Via Negativa

March 24, 2026March 23, 2026 by Luisa A. Igloria

Poem For When I Can’t Sleep at Night

river in November light between bare woods and mountain

 
After decades of bragging I do my best
work late at night since I'm a night owl, 
how is it that I'm practically nodding 
into my plate by the end of dinner, 
wanting to straightaway brush my teeth,
wash my face, and climb under the covers?
But once I'm there and close my eyes, how 
is it that something clicks the lights on 
again in my brain and it's anything but 
calmante? A friend suggested a visualization 
exercise: think of a softly lit orb just above 
my head descending as it slowly inflates, 
humming over each part of my body until 
it reaches my feet. By that time, she said, 
you'll be sound asleep. Except before
it can glide over my chest, I'm lost 
and awake in a chain of memory-associations. 
The light becomes the crackly flash cube 
on those old cameras. My mother's ordering 
everyone back on the sofa for another picture 
because she's sure her eyes were half-closed. 
The collar of my mohair sweater is itchy. 
All I want to do is drink a cold Mirinda 
Orange soda and kick off my shoes. At Gregg's, 
she chose them because they were shiny patent 
leather; maybe she felt she needed to get me 
something, just because she bought two pairs 
of pumps for herself. My mother knew she wasn't 
born with any kind of spoon in her mouth— 
she had to figure out how to get to everything 
she wanted, even if it meant staying up late 
to sew frothy dresses for wealthy matrons 
and their homely daughters, and praising 
how they looked when they came for fittings. 
She had natural style, though, and could pull
off any outfit. She knew what top to match 
with what pencil skirt without looking exactly 
like the secretaries in my father's office. Now
I'm lying in my darkened bedroom, in my head 
trying to compose tomorrow's outfit. She never 
let me wear jeans until I got to college, but now 
I wear them even when I teach: dark wash, cuffed 
at the hem, or sporting visible mending stitches 
I made with bright embroidery thread. I like to wear
low boots and throw on my most unstuffy blazer, aim 
for a look that says confident and put together, 
but not trying too hard. I've also become 
a woman who has to work hard for what she 
wants, including the sleep I crave so much.

March 23, 2026March 23, 2026 by Dave Bonta

Poetry Blog Digest 2026, Week 12

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: intense incomprehension, the strings of things, apple maggots, plastic words, and much more. Enjoy.

March 23, 2026March 23, 2026 by Luisa A. Igloria

Quantum Entanglement

Who was it that said rub
the sticks of your bad luck together
and make a little fire out of them?
Well then, why not an all-out conflagration,
a let's-burn-you-down-to-the-cinders so there's 
no hope of it coming back (the bad luck, I mean)? 
People are always starting memes or conversations 
with questions like What should your future 
self have said to your past self at a time
when you might have most needed it? I can think 
of more than one of those times when I was young 
and timid, easily intimidated but scrambling 
to quickly put on some costume of bravado. 
My future self should have told that past self 
Look, kid, it gets better or You don't have 
to get hitched to make a life you can call 
your own. And when the girl that was me was told 
by a man Don't pretend you don't know what I want, 
my future self should have said through her mouth 
Why don't you fuck all the way off? In this life,
we're lucky to get a glimpse of something trifling
in the moment that later turns out to be (in hindsight) 
important. Like the time this girl in a sci-fi series 
we were watching says if she'd stayed home instead 
of taken the trash to the end of the road, her house, 
and her mother inside that house, might still be 
around instead of being disappeared into some kind of 
wormhole. It turns out the mother didn't really want 
to be a mother. And children always think it must be 
their fault. Perhaps the girl lingered too long after
school, mouth open and entranced by trees along the way 
spangled with icicles, determined to see if each drop 
tasted different. Perhaps the mother wanted to go 
to conservatory, train her voice into a sweet soprano. 
Or she wanted to master theoretical physics and quantum 
entanglement, calculating correlations that persist  
across light years and distances. In theory,  
manipulating entangled particles can help alter 
a particle's past state. Think of your future 
self taking your child self's hand in your own, 
both of you walking into a winter night, little 
dendrite flakes suspended for a moment, looking 
as though they could be falling either down or up.

March 23, 2026 by Dave Bonta

Under fire

Up betimes and to my office, before noon my wife and I eat something, thinking to have gone abroad together, but in comes Mr. Hunt, who we were forced to stay to dinner, and so while that was got ready he and I abroad about 2 or 3 small businesses of mine, and so back to dinner, and after dinner he went away, and my wife and I and Ashwell by coach, set my wife down at her mother’s and Ashwell at my Lord’s, she going to see her father and mother, and I to Whitehall, being fearful almost, so poor a spirit I have, of meeting Major Holmes. By and by the Duke comes, and we with him about our usual business, and then the Committee for Tangier, where, after reading my Lord Rutherford’s commission and consented to, Sir R. Ford, Sir W. Rider, and I were chosen to bring in some laws for the Civill government of it, which I am little able to do, but am glad to be joyned with them, for I shall learn something of them.
Thence to see my Lord Sandwich, and who should I meet at the door but Major Holmes. He would have gone away, but I told him I would not spoil his visitt, and would have gone, but however we fell to discourse and he did as good as desire excuse for the high words that did pass in his heat the other day, which I was willing enough to close with, and after telling him my mind we parted, and I left him to speak with my Lord, and I by coach home, where I found Will. Howe come home to-day with my wife, and staid with us all night, staying late up singing songs, and then he and I to bed together in Ashwell’s bed and she with my wife. This the first time that I ever lay in the room. This day Greatorex brought me a very pretty weather-glass for heat and cold.

noon comes to stay
and being poor

we consent to a government
of sand and spoil

but how we desire a night
in bed together
and the weather cold

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 23 March 1662/63.

March 22, 2026 by Dave Bonta

Mental health break

(Lord’s day). Up betimes and in my office wrote out our bill for the Parliament about our being made justices of Peace in the City.
So home and to church, where a dull formall fellow that prayed for the Right Hon. John Lord Barkeley, Lord President of Connaught, &c. So home to dinner, and after dinner my wife and I and her woman by coach to Westminster, where being come too soon for the Christening we took up Mr. Creed and went out to take some ayre, as far as Chelsey and further, I lighting there and letting them go on with the coach while I went to the church expecting to see the young ladies of the school, Ashwell desiring me, but I could not get in far enough, and so came out and at the coach’s coming back went in again and so back to Westminster, and led my wife and her to Captain Ferrers, and I to my Lord Sandwich, and with him talking a good while; I find the Court would have this Indulgence go on, but the Parliament are against it. Matters in Ireland are full of discontent.
Thence with Mr. Creed to Captain Ferrers, where many fine ladies; the house well and prettily furnished. She lies in, in great state, Mr. G. Montagu, Collonel Williams, Cromwell that was, and Mrs. Wright as proxy for my Lady Jemimah, were witnesses. Very pretty and plentiful entertainment, could not get away till nine at night, and so home. My coach cost me 7s. So to prayers, and to bed.
This day though I was merry enough yet I could not get yesterday’s quarrel out of my mind, and a natural fear of being challenged by Holmes for the words I did give him, though nothing but what did become me as a principal officer.

out to take some air
as far as I fare

in the fine fur of my fear
of being nothing

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 22 March 1662/63.

March 22, 2026March 22, 2026 by Luisa A. Igloria

Not to be the Sun

Some say I am light-
ning when I write, sure 
of the strike and the burn. 
Brilliance seen for miles 
around, but is it only for 
the space of a few seconds?

The accretions of language
through the years, flint
cobbled from the silt and 
mud of this life. Sentences
honed through practice—
this requires patience. 

This is not an ode 
to the ways in which 
certain hothouse plants  
bloom only one night each 
year— a grand display, 
followed by sad withering.  

Neither is this praise
for steadfastness or obscurity,
for holding still against 
a background, like the velvet
of moth wings melting against 
warm screens of bark.  

And this isn't mere 
argument for importance and
various other bold announcements 
of self— not to be the sun, but   
to have proof my small heat matters 
and emits a real radiance of its own.

March 22, 2026 by Dave Bonta

Origin story

Up betimes and to my office, where busy all the morning, and at noon, after a very little dinner, to it again, and by and by, by appointment, our full board met, and Sir Philip Warwick and Sir Robert Long came from my Lord Treasurer to speak with us about the state of the debts of the Navy; and how to settle it, so as to begin upon the new foundation of 200,000l. per annum, which the King is now resolved not to exceed. This discourse done, and things put in a way of doing, they went away, and Captain Holmes being called in he began his high complaint against his Master Cooper, and would have him forthwith discharged. Which I opposed, not in his defence but for the justice of proceeding not to condemn a man unheard, upon [which] we fell from one word to another that we came to very high terms, such as troubled me, though all and the worst that I ever said was that that was insolently or ill mannerdly spoken. When he told me that it was well it was here that I said it. But all the officers, Sir G. Carteret, Sir J. Minnes, Sir W. Batten, and Sir W. Pen cried shame of it. At last he parted and we resolved to bring the dispute between him and his Master to a trial next week, wherein I shall not at all concern myself in defence of any thing that is unhandsome on the Master’s part nor willingly suffer him to have any wrong. So we rose and I to my office, troubled though sensible that all the officers are of opinion that he has carried himself very much unbecoming him.
So wrote letters by the post, and home to supper and to bed.

war and the state
begin with a fence

an unheard word
to the worst pen

a last dispute between
masters of unbecoming

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 21 March 1662/63.

March 21, 2026March 21, 2026 by Luisa A. Igloria

Poem with a line from Linda Gregg

Fragile and momentary, we continue,
waking to the pull of breath at dawn.
Outside, the world begins to dress in light. 
So many small forms of hesitation: the way 
the kettle on the stove somehow doesn't sit 
completely within the burner's circle, 
and so the water takes longer to shrill. 
Last night's rain still lines the undersides 
of leaves, and the lamps on the street have not 
yet gone out. I am  always standing in the in-
between, one hand folded around a dream, the other 
raised toward the shape of a decision. My ear 
turning toward the last place it remembers
an animal once stopped for water.

March 21, 2026 by Dave Bonta

Holy book

Up betimes and over the water, and walked to Deptford, where up and down the yarde, and met the two clerks of the Cheques to conclude by our method their callbooks, which we have done to great perfection, and so walked home again, where I found my wife in great pain abed of her months. I staid and dined by her, and after dinner walked forth, and by water to the Temple, and in Fleet Street bought me a little sword, with gilt handle, cost 23s., and silk stockings to the colour of my riding cloth suit, cost 15s., and bought me a belt there too, cost 15s., and so calling at my brother’s I find he has got a new maid, very likely girl, I wish he do not play the fool with her. Thence homewards, and meeting with Mr. Kirton’s kinsman in Paul’s Church Yard, he and I to a coffee-house; where I hear how there had like to have been a surprizall of Dublin by some discontented protestants, and other things of like nature; and it seems the Commissioners have carried themselves so high for the Papists that the others will not endure it. Hewlett and some others are taken and clapped up; and they say the King hath sent over to dissolve the Parliament there, who went very high against the Commissioners. Pray God send all well! Hence home and in comes Captain Ferrers and by and by Mr. Bland to see me and sat talking with me till 9 or 10 at night, and so good night. The Captain to bid my wife to his child’s christening.
So my wife being pretty well again and Ashwell there we spent the evening pleasantly, and so to bed.

the book we have to eat
is the color of war

how to protest a thing
that others lap up

who miss god
and come and go in ash

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 20 March 1662/63.

March 20, 2026March 20, 2026 by Luisa A. Igloria

All Heal

The body doesn't e[r]ase or quiet  
immediately or of its own accord. 

It is a town with nerve [ending]s 
all lit up through the night, 

windows shaded, doors bolted shut
against wind or animals that howl

at the slightest noise. The body
is an archive of what tightened

the knots along its spine, what
made the jaws clench to [w]ire 

as if in place. Once there was
a bird which feathered the rooms

inside the chest, before it hid then
flew through the bars of the ribs. 

The body takes notes, keeps score. 
In its fortress it pours stones 

instead of water into jars. It knows
it needs to unlearn construction

and defense, to practice compos[t]ing
instead of ruthless accounting. 

The field that flinched from fire
passing through learns that green 

grows again. The shoulders soften
and the bird returns. The lake where

the body floats is still dark, but warmer 
and looser now on the back of the neck.