Vanishing point

Sam Pepys and me

At the office all the morning, and in the afternoon to Paul’s Churchyard to a blind place, where Mrs. Goldsborough was to meet me (who dare not be known where she lives) to treat about the difference which remains between my uncle and her. But, Lord! to hear how she talks and how she rails against my uncle would make one mad. But I seemed not to be troubled at it, but would indeed gladly have an agreement with her. So I appoint Mr. Moore and she another against Friday next to look into our papers and to see what can be done to conclude the matter. So home in much pain by walking too much yesterday I have made my testicle to swell again, which much troubles me.

morning in the blind place
where gold lives

between rails an agreement
not to conclude


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 15 October 1661.

Café Interlude, with Socratic Method

river in November light between bare woods and mountain
After his trial, Socrates is condemned to death
for sins of impiety and corrupting the youth.
Most depictions show him as noble and calm
in this final adversity, befitting a philosopher
of his stature—In the Phaedo, when he inquires,
the official poisoner says the only thing he's
expected to do is drink it, that's all. Carrot
fern, poison parsley, purple-blotched
along the stem and bitter when bruised—
Even as Socrates gamely downs
the hemlock-saturated cup of wine,
he doesn't froth at the mouth, clutch
at his stomach, or stumble around
like a common drunk. He simply pulls
his robe over his face. This is the guy
famous for asking What do you know?
How do you know what you know?
and
Why should you care about it? Unsettling,
to anyone uncomfortable with challenging
the status quo or what they've been
conditioned to believe. And so, at the café
this morning, when the barista instructs
us to keep anyone from sitting at the corner
table because a repairman's coming to fix
the closed circuit camera above it,
we are at first amused as customer
after customer tries to sit there,
even when we've turned the chairs
over or pushed them under the window
counter. All they have to do is comply, find
another table; that's all. Aren't they also
asking How do you know? Why should we
believe you?
And it seems there is also
something in the spirit that makes me want
to cheer, for refusing to accept there can be
only one outcome, besides or before
the body's surrender to its most final fate.

Poetry Blog Digest 2024, Week 41

Poetry Blogging Network

A personal selection of posts from the Poetry Blogging Network and beyond. Although I tend to quote my favorite bits, please do click through and read the whole posts. You can also browse the blog digest archive at Via Negativa or, if you’d like it in your inbox, subscribe on Substack (where the posts might be truncated by some email providers).

This week: what’s bothering the clouds, a mausoleum of flowers, slim needles of flow, the hitchhiking dead, and much more. Enjoy.

Continue reading “Poetry Blog Digest 2024, Week 41”

Luisa on “Caulbearer” at Poetry Daily

river in November light between bare woods and mountain

Don’t miss this feature on the title poem from Luisa’s new collection Caulbearer at Poetry Daily, as part of their series What Sparks Poetry. Here’s an excerpt:

As an immigrant and a writer in the diaspora, despite the length of time I’ve lived in the U.S. and as a naturalized citizen, I’m still conscious of the feeling of being neither here nor there. There is a fantasy of irrecoverable return, and here is the place to which I’ve carried the ghosts of my own (and perhaps my community’s) nostalgia. Between these two states of being is a veil perishable as a panicle of yucca flowers, sheer as the wings of a yucca moth whose continued existence in an often brutal world depends on mutuality. But it is also a space which I want to imbue with as much tenderness as I can.
Read the rest.

Regular readers might recognize the poem, which first appeared here in January 2019. Read it at Poetry Daily… and order the book from Black Lawrence Press.

After ward

Sam Pepys and me

This morning I ventured by water abroad to Westminster, but lost my labour, for Mr. Montagu was not in town. So to the Wardrobe, and there dined with my Lady, which is the first time I have seen her dine abroad since her being brought to bed of my Lady Katherine. In the afternoon Captain Ferrers and I walked abroad to several places, among others to Mr. Pim’s, my Lord’s Taylour’s, and there he went out with us to the Fountain tavern and did give us store of wine, and it being the Duke of York’s birthday, we drank the more to his health. But, Lord! what a sad story he makes of his being abused by a Dr. of Physique who is in one part of the tenement wherein he dwells. It would make one laugh, though I see he is under a great trouble in it. Thence home by link and found a good answer from my father that Sir R. Bernard do clear all things as to us and our title to Brampton, which puts my heart in great ease and quiet.

a lost war is a road
to no place
to give birth

the lord of abuse
dwells under a title
in great quiet


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 14 October 1661.

Daughters

river in November light between bare woods and mountain
The novelist said drop daughter
into your proposal and the whole
marketing team will be behind you

because daughter is synonymous
with love and sorrow, conflict
and separation, age, impossible

desire. We laughed but I knew
it was true—all those stories
about blood and bone, how we

felt our way out of blind tunnels
in the same way our mothers and
their mothers and their mothers before

them did, elbowing into a world we
are still demanding make space for us.

Satyr

Sam Pepys and me

(Lord’s day). Did not stir out all day, but rose and dined below, and this day left off half skirts and put on a wastecoate, and my false taby wastecoate with gold lace; and in the evening there came Sir W. Batten to see me, and sat and supped very kindly with me, and so to prayers and to bed.

a day of skirts
my false gold

the evening came
with a prayer


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 13 October 1661.

Two haibun

Wrack

You’ve been courting disaster long enough. Isn’t it time you got hitched? You in a suit of rain, with your lucky feet. She in her thunderwear, the ship that launched a thousand faces as close as the phone vibrating in your pocket.

beach bodies rushing to water a stranded whale

from whiptail: journal of the single-line poem, Issue 10 (June 2014)


Raised by Trees

Before my salad days, I was sour as cabbage. I grieved as publicly as a mower for its meadow, cried on every occasion—a virtuoso of tears. Except, my mother noted, when she took me to the woods: as the sky filled with leaves, my last tearful gasp for breath drew in the leaf-mould and the silence and I would fall still. Grief may have been my natural habitat, but the forest soon became my strengthening medicine. Before I even learned to talk, I knew that long sighs could mean happiness among the pines, and that time passes differently in a sunlit glade. And long after I grew out of my bluest period, the forest continued to be a refuge from my own self-centeredness, a place where I could practice being human.

leaping rock to rock the children I never had

from Woodrat Photohaiku, 12 October 2024

Astral

Sam Pepys and me

In bed the greatest part of this day also, and my swelling in some measure gone. I received a letter this day from my father, that Sir R. Bernard do a little fear that my uncle has not observed exactly the custom of Brampton in his will about his lands there, which puts me to a great trouble in mind, and at night wrote to him and to my father about it, being much troubled at it.

someone received
a letter from
my little ear

that outland there
in mind at night


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 12 October 1661.