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Posted on by Uma Gowrishankar

Stake A Claim

A lake breathes under the car park
evenly rising and sinking.

Dried reed silts limp, dead fish
flush into my dilated lungs.

She sat on the grass, legs dipped
in water. Pearls of desire

beaded as his fingers ran along
her back into the throat

of lily. Lust gushes out of the tap
into the sink in my kitchen

curdling the milk. The cream
trembles orgasmically in the glass.

Water oozes out of springs like
a secret hard to keep.

Particles of clay turn molten, car
floats as the lake reclaims itself

in my veins where corpuscles in
blood are displaced by algae.


Another poem prompted by the recent flooding in Chennai. See “Flood” and “Chronicle of Drowning.”

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Pretty

Up pretty early, and sent my boy to the carrier’s with some wine for my father, for to make his feast among his Brampton friends this Christmas, and my muff to my mother, sent as from my wife. But before I sent my boy out with them, I beat him for a lie he told me, at which his sister, with whom we have of late been highly displeased, and warned her to be gone, was angry, which vexed me, to see the girl I loved so well, and my wife, should at last turn so much a fool and unthankful to us.
So to the office, and there all the morning, and though without and a little against the advice of the officers did, to gratify him, send Thomas Hater to-day towards Portsmouth a day or two before the rest of the clerks, against the Pay next week.
Dined at home; and there being the famous new play acted the first time to-day, which is called “The Adventures of Five Hours,” at the Duke’s house, being, they say, made or translated by Colonel Tuke, I did long to see it; and so made my wife to get her ready, though we were forced to send for a smith, to break open her trunk, her mayde Jane being gone forth with the keys, and so we went; and though early, were forced to sit almost out of sight, at the end of one of the lower forms, so full was the house. And the play, in one word, is the best, for the variety and the most excellent continuance of the plot to the very end, that ever I saw, or think ever shall, and all possible, not only to be done in the time, but in most other respects very admittable, and without one word of ribaldry; and the house, by its frequent plaudits, did show their sufficient approbation. So home; with much ado in an hour getting a coach home, and, after writing letters at my office, I went home to supper and to bed, now resolving to set up my rest as to plays till Easter, if not Whitsuntide next, excepting plays at Court.

pretty is a lie
I love to translate

a ready key to forms
in one word

the best of all plaudits
at writing off


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 8 January 1662/63.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

I was surprised but not surprised

to learn that my father was buried
with his wedding ring (but snapped, to break
all ties with earthly life), his wallet
(of course stuffed with bills and some change
for the ferryman), and his gold watch.

My father— who all his life had counted
carefully all the hours upon waking, enjoying
but not lingering unnecessarily at each mealtime,
punctual to work and industrious at his daily
meditations on the toilet— I would have wanted
to keep this watch, the only one he favored,

a gift from one of his wealthy cousins: Swiss
timepiece, Omega Seamaster Deville Automatic,
its round pearled face mounted on a band of wavy
metal links, its little window with the dates
clicking each day imperceptibly forward.
Analog of time, as though each sweep

of the hands positioned all in due order:
as if we knew indeed the quantity of days assigned
to our care. Deep in the earth he’s tilled now
more than a quarter century: tiny gold horseshoe
under glass— From alpha to omega, from end
to end, each one a perfect twin to the other.

Posted on by Uma Gowrishankar

Chronicle of Drowning

I should have killed the serpents
that roiled in the river. One escaped,
coiled under the warm stove,
its scales brittle and ready to crackle
into a spiral of fire like Vishnu’s disc.

The house is now drowned. Kitchen fire
doused in rain, hissed like the serpent
I failed to slay, watched it slither
into my dream – poison coloured my nails,
made bones frail till I broke like a twig.

The river washed me away as I divined
the sky, reading as I would my palm where
serpentine lines grooved by storm
mirrored the currents that looped
around, sucking me into dark reeds.


Another poem prompted by the recent flooding in Chennai. See “Flood.”

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Testing the water

Up pretty early, that is by seven o’clock, it being not yet light before or then. So to my office all the morning, signing the Treasurer’s ledger, part of it where I have not put my hand, and then eat a mouthful of pye at home to stay my stomach, and so with Mr. Waith by water to Deptford, and there among other things viewed old pay-books, and found that the Commanders did never heretofore receive any pay for the rigging time, but only for seatime, contrary to what Sir J. Minnes and Sir W. Batten told the Duke the other day. I also searched all the ships in the Wett Dock for fire, and found all in good order, it being very dangerous for the King that so many of his ships lie together there. I was among the canvass in stores also, with Mr. Harris, the saylemaker, and learnt the difference between one sort and another, to my great content, and so by water home again, where my wife tells me stories how she hears that by Sarah’s going to live at Sir W. Pen’s, all our affairs of my family are made known and discoursed of there and theirs by my people, which do trouble me much, and I shall take a time to let Sir W. Pen know how he has dealt in taking her without our full consent. So to my office, and by and by home to supper, and so to prayers and bed.

not yet light
I put my hand in the sea
to learn the difference between
air and prayer


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 7 January 1662/63.

Posted on by Laura M Kaminski

Fourth Sense

I stop for several moments,
permit my spine to straighten
against the inch of foam

that tops the hardwood board
I have upon my bed in lieu
of mattress. (My husband does

not like unyielding, he calls it
the torture rack and instead
submerges nightly in a pillow-

top’s embrace.) But it is
here I reconnect with my own
surface, the meter and a half

of uncured leather I wear
daily. I close my eyes and in
the blindness stay completely

still, try to find each hinge
by focusing attention where
I think it is, sonar-pings

sent into darkness, waiting
for an answering ache or itch
or tickle. Then I move along,

still sounding in the dark,
seek out and find an ankle,
an elbow, a hip. I scan and

map these surfaces I have
ignored all day, volume on
the touch-sense turned down

low. I let attention brush
each joint for just a moment,
give each one a quick

permission to emerge from
the repression, then move on,
hold fast upon the rack:

while joy—like the rush
of an incoming wave—
kisses all my skin.


In response to/inspired by Luisa A. Igloria’s “A dress:“, ending with lines from Robert K. Johnson’s “Eighty-five.”

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Zip

Zip: A brief sharp hissing sound; vim or energy; to move or act with speed; to fasten or unfasten with a zipper; nothing, nil, zero (slang); zip it up, be quiet (idiomatic).

Several ambassadors were symbolically recalled today
on charges of negligence, after the world’s last
authentic, all-purpose zipper went missing. Previously,
it was seen in special guarded exhibits traveling
from Port Authority to The Sea of Sorrowful Distillations.
National agents reported that it tried to escape,
was intercepted around midmorning, then subdued
with a fusillade from torch guns. Majority Convenors
had just emerged from their first round of ritual comestibles—
Pin-striped, a representative went on Streaming TV to make
the announcement. We could see the rest of them in the background,
still licking the salt trails left by their legendary special reserve
caviar breakfasts from their fingers. Some were glimpsed plodding
through painfully manicured grass in hot pursuit of renegade
golf balls. They had just voted to render obsolete the Humanitarian
Care Act, and were clearly feeling accomplished. The levels of noise
they made congealed on the ceiling of the auditorium, like fat
from a cold tin of foie gras; still, they would not cease their yapping
and roaring. In the old days, which are now rare, there were several
other forms of technology as effective as an all-purpose authentic
zipper; any of them in the right hands would have put a stop
to the ongoing nonsense. It could have heroically snapped
out of its case and bypassed all the artificial controls
entered by the neurosurgeon general. It would have silenced
the doomsayer entrepreneurs spouting their gospel of blond fists
and gilded cages. Nothing to do now but go to work more
carefully, collect every small, rare metal glow radiating the codes
for tomorrow. File sharp every bright tooth strong enough to bite
close and open two edges, harness the muscle of axles and gears:
lay tracks to convey us past ice, rock, this manufactured dark.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Diplomacy.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Slumming it

(Twelfth Day). Up and Mr. Creed brought a pot of chocolate ready made for our morning draft, and then he and I to the Duke’s, but I was not very willing to be seen at this end of the town, and so returned to our lodgings, and took my wife by coach to my brother’s, where I set her down, and Creed and I to St. Paul’s Church-yard, to my bookseller’s, and looked over several books with good discourse, and then into St. Paul’s Church, and there finding Elborough, my old schoolfellow at Paul’s, now a parson, whom I know to be a silly fellow, I took him out and walked with him, making Creed and myself sport with talking with him, and so sent him away, and we to my office and house to see all well, and thence to the Exchange, where we met with Major Thomson, formerly of our office, who do talk very highly of liberty of conscience, which now he hopes for by the King’s declaration, and that he doubts not that if he will give him, he will find more and better friends than the Bishopps can be to him, and that if he do not, there will many thousands in a little time go out of England, where they may have it. But he says that they are well contented that if the King thinks it good, the Papists may have the same liberty with them. He tells me, and so do others, that Dr. Calamy is this day sent to Newgate for preaching, Sunday was se’nnight, without leave, though he did it only to supply the place; when otherwise the people must have gone away without ever a sermon, they being disappointed of a minister but the Bishop of London will not take that as an excuse. Thence into Wood Street, and there bought a fine table for my dining-room, cost me 50s.; and while we were buying it, there was a scare-fire in an ally over against us, but they quenched it. So to my brother’s, where Creed and I and my wife dined with Tom, and after dinner to the Duke’s house, and there saw “Twelfth Night” acted well, though it be but a silly play, and not related at all to the name or day. Thence Mr. Battersby the apothecary, his wife, and I and mine by coach together, and setting him down at his house, he paying his share, my wife and I home, and found all well, only myself somewhat vexed at my wife’s neglect in leaving of her scarf, waistcoat, and night-dressings in the coach today that brought us from Westminster, though, I confess, she did give them to me to look after, yet it was her fault not to see that I did take them out of the coach. I believe it might be as good as 25s. loss or thereabouts.
So to my office, however, to set down my last three days’ journall, and writing to my Lord Sandwich to give him an account of Sir J. Lawson’s being come home, and to my father about my sending him some wine and things this week, for his making an entertainment of some friends in the country, and so home. This night making an end wholly of Christmas, with a mind fully satisfied with the great pleasures we have had by being abroad from home, and I do find my mind so apt to run to its old want of pleasures, that it is high time to betake myself to my late vows, which I will to-morrow, God willing, perfect and bind myself to, that so I may, for a great while, do my duty, as I have well begun, and increase my good name and esteem in the world, and get money, which sweetens all things, and whereof I have much need. So home to supper and to bed, blessing God for his mercy to bring me home, after much pleasure, to my house and business with health and resolution to fall hard to work again.

at this end of town
we talk highly
of hope

thousands out of land
have gone into the country
of want

as we increase
and get money which sweetens
all things


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 6 January 1662/63.

Posted on by Uma Gowrishankar

Flood

The water mark below my lips at the place
cleft disappears like a rumour.

I watched the water level rise above my heart
where a spring lies buried.

Then to my neck as the serpent stirred, scales
beehive of deep and long sighs.

I smelled earth, roots of the neem tree in clumps
of clay that snagged my voice.

Like a beaker the vocal chord filled, brimmed over
when a turtle choked the larynx.

As the noise subsided I heard the announcement
from the sky. The wind fell.

In the darkness among abandoned homes plumeria
rendered odourless.

Pale with terror pigeons under windowsills breathed
lung full with bones of the drowned.


In response to “Flooded” by Jean Morris. Chennai experienced unprecedented rain and flooding in December 2015, claiming many lives and rendering people homeless. The apartment block where I live was flooded. I had to move out and stay away from home for 17 days. I wrote poems during this period to cope with the suffering I saw around, to grapple with the distress of displacement, of being homeless.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Clutch

Cleaning out closets I find
irregular wonders— Linen-

wrapped, someone’s chalky tooth
in an old jelly jar; rubber

ring under the lid now brittle
to the touch. Cash in pants

pockets! Folded diagram,
blueprint for a perforated

organ: in whose house does it
live now? Whose voices chorused

on this blanket, under stars?
Clever charts, discreet gauze

whose function was to staunch: do I
roll them to their terminal points?

Do I keep them, throw them out,
use them again? and what parts?

 

In response to Via Negativa: Proverbial.