Poems & poem-like things

April 17, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Senescent

To Mr. Holliard’s in the morning, thinking to be let blood, but he was gone out. So to White Hall, thinking to have had a Seal at Privy Seal, but my Lord did not come, and so I walked back home and staid within all the afternoon, there being no office kept to-day, but in the evening Sir W. Batten sent for me to tell me that he had this day spoke to the Duke about raising our houses, and he hath given us leave to do it, at which, being glad, I went home merry, and after supper to bed.

the ink gone white
did not come back

but the evening bat
is out after supper

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 17 April 1662.

April 16, 2025April 16, 2025 by Luisa A. Igloria

Believe

river in November light between bare woods and mountain

We were told to keep our heads down.
To forget what we saw on the way 
here— Razed lands, furrows seeded
with stumps and fingers. 
We were told to close our eyes 
when flares descended to melt 
the earth under our sandals.   
Thousands of wings once beat the air
as they departed into the sky. My heart
was the size of an apple, flesh and skin
dissolving into itself. I clung 
to a promise we heard in the time before: 
there will be rain again, cool
evenings streaked with ordinary light. 
Orchards will leap up from the earth 
to embrace a chorus of returning birds.

April 16, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Resolve

Up early and took my physique; it wrought all the morning well. At noon dined, and all the afternoon, Mr. Hater to that end coming to me, he and I did go about my abstracting all the contracts made in the office since we came into it. So at night to bed.

up early to my ought
an abstract contract
made in the ice
I am at night

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 16 April 1662.

April 15, 2025April 15, 2025 by Luisa A. Igloria

Knowledge of the Soul’s Encounters

If we are all      
   
               copies  

                         if more ideal

forms of            ourselves 

                                  reside somewhere 

in the universe                
                
                 then shouldn't 

one's disappearance          

            engender 

a chain 

                 of absolute       longing  

the rupture

       a bereavement

                    felt all the way           

                                   down

April 15, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Ministry of Truth

At the office all the morning. Dined at home. Again at the office in the afternoon to despatch letters and so home, and with my wife, by coach, to the New Exchange, to buy her some things; where we saw some new-fashion pettycoats of sarcenett, with a black broad lace printed round the bottom and before, very handsome, and my wife had a mind to one of them, but we did not then buy one. But thence to Mr. Bowyer’s, thinking to have spoke to them for our Sarah to go to Huntsmore for a while to get away her ague, but we had not opportunity to do it, and so home and to bed.

at the office
in the afternoon
letters change to ash
coat the hands
in one ink

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 15 April 1662.

April 14, 2025April 14, 2025 by Luisa A. Igloria

Arachne

I stitch the scenes 
                  of the gods' excesses— their

predilection for mortal flesh,
                  their fascination with trying out

the bodies of beasts; their indiscretions. 
                  I weave the cosmos as a tapestry—  

one side a knotted chaos 
                  of carried-over strings, 

the other a prized, pearled
                  sheen. This is nothing

but honesty, though it's also
                  artistry. The goddess was displeased

because she couldn't tell the truth 
                  apart from the lie. My lies

are magnificent— an archive of evidence,
                  a triumph of detailing. They will say

I was changed in punishment for my pride;
                  they will tell you I got only

what was coming. But those are rumors in
                  a web of trembling— I know I struck

a nerve. Thus they want censorship, book
                  burning, drastic revision. Scrub away

though they might, I swing by my own tensile thread
                  in the canopy. My children multiply.

April 14, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Survivor

Being weary last night I lay very long in bed to-day, talking with my wife, and persuaded her to go to Brampton, and take Sarah with her, next week, to cure her ague by change of ayre, and we agreed all things therein.
We rose, and at noon dined, and then we to the Paynter’s, and there sat the last time for my little picture, which I hope will please me. Then to Paternoster Row to buy things for my wife against her going.
So home and walked upon the leads with my wife, and whether she suspected anything or no I know not, but she is quite off of her going to Brampton, which something troubles me, and yet all my design was that I might the freer go to Portsmouth when the rest go to pay off the yards there, which will be very shortly. But I will get off if I can.
So to supper and to bed.

night air
in the rose at noon

my little hope ongoing
in a freer mouth

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 14 April 1662.

April 14, 2025April 14, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Present Tense

disoriented by the mass slaughter of innocents
or the world as so many assumed they knew it vanishing
one might resolve to live only in the present tense

one could pay attention for example to the constant embrace of clothes
how air and water flow around and also through us
the way sound waves break against our eardrums
the proprioceptive intelligence of the feet

all the machinery of being human humming away
even for humans who lose or misplace their humanity
they must retain a muscle memory of how to crawl
the ground by and large continues to hold them up
lightning fails to edit them out of the story
prayers do not curdle in their unremarkable mouths
they fish with gilded forks through a bitter stew

shielded by double-glazed windows from the calls of birds
and soon enough the thunderous love-songs of 17-year locusts
currently still as pale as an army of spirits
tunnelling up through roots and rocks and mud

April 13, 2025April 13, 2025 by Luisa A. Igloria

Link and Spore

Before we coast    
  
                               into the lift

the pilot 
says a few words 
  on his many years          of experience

as if to reassure

There may be some                      turbulence
   
Cloudiness in the skies      over Chicago

a light wind but this is            never only just
about weather

Yesterday                          walking under

the train tracks downtown   
           My friend and I          looked into her camera for

a selfie                     The light was so bright 

 it glanced off my glasses 
     in such a way                 it made my pupils look white
    
We spoke of how we are       blind—

                                 Time is always breaking
and catching         
                       We think of the pauses as 

   interminable when in                   truth      it is fear
That can’t see past its face

                               But my friend sat with seedlings
for a hundred days  
            learning how it is          that we are 
                    all connected to the earth


~ For Myrna, and M.G.

April 13, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Night of broken glass

(Lord’s day). In the morning to Paul’s, where I heard a pretty good sermon, and thence to dinner with my Lady at the Wardrobe; and after much talk with her after dinner, I went to the Temple to Church, and there heard another: by the same token a boy, being asleep, fell down a high seat to the ground, ready to break his neck, but got no hurt.
Thence to Graye’s Inn walkes; and there met Mr. Pickering and walked with him two hours till 8 o’clock till I was quite weary. His discourse most about the pride of the Duchess of York; and how all the ladies envy my Lady Castlemaine. He intends to go to Portsmouth to meet the Queen this week; which is now the discourse and expectation of the town.
So home, and no sooner come but Sir W. Warren comes to me to bring me a paper of Field’s (with whom we have lately had a great deal of trouble at the office), being a bitter petition to the King against our office for not doing justice upon his complaint to us of embezzlement of the King’s stores by one Turpin. I took Sir William to Sir W. Pen’s (who was newly come from Walthamstow), and there we read it and discoursed, but we do not much fear it, the King referring it to the Duke of York. So we drank a glass or two of wine, and so home and I to bed, my wife being in bed already.

in the war I am
a boy asleep

ready to break the gray
lock of the castle

his own home
on paper

a bitter petition
for justice plain as glass

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 13 April 1662.