Via Negativa

April 2, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Outer spaces

Mr. Moore came to me, and he and I walked to the Spittle an hour or two before my Lord Mayor and the blewcoat boys come, which at last they did, and a fine sight of charity it is indeed. We got places and staid to hear a sermon; but, it being a Presbyterian one, it was so long, that after above an hour of it we went away, and I home and dined; and then my wife and I by water to the Opera, and there saw “The Bondman” most excellently acted; and though we had seen it so often, yet I never liked it better than to-day, Ianthe acting Cleora’s part very well now Roxalana is gone. We are resolved to see no more plays till Whitsuntide, we having been three days together. Met Mr. Sanchy, Smithes, Gale, and Edlin at the play, but having no great mind to spend money, I left them there. And so home and to supper, and then dispatch business, and so to bed.

the blue places above me
in an opera of the now

play sun together
having no mind to end

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 2 April 1662.

April 2, 2025April 2, 2025 by Luisa A. Igloria

Field Guide with Daughter Giving Testimony

river in November light between bare woods and mountain

Her speech is flawless, though broken
occasionally with tears. The camera 
doesn't capture everything, 
but you can see behind the podium 
she's in a well-pressed school uniform. 
White blouse under navy blazer. Perhaps 
she's wearing a pleated skirt in the same 
color; black shoes, white ankle socks. 
Before she describes the moment 
of her father's abduction by ICE agents, 
she tells the people gathered in the hall 
how her father coached her at every race 
she ran, cheered from the sidelines, 
told her not to give up. Here you can enter 
the information that he was getting better
at learning English; he was looking forward 
to a better job. His so-called crime? 
Not being born in this country, and only 
having a green card. Here you can enter 
information on ethnicity or provenance. 
The daughter says, When I grow up 
I want to be a lawyer. I won't 
give up fighting for him. 
I have other races to run.

April 1, 2025April 1, 2025 by Luisa A. Igloria

Unshakeable

Nevertheless, walk with the audacity
of a white man, says my therapist.

Walk with the audacity of someone
who knows what they want, the ant

bent on lugging the sugar it collected 
by itself, all the way home.

April 1, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Correspondence

Within all the morning and at the office. At noon my wife and I (having paid our maid Nell her whole wages, who has been with me half a year, and now goes away for altogether) to the Wardrobe, where my Lady and company had almost dined. We sat down and dined. Here was Mr. Herbert, son to Sir Charles Herbert, that lately came with letters from my Lord Sandwich to the King. After some discourse we remembered one another to have been together at the tavern when Mr. Fanshaw took his leave of me at his going to Portugall with Sir Richard.
After dinner he and I and the two young ladies and my wife to the playhouse, the Opera, and saw “The Mayde in the Mill,” a pretty good play. In the middle of the play my Lady Paulina, who had taken physique this morning, had need to go forth, and so I took the poor lady out and carried her to the Grange, and there sent the maid of the house into a room to her, and she did what she had a mind to, and so back again to the play; and that being done, in their coach I took them to Islington, and then, after a walk in the fields, I took them to the great cheese-cake house and entertained them, and so home, and after an hour’s stay with my Lady, their coach carried us home, and so weary to bed.

at our age now
down to letters
we remember one another

you who had
a need to go out
of her mind

and that one walk
I took to the cheese-
cake house

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 1 April 1662.

March 31, 2025March 31, 2025 by Luisa A. Igloria

Aftershock

It's time to clean up the edges,
pull up the overgrowth, yank
the weeds away from the fence;
to turn and level the soil.

I don't have the knack 
that the neighbors do 
for clearing their yards
of every dry pine cone
almost as if at the exact 
moment the trees pelt them down;

for using their leafblowers
like edgers. So much of the world
falls unbidden into the spaces 
we like to carefully curate.

Indoors, I've had to separate
the monstera practically jumping
out of their pot from overcrowding.
But how much can I really control? 

I gasped when I saw on the news 
how the water on rooftop pools 
sloshed over the sides of eighty-
floor hotels, before the balconies 
collapsed one on top of the other 
from the force of an earthquake.  

I lived, somehow, through a similar 
moment over thirty years ago. I could say 
time stopped, though I know it didn't. 

It simply continued to vibrate 
in a way no one could deny—
only stronger, more visibly.

March 31, 2025March 31, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Poetry Blog Digest 2025, Week 13

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: synapses on fire, cryptic colonial zooids, a hearth of spiders, open secrets, a big smashing life, and more. Enjoy.

March 31, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Wreckage

the wreck and not the story of the wreck
Adrienne Rich

Growing old under capitalism, we learn again and again how foolish we are to allow ourselves to become attached to any particular place. All will be destroyed for short-term profits. The kids who grew up playing in the creek that ran through an old pasture gone back to woods saw it all disappear under acres of parking lot for a new mall. The kids who grew up hanging out at the mall return home to find it derelict, the parking lot full of weeds from other continents.

And now, one supposes, there are children with skateboards and big dreams who love this new wasteland. Because when the wild is out of reach, the feral can serve in its place. The human need for unmanaged places is strong. Without regular contact with the more-than-human, our imaginations shrivel and we lose most capacity for self-reinvention, like large language models training on each other’s output, increasingly disconnected from the living flow.

Or perhaps the children are all scheduled up with structured playtime in safe and fenced-in spaces, and the only people out in the wasteland now are drug addicts and other unhappy campers. Under their heads as they sleep, the creek is breaking out of its rusty conduit. Ailanthus roots have found a fissure. It’s only a matter of time.

March 31, 2025 by Dave Bonta

The Great Transformation

This morning Mr. Coventry and all our company met at the office about some business of the victualling, which being dispatched we parted.
I to my Lord Crew’s to dinner (in my way calling upon my brother Tom, with whom I staid a good while and talked, and find him a man like to do well, which contents me much), where used with much respect, and talking with him about my Lord’s debts, and whether we should make use of an offer of Sir G. Carteret’s to lend my Lady 4 or 500l., he told me by no means, we must not oblige my Lord to him, and by the by he made a question whether it was not my Lord’s interest a little to appear to the King in debt, and for people to clamor against him as well as others for their money, that by that means the King and the world may see that he do lay out for the King’s honour upon his own main stock, which many he tells me do, that in fine if there be occasion he and I will be bound for it.
Thence to Sir Thomas Crew’s lodgings. He hath been ill, and continues so, under fits of apoplexy. Among other things, he and I did discourse much of Mr. Montagu’s base doings, and the dishonour that he will do my Lord, as well as cheating him of 2 or 3,000l., which is too true.
Thence to the play, where coming late, and meeting with Sir W. Pen, who had got room for my wife and his daughter in the pit, he and I into one of the boxes, and there we sat and heard “The Little Thiefe,” a pretty play and well done.
Thence home, and walked in the garden with them, and then to the house to supper and sat late talking, and so to bed.

all our business is art
we re-make the world

out of other things
and heat it up

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 31 March 1662.

March 30, 2025March 30, 2025 by Luisa A. Igloria

Flux

Spring is a profusion of white—

flowers of winter solitude, 
thawing on the branch. 

How do I know it's safe to bring 
my loneliness out into the green
air? The stone angel 

by the church door lifts 
a fluted clamshell in his hands.

Water has pooled there, overnight.

March 30, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Interrogation

(Easter day). Having my old black suit new furbished, I was pretty neat in clothes to-day, and my boy, his old suit new trimmed, very handsome. To church in the morning, and so home, leaving the two Sir Williams to take the Sacrament, which I blame myself that I have hitherto neglected all my life, but once or twice at Cambridge. Dined with my wife, a good shoulder of veal well dressed by Jane, and handsomely served to table, which pleased us much, and made us hope that she will serve our turn well enough.
My wife and I to church in the afternoon, and seated ourselves, she below me, and by that means the precedence of the pew, which my Lady Batten and her daughter takes, is confounded; and after sermon she and I did stay behind them in the pew, and went out by ourselves a good while after them, which we judge a very fine project hereafter to avoyd contention.
So my wife and I to walk an hour or two on the leads, which begins to be very pleasant, the garden being in good condition.
So to supper, which is also well served in. We had a lobster to supper, with a crabb Pegg Pen sent my wife this afternoon, the reason of which we cannot think; but something there is of plot or design in it, for we have a little while carried ourselves pretty strange to them.
After supper to bed.

a black suit
his hand on my shoulder

as we seat ourselves
in the void

which begins to be a garden
with nothing in it

Erasure haiku derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 30 March 1662.