Month: March 2024

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Ghosts

river in November light between bare woods and mountain 

My father was twenty
years older than my mother
when they married—in a photograph 
I remember seeing, she wore no veil
but was the image of simple 

elegance, her slender neck 
emerging from the cowl of a sheath 
dress she sewed herself. No one 
would guess she came from a sleepy 
town far north: the air tobacco-

scented, textured like carabao hide.
In the short interval after that, I know
I was born. What I know of them
as I grew up is wrapped in clouds 
of dusting powder and tang 

of aftershave, rituals of washing 
and dressing, eating and drinking;
the alcove where they stationed 
their saints and shed the cuff 
links and chains of the everyday.

My youngest daughter said one night 
at the dinner table, perhaps our ghosts 
don't really haunt us. Perhaps it is us 
who are their ghosts, for as long 
as we  keep thinking of them.
Posted on by Dave Bonta

Surf

Sam Pepys and me

To Whitehall and there with Mr. Creed took a most pleasant walk for two hours in the park, which is now a very fine place.
Here we had a long and candid discourse one to another of one another’s condition, and he giving me an occasion I told him of my intention to get 60l. paid me by him for a gratuity for my labour extraordinary at sea. Which he did not seem unwilling to, and therefore I am very glad it is out.
To my Lord’s, where we found him newly come from Hinchingbroke, where he left my uncle very well, but my aunt not likely to live.
I staid and dined with him. He took me aside, and asked me what the world spoke of the King’s marriage. Which I answering as one that knew nothing, he enquired no further of me. But I do perceive by it that there is something in it that is ready to come out that the world knows not of yet.
After dinner into London to Mrs. Turner’s and my father’s, made visits and then home, where I sat late making of my journal for four days past, and so to bed.

white wave on the sea
newly broke

like a world that knew
nothing of the world

turn home
making a bed


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 9 March 1660/61.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Water Clock

river in November light between bare woods and mountain 
Slip your feet into sandals, your shoulders out of loose sweaters.

A slip of rain remains on the roof, and not all bodies are easy to rouse.

You wrap your body in any season, regardless of weather. 

The minutes tick quietly above the counter, practicing for the final season.

And yet, so much refusal of what's final; look, leaves rain down but blossoms open. 

It's like the world refuses to give up just yet.

A whole world teems with life in a waterdrop, under a scope.

How to stack them like a calculus, an abacus of sheen trembling on the surface?

Which is to say, the countdown began sometime ago but isn't done.

Loose coins of sunlight fall on the body remembering how to be one.
Posted on by Dave Bonta

Mosquito-eater

Sam Pepys and me

All the morning at the office. At noon Sir W. Batten, Col. Slingsby and I by coach to the Tower, to Sir John Robinson’s, to dinner.
Where great good cheer. High company; among others the Duchess of Albemarle, who is ever a plain homely dowdy.
After dinner, to drink all the afternoon. Towards night the Duchess and ladies went away. Then we set to it again till it was very late. And at last came in Sir William Wale, almost fuddled; and because I was set between him and another, only to keep them from talking and spoiling the company (as we did to others), he fell out with the Lieutenant of the Tower; but with much ado we made him under stand his error, and then all quiet. And so he carried Sir William Batten and I home again in his coach, and so I almost overcome with drink went to bed.
I was much contented to ride in such state into the Tower, and be received among such high company, while Mr. Mount, my Lady Duchess’s gentleman usher, stood waiting at table, whom I ever thought a man so much above me in all respects.
Also to hear the discourse of so many high Cavaliers of things past. It was a great content and joy to me.

bat in a tower of night
I am almost an error

the quiet carried me
over a waiting thought

so much above me to hear
so many high things


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 8 March 1660/61.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Mourning Cloak

moss like sadness
hiding old wounds

a mourning cloak butterfly
touches down

accompanied by a hydraulic drill
hammering at the quarry

and the screech of steel
from a passing coal train

the butterfly’s dark wings
edged in white look immaculate

after months secluded under
some loose flap of bark

all systems shut down
cells flooded with antifreeze

now come miraculously back
to green unshaded moss

waiting for the sun to open
her bluest wings
of pure grief

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Translations

river in November light between bare woods and mountain 

"Aanhin ang damo pag patay na ang kabayo?"
(What good is the grass to a horse already dead?)
                                         ~ Filipino proverb

Don't be a goody two-shoes, my father said: ma-
among tupa, head bowed meekly, just following

the herd. And don't be balat sibuyas: skin thin
as an onion, tearing up at the slightest injury. Malayo 

sa bituka, he'd pronounce—as long as the hurt lands far
from the gut, you won't die. Muster up a thick hide—balat

kalabaw.  But remember that nothing comes to those who
don't burn their eyebrows either—magsunog ng kilay, working

hard until dawn. Do you want to succeed, or do you want 
to wind up among those kalapating mababa ang lipad? 

Beware of scammers and sweet-talkers, those with matamis 
na dila. They'll hack their way into your soul and make off 

with everything, including the smallest nail, your cheapest 
piece of furniture. Don't cry. Don't let anyone see you

cry. You make a wrong turn, you get back in 
the saddle. You steer yourself right back again.
Posted on by Dave Bonta

Spokesperson

Sam Pepys and me

This morning Sir Williams both went to Woolwich to sell some old provisions there.
I to Whitehall, and up and down about many businesses. Dined at my Lord’s, then to Mr. Crew to Mr. Moore, and he and I to London to Guildhall to see the seamen paid off, but could not without trouble, and so I took him to the Fleece tavern, where the pretty woman that Luellin lately told me the story of dwells, but I could not see her.
Then towards home and met Spicer, D. Vines, Ruddiard, and a company more of my old acquaintance, and went into a place to drink some ale, and there we staid playing the fool till late, and so I home.
At home met with ill news that my hopes of getting some money for the Charles were spoiled through Mr. Waith’s perverseness, which did so vex me that I could not sleep at night. But I wrote a letter to him to send to-morrow morning for him to take my money for me, and so with good words I thought to coy with him. To bed.

I sell visions
about any sin without
too pretty a story

but I see the war more
my old acquaintance
in drink

playing with ill news
getting the spoil
into good words


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 7 March 1660/61.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

The End of Suffering

river in November light between bare woods and mountain 
In the matter of children—I didn't want
to inflict on mine the kinds of expectations

children of my generation unfailingly got from our
own parents: you will be a doctor, you will be a nurse,

you will be a lawyer or else; you will enter the nunnery 
or become a priest so there will be someone who 

can plead our case in the afterlife. At least one
of mine says she doesn't want to have any children,

given the state of the world. Which is to say, 
the decimation of human and nonhuman life,  

the terrible cruelties and hatreds that daily fly 
through the air— landing as spit on the dusky 

cheek of a woman on a train, falling as a rain 
of bombs on the defenceless sleeping in refugee 

camps. A grandfather kicked in the shins, a woman
thrown to the ground in the street—hate and harm,

harm and hate, their letters almost interchangeable.
A poet told of traveling through the nearly impossible 

dark where a deer lay rigid on a mountain 
road, the unborn fawn still warm inside her. 

Why is the end of suffering promised as a heaven 
no one can see, but that many seem so certain of?
Posted on by Dave Bonta

Fog-bound

Sam Pepys and me

At the office all the morning. At dinner Sir W. Batten came and took me and my wife to his house to dinner, my Lady being in the country, where we had a good Lenten dinner.
Then to Whitehall with Captn. Cuttle, and there I did some business with Mr. Coventry, and after that home, thinking to have had Sir W. Batten, &c., to have eat a wigg at my house at night. But my Lady being come home out of the country ill by reason of much rain that has fallen lately, and the waters being very high, we could not, and so I home and to bed.

morning came
in a white wig

a country of rain
fallen late and high


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 6 March 1660/61.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Garter Snake

what i had taken for a path
you knew to be home

your long striped road of a body
coiled in last year’s leaves

poised for whatever the first
day of spring might bring

to a hill scarred and scoured
by centuries of exploitation

i study your legless stance
you gaze off to the north

your tongue flickering
i hold out marshmallow hands

show me how to inhabit
one thought at a time

even if i cannot simply
crawl out of an old skin

i could hone my cravings
till they’re small and sharp