Poems & poem-like things

March 26, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Jihad

Up early. This being, by God’s great blessing, the fourth solemn day of my cutting for the stone this day four years, and am by God’s mercy in very good health, and like to do well, the Lord’s name be praised for it. To the office and Sir G. Carteret’s all the morning about business. At noon come my good guests, Madame Turner, The., and Cozen Norton, and a gentleman, one Mr. Lewin of the King’s LifeGuard; by the same token he told us of one of his fellows killed this morning in a duel. I had a pretty dinner for them, viz., a brace of stewed carps, six roasted chickens, and a jowl of salmon, hot, for the first course; a tanzy and two neats’ tongues, and cheese the second; and were very merry all the afternoon, talking and singing and piping upon the flageolette. In the evening they went with great pleasure away, and I with great content and my wife walked half an hour in the garden, and so home to supper and to bed.
We had a man-cook to dress dinner to-day, and sent for Jane to help us, and my wife and she agreed at 3l. a year (she would not serve under) till both could be better provided, and so she stays with us, and I hope we shall do well if poor Sarah were but rid of her ague.

like the Lord’s name
on a killed tongue

the flag we serve
stays poor

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 26 March 1662.

March 25, 2025March 25, 2025 by Luisa A. Igloria

Point and Scale

river in November light between bare woods and mountain


Horizon line, vanishing point, convergence—
concepts first learned in perspective drawing 
from Mr. Caja, my first art teacher. I think

he was a clerk in some office during the day.
But on weekends the Belgian nuns and priests
who ran the elementary school on the hill

let him have two drafty rooms above the space 
where children took piano lessons, sometimes
getting their pancake fingers rapped 

with a pencil. Grey-haired and unassuming in his 
plain jacket and dusty slacks, yet he came to life
in that makeshift studio where on rough planks

he set out wooden cylinders, blocks, smooth
round or oval shapes. How does one learn 
to move more surely inside the outline, 

discern the source of light so shadow can be 
filled in properly? Easy to feel confused as lines
and details begin to crowd on paper, lean crooked

or badly measured. I want to figure out 
the world in smaller spaces, because the too-
real world is swollen if not with elegy, then 

with the detritus of memory. Constant cries, 
demanding love or time or sacrifice. And why 
is it these seem infinitely interchangeable?

But I don't pity the worm whose sights turn outward 
from the soil of its burrowing; nor envy the bird and its 
aerial view. Both think their distance from the horizon

is a kind of destiny or curse until one tries to snatch 
up the other, and the other tunnels deeper into the loam;
and all of us return to the mere but exquisite present.

March 25, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Coalface

Lady Day. All the morning at the office. Dined with my wife at home. Then to the office, where (while Sir Wms both did examine the Victuallers account) I sat in my closet drawing letters and other businesses — being much troubled for want of an order of the Councells lately sent us, about making of boates for some ships now going to Jamaica. At last, late at night, I had a Copy sent me of it by Sir G. Lane from the Council Chamber. With my mind well at ease, home and to supper and bed.

all morning in the mine
for an ounce of night

a copy of my mind
as an upper bed

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 25 March 1661/62.

March 24, 2025March 24, 2025 by Luisa A. Igloria

Signs and Wonders

Once, buying a pair of kitten-
heeled pumps as a gift for my mother 
(she'd walked past the store window 
more than once to admire them), my
father tucked a peso bill into each 
toe box. Though I didn't quite 
understand how this rendered the gift, 
even if gift, more than just a thing-
transaction, I knew he believed in 
the power of symbols—how they 
scatter potency through life in the guise 
of ordinary things, then transform 
into meaning. Each new year's eve,
he'd wear the same yellow silk
shirt with orange dots, circles
being the sign for wealth and luck.
Every surface could be an augur,
a token of the future, a foreboding:
warts on a finger, the shell 
discarded by a cicada like a coat; 
fish scales refracting light 
like a prism or a disco ball.

March 24, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Bearish

Early Sir G. Carteret, both Sir Williams and I on board the Experiment, to dispatch her away, she being to carry things to the Madeiras with the East Indy fleet. Here (Sir W. Pen going to Deptford to send more hands) we staid till noon talking, and eating and drinking a good ham of English bacon, and having put things in very good order home, where I found Jane, my old maid, come out of the country, and I have a mind to have her again.
By and by comes La Belle Pierce to see my wife, and to bring her a pair of peruques of hair, as the fashion now is for ladies to wear; which are pretty, and are of my wife’s own hair, or else I should not endure them. After a good whiles stay, I went to see if any play was acted, and I found none upon the post, it being Passion week. So home again, and took water with them towards Westminster; but as we put off with the boat Griffin came after me to tell me that Sir G. Carteret and the rest were at the office, so I intended to see them through the bridge and come back again, but the tide being against us, when we were almost through we were carried back again with much danger, and Mrs. Pierce was much afeard and frightened. So I carried them to the other side and walked to the Beare, and sent them away, and so back again myself to the office, but finding nobody there I went again to the Old Swan, and thence by water to the New Exchange, and there found them, and thence by coach carried my wife to Bowes to buy something, and while they were there went to Westminster Hall, and there bought Mr. Grant’s book of observations upon the weekly bills of mortality, which appear to me upon first sight to be very pretty.
So back again and took my wife, calling at my brother Tom’s, whom I found full of work, which I am glad of, and thence at the New Exchange and so home, and I to Sir W. Batten’s, and supped there out of pure hunger and to save getting anything ready at home, which is a thing I do not nor shall not use to do.
So home and to bed.

here in the hair I wear
my wife’s passion
to be with a bear

I change at first sight
back into my work
of pure hunger

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 24 March 1661/62.

March 23, 2025 by Dave Bonta

What About the Children

empty playground
snow on all the swings

the missing children on phones
or under rubble

the missing photographer
replaced by AI

it’s as perfect as the snow
at an indoor ski resort in Dubai

a vision of bleakness from some
mind of summer

where childhood ends
in a bully’s empty pledge

***

in response to this photo, used as a recent writing prompt by tiny words

March 23, 2025March 23, 2025 by Luisa A. Igloria

The Language of the Law

Parents sometimes say things like I hope
you follow in my footsteps. Or at least, 
my parents did. In my case, the hope was 
law school, because my father was a lawyer 
most of his life; then in the last twelve 
or fifteen, a judge in the local circuit 
court. I was in high school when he started, 
and had learned to type. He was, however, 
no good at it; but didn't think he should
ask any of the law clerks or secretaries 
to type up his statements of decision. And so 
at the end of the day on Fridays, he'd lug home 
one of the office machines, a heavy Remington 
Standard with a gunmetal frame and green keys, 
and ask for my help. I loved the language of 
the law— formal, latinate, nuanced— though I 
didn't always understand everything such words 
could mean: prima facie, incumbent; appellate, 
plea, substantial evidence. We sat at the table
after dinner, my fingers ready to go while he
chewed on the end of a pencil as he reviewed
scribbles on a legal pad. Interviewers often
ask me how it happened that my daughters 
became writers too; and how or if I'd pushed 
them (that always gives me pause). How much
of our propensities— that bright quickening 
to language, those qualities of dark brooding— 
are passed down somehow in the blood? How much 
is nurtured, willed, imposed; and how much accident, 
a hand held out as if to say stop, that's not  
what I intended? And it's true, we look to language
to help us regulate, to keep monarchs from corrupting
their powers, to give expression to both the seething 
and the profound intimacies in our days. Not yet
a perfect arbitration by any means, but I think
there was a time when we said things like justice
and rights and recourse to the law for remedy or
relief, and it felt like we knew what these meant.

March 23, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Pearly

(Lord’s day). This morning was brought me my boy’s fine livery, which is very handsome, and I do think to keep to black and gold lace upon gray, being the colour of my arms, for ever. To church in the morning, and so home with Sir W. Batten, and there eat some boiled great oysters, and so home, and while I was at dinner with my wife I was sick, and was forced to vomit up my oysters again, and then I was well.
By and by a coach came to call me by my appointment, and so my wife and I carried to Westminster to Mrs. Hunt’s, and I to Whitehall, Worcester House, and to my Lord Treasurer’s to have found Sir G. Carteret, but missed in all these places. So back to White Hall, and there met with Captn. Isham, this day come from Lisbon, with letters from the Queen to the King. And he did give me letters which speak that our fleet is all at Lisbon; and that the Queen do not intend to embarque sooner than tomorrow come fortnight.
So having sent for my wife, she and I to my Lady Sandwich, and after a short visit away home. She home, and I to Sir G. Carteret’s about business, and so home too, and Sarah having her fit we went to bed.

morning the color
of some great oyster

while I am
by appointment

with the peak
for a short sit

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 23 March 1661/62.

March 22, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Substitutionary

At the office all the morning. At noon Sir Williams both and I by water down to the Lewes, Captain Dekins, his ship, a merchantman, where we met the owners, Sir John Lewes and Alderman Lewes, and several other great merchants; among others one Jefferys, a merry man that is a fumbler, and he and I called brothers, and he made all the mirth in the company. We had a very fine dinner, and all our wives’ healths, with seven or nine guns apiece; and exceeding merry we were, and so home by barge again, and I vexed to find Griffin leave the office door open, and had a design to have carried away the screw or the carpet in revenge to him, but at last I would not, but sent for him and chid him, and so to supper and to bed, having drank a great deal of wine.

water to the captain
is company and health

we barge in and leave
the door open

to a last supper having
a great deal of wine

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 22 March 1661/62.

March 22, 2025March 21, 2025 by Luisa A. Igloria

What Takes the Breath

Such a curious word— breathtaking. To take
one's breath. Away. One can take precautions,

take five, take advice, take note; take pity,
take hostage... I too am floored by moments

called breathtaking. It can take so little for
that catch of breath in the throat. It's as though 

a finger presses lightly inward at the hollow 
center of your collarbone. And yes, all of us 

have lost and grieved our dead. But recently, 
I heard someone say that those who've wilfully 

cut ties with us have also become as if dead. 
That's the kind of grief I've been carrying, 

since my firstborn stopped speaking to me
nearly four years ago now. But doesn't loss

imply a previous ownership; or if not ownership,
then a belonging? I grieve too over my inability

to lift the longsuffering of others I love, 
whether from mental illness or anxiety or just

the everyday bludgeoning by life. On a train, 
in a coach where the seats face away from 

the direction it's headed, I watch the landscape 
recede as if toward the past. Out here in rural 

Virginia, horses and cows against brilliant 
green; then hulls of houses gone to ruin 

followed by rows of boxy apartments and squares 
of parking lots. Back home, there's an amateur 

telescope which we haven't used because of light
pollution. Here, I imagine nights unroll a dark

that could be truer dark. Nightfall means the onset
of night. But can I also think of it as the fall of

night? The fall of those forces which cloud our joy,
leave nothing warm even in spaces of abundant silence.