drums with him, who stay before the house while he is with her; and yet he says that, for all this, the Queen do not know of it, for that nobody dares to tell her; but that I dare not believe. Thence I to Wilkinson’s, where we had bespoke a dish of pease, where we eat them very merrily, and there being with us the little gentleman, a friend of Captain Ferrers, that was with my wife and I at a play a little while ago, we went thence to the Rhenish wine-house, where we called for a red Rhenish wine called Bleahard, a pretty wine, and not mixed, as they say.
Here Mr. Moore showed us the French manner, when a health is drunk, to bow to him that drunk to you, and then apply yourself to him, whose lady’s health is drunk, and then to the person that you drink to, which I never knew before; but it seems it is now the fashion.
Thence by water home and to bed, having played out of my chamber window on my pipe before I went to bed, and making Will read a part of a Latin chapter, in which I perceive in a little while he will be pretty ready, if he spends but a little pains in it.

morning laid out
over all the ships

a child drums merrily
on the window


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 19 June 1663.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Phases

New moon

Every thumbnail reminds me
to tuck coins into my pockets.
The window rattles when
the meter maid rides by.

*

Waxing gibbous

On Tuesday, mail arrives
from the colony— each page
soaked with the smell
of fog and bitter melon.

*

Full moon

After we drank the tea down to the dregs,
the gypsy read our fortunes. I want to know,
Where did she learn to tell the shape
of death from that of pillows?

*

Waning crescent

The meadow was ablaze
with firefly light. I knelt
in the garden, practicing
for certain grief.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Face to face.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Recluse

Up by four o’clock and to my office, where all the morning writing out in my Navy collections the ordinary estimate of the Navy, and did it neatly. Then dined at home alone, my mind pleased with business, but sad for the absence of my wife. After dinner half an hour at my viallin, and then all the afternoon sitting at the office late, and so home and to bed. This morning Mr. Cutler came and sat in my closet half an hour with me, his discourse very excellent, being a wise man, and I do perceive by him as well as many others that my diligence is taken notice of in the world, for which I bless God and hope to continue doing so.
Before I went into my house this night I called at Sir W. Batten’s, where finding some great ladies at table at supper with him and his lady, I retreated and went home, though they called to me again and again, and afterwards sent for me. So I went, and who should it be but Sir Fr. Clerke and his lady and another proper lady at supper there, and great cheer, where I staid till 11 o’clock at night, and so home and to bed.

out of my mind
I sat in my closet

no world called to me
but a clock


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 18 June 1663.

Posted on by Kristin Berkey-Abbott

Improbable Blessings

After the Eucharist, the clean
up, every plastic cup consigned
to the trash, pottery chalice
and plate rinsed in the sink.

I take the bread to the butterfly
garden. I tear scraps
of unleavened rounds into crumbs
which I scatter across the ground.

The children delight in pouring
the undrunk but consecrated
wine into the flowers, where it drips
down to the soil below.

I imagine caterpillars drunk
on God’s love made visible
in sacrament, birds pecking
in the dirt, surprised
to find a blessing,
bushes bursting with blooms
in improbable colors.


Inspired by Dave Bonta’s “Inner city” and Luisa A. Igloria’s “What can you do with day old bread?“

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

The only mammals that can’t jump

Do you ever hunger for a taste you can’t seem to find
in anything you eat, but don’t know what exactly?

Do you walk more slowly in the rain, waiting
for some other rhythm with which to fall in step?

You used to keep notebooks of collected facts
which gathered and curled into themselves

in interesting shapes. You’d take them out
every now and then, thumbnails to your own

kind of hairball museum— Hot water is heavier
than cold. A shrimp’s heart resides in its head.

Beetles taste like apples, wasps like pine nuts,
worms like fried bacon. Despite or because of

the memes and .gifs inspired by Nicolas Deveaux’s
short film of an elephant on a trampoline,

the elephant is the only mammal that can’t
jump. And Leonardo da Vinci invented scissors,

that same implement which an American in Taiwan
dismantled into two blades yesterday, and used

to stab himself in a courtroom after the judge
sentenced him to four years in jail for illegal

possession of drugs. All the sad news
this week, all the much too young people

whose names were listed and whose brief
lives flickered like the jeweled flames

music makes in laying down a beat. And all
the stupid accidents on the road today

causing pileups. Still, you are convinced
that everyone and everything just wants

to be loved and understood, accounted for.
Even the single-file line of giraffes

walking gravely through the narrow tiled lane
leading to the high dive platform above the pool

—each one wants to touch noses with the upside-
down spotter before landing clean in the water.