Via Negativa

October 7, 2024October 7, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Sky watcher

Up in the morning and to my uncle Fenner’s, thinking to have met Peg Kite about her business but she comes not, so I went to Dr. Williams, where I found him sick in bed and was sorry for it. So about business all day, troubled in my mind till I can hear from Brampton, how things go on at Sturtlow, at the Court, which I was cleared in at night by a letter, which tells me that my cozen Tom was there to be admitted, in his father’s name, as heir-at-law, but that he was opposed, and I was admitted by proxy, which put me out of great trouble of mind.

up a kite comes
where my mind can go

clear as the heir
of great trouble

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 7 October 1661.

October 7, 2024October 6, 2024 by Luisa A. Igloria

Aftermath, with Asteroid from Arjuna

river in November light between bare woods and mountain

What has happened to the soil, we ask,
that leather boots are melting; that wood

palings look passed through mouths toothed 
with blades. And what has happened to passages 

inland that used to shelter instead of shatter,
hillsides where we buried our dead, entrusting 

them to the good, slow patience of years? 
I cannot blame those who say they can't 

bear to bring another life into this world, 
raise a flag to some other idea of endurance. 

These days even the sun seems to wear 
a lighter coat of radiance, though a second 

moon has quietly slipped into our orbit
as if in sympathy, for a little while.

October 6, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Cold comforter

(Lord’s day). To church in the morning; Mr. Mills preached, who, I expect, should take in snuffe that my wife not come to his child’s christening the other day. The winter coming on, many of parish ladies are come home and appear at church again; among others, the three sisters the Thornbury’s, a very fine, and the most zealous people that ever I saw in my life, even to admiration, if it were true zeal. There was also my pretty black girl, Mrs. Dekins, and Mrs. Margaret Pen, this day come to church in a new flowered satin suit that my wife helped to buy her the other day.
So home to dinner, and to church in the afternoon to St. Gregory’s, by Paul’s, where I saw Mr. Moore in the gallery and went up to him and heard a good sermon of Dr. Buck’s, one I never heard before, a very able man. So home, and in the evening I went to my Valentine, her father and mother being out of town, to fetch her to supper to my house, and then came Sir W. Pen and would have her to his, so with much sport I got them all to mine, and we were merry, and so broke up and to bed.

I preach the winter coming on
the thorn in life

a true black flower
for the evening moth

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 6 October 1661.

October 6, 2024October 6, 2024 by Luisa A. Igloria

Saturday in E-Mart

In E-Mart we find a box of brownskinned 
Chico or Sapodilla beside green bayabas

in plastic sleeves. The old Star
Margarine from your childhood  

is in its familiar yellow plastic yellow tub, but now 
goes under the label Star Classique. You still wonder 

how tins of liver spread came to be named Reno; 
how many times you ate breakfasts of fried egg 

and Vienna sausages; if calavaza is the same as kabocha, 
moringga the same as malunggay. The shelves 

in every aisle are packed with jars and containers 
inviting you to look, to listen for the crackle of crisps 

through foil, to what bids you enter that space, trust you'll 
recognize it if not by touch then by sight, smell, taste.

October 5, 2024October 5, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Ungodly

At the office all the morning, then dined at home, and so staid at home all the afternoon putting up my Lord’s model of the Royal James, which I borrowed of him long ago to hang up in my room. And at night Sir W. Pen and I alone to the Dolphin, and there eat some bloat-herrings and drank good sack. Then came in Sir W. Warren and another and staid a while with us, and then Sir Arnold Brames, with whom we staid late and till we had drank too much wine. So home and I to bed pleased at my afternoon’s work in hanging up the shipp. So to bed.

no Lord to hang
up in my room

alone I bloat
with too much wine

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 5 October 1661.

October 5, 2024October 4, 2024 by Luisa A. Igloria

Five Ways to Say This

Here are the first three ways 
to say this in Ilocano when 
referring to a visible object:

Daytoy—

                        This is a picture of us
taken over thirty years ago at a small 
photo studio owned by a friend, right 
across from the gate of a university 
(nice location, I told her). She had us 
pose with various accessories from 
her studio stash: purple scarves, 
purple drape; royal purple, the color 
of a bruise partway healed.

Dagitoy—

             These are among
the only articles that remain
from that time. I wrap them
in plastic and lay them in boxes.
I keep them though I know 
they would probably not 
survive a fire or a flood 
or our common, 
certain end.

Dayta—

           In the credenza 
is a box of smoky jade  
tea mugs: an artist mixed 
clay with ashes she gathered 
in the aftermath of Mount
Pinatubo's explosion.  
 
There is a fourth 
form, referring to something 
not in view or off at some distance:

Daydiay—

                    Those are the same  
ashes into which whole towns 
and churches sank. You could tell 
which ones by their belfries, by
the halos still on the sculpted
heads of saints. In the distance,
scudding clouds.

The fifth refers to something
or to one that no longer exists: 

Daydi—

                  (The absent, gone) —

October 4, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Incitement

By coach to White Hall with Sir W. Pen. So to Mr. Montagu, where his man, Mons. Eschar, makes a great complaint against the English, that they did help the Spaniards against the French the other day; and that their Embassador do demand justice of our King, and that he do resolve to be gone for France the next week; which I, and all that I met with, are very glad of. Thence to Paternoster Row, where my Will did receive the 50l. I borrowed yesterday. I to the Wardrobe to dinner, and there staid most of the afternoon very merry with the ladies. Then Captain Ferrers and I to the Theatre, and there came too late, so we staid and saw a bit of “Victoria,” which pleased me worse than it did the other day. So we staid not to see it out, but went out and drank a bottle or two of China ale, and so home, where I found my wife vexed at her people for grumbling to eat Suffolk cheese, which I also am vexed at. So to bed.

plain as a Pater Noster
the war stayed in a bottle
rumbling

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 4 October 1661.

October 4, 2024October 3, 2024 by Luisa A. Igloria

Short History of Cars My Father Used to Own

The last car my father bought was the last car he ever owned, 
we ever owned—a burgundy Mitsubishi Galant, bought 
at great cost and enterprise from an auto supplier in Manila, 
delivered at equally great enterprise to our house because
my father did not drive. It sat in a makeshift garage that consisted 
of beams erected on the right side of the house, over which
a corrugated iron roof was erected, until he found a driver 
willing to work part-time, as needed. The first car 
I remember him buying was a used car—dirty white, 
sharpfinned Impala, the kind with the tiny triangular windows 
on the side of each front window you could crank open and close 
with a small winding knob. The second car my father owned 
was a green Mercedes Benz, a hand-me-down from one 
of his rich Ilocano politician cousins. There were 
pictures of me entering that car with its cracked 
leather upholstery, holding up the skirt of my wedding 
dress in one hand and clutching a spray of white cattleyas 
in the other. What each cost, I don't exactly know—the cars, 
my father's standing in the eyes of colleagues, friends, 
clients. The orchids were free, a gift from a neighbor; 
that first marriage, fifteen difficult years of always 
being told you could only resign yourself to it, couldn't 
trade it in, resell, or simply leave in the yard 
to rust and choke among the bindweed.

October 3, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Material

At the office all the morning; dined at home, and in the afternoon Mr. Moore came to me, and he and I went to Tower Hill to meet with a man, and so back all three to my house, and there I signed a bond to Mr. Battersby, a friend of Mr. Moore’s, who lends me 50l., the first money that ever I borrowed upon bond for my own occasion, and so I took them to the Mitre and a Portugal millon with me; there sat and discoursed in matters of religion till night with great pleasure, and so parted, and I home, calling at Sir W. Batten’s, where his son and his wife were, who had yesterday been at the play where we were, and it was good sport to hear how she talked of it with admiration like a fool. So home, and my head was not well with the wine that I drank to-day.

batter me with matter
o religion o art

we go well
with wine

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 3 October 1661.

October 3, 2024October 1, 2024 by Luisa A. Igloria

Bones

It walks the shore, if walking can describe 
what the wind does to a body made of poly-
vinyl parts. It is intricate as a fossil assembly

holding court in the atrium of a museum 
of natural history. Yet there are beings 
whose forms we can't articulate, 

because their bones washed away
or were entombed in glacial mud.  
The wind is a bellows, the wind is a sail.

It fills the hollows of a body and spreads
an energy like life along each tensile node.
I know at least three people who have had

either hip or knee replacement surgery.
They talk about taking walks through 
the neighborhood again, or even dancing.