In our final year of high school, my friends and I
were studying at home for a test on the works
of the national hero, including the very last poem
he wrote before he was marched out of his cell and into
the field where he would be shot by firing squad at sunrise.
Between mouthfuls of chips and swigs of soda, we tried
to recite the poem in stumbling Spanish— Mi Ultimo Adios.
The story is that his sisters found it, soot-covered, in an alcohol
lamp. As we prepared to leave for school, my friends waved
their thanks and goodbye to my mother, busy at her sewing
machine. My Last Farewell, I intoned dramatically,
swinging the door open. My mother's head snapped up
and she shrieked, Don't say that, don't ever say that again,
as if I'd turned into a frightening angel of prophecy.
Poetry Blog Digest 2024, Week 34
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: community with the dead, peyote in the cornfield, a cursed seaside town, wasps as good fairies, god’s forked tongue, and more. Enjoy!
Continue reading “Poetry Blog Digest 2024, Week 34”Hot
This morning before I went out I made even with my maid Jane, who has this day been my maid three years, and is this day to go into the country to her mother. The poor girl cried, and I could hardly forbear weeping to think of her going, for though she be grown lazy and spoilt by Pall’s coming, yet I shall never have one to please us better in all things, and so harmless, while I live. So I paid her her wages and gave her 2s. 6d. over, and bade her adieu, with my mind full of trouble at her going.
Hence to my father, where he and I and Thomas together setting things even, and casting up my father’s accounts, and upon the whole I find that all he hath in money of his own due to him in the world is but 45l., and he owes about the same sum: so that I cannot but think in what a condition he had left my mother if he should have died before my uncle Robert. Hence to Tom Trice for the probate of the will and had it done to my mind, which did give my father and me good content.
From thence to my Lady at the Wardrobe and thence to the Theatre, and saw the “Antipodes,” wherein there is much mirth, but no great matter else. Hence with Mr. Bostock whom I met there (a clerk formerly of Mr. Phelps) to the Devil tavern, and there drank and so away. I to my uncle Fenner’s, where my father was with him at an alehouse, and so we three went by ourselves and sat talking a great while about a broker’s daughter that he do propose for a wife for Tom, with a great portion, but I fear it will not take, but he will do what he can. So we broke up, and going through the street we met with a mother and son, friends of my father’s man, Ned’s, who are angry at my father’s putting him away, which troubled me and my father, but all will be well as to that.
We have news this morning of my uncle Thomas and his son Thomas being gone into the country without giving notice thereof to anybody, which puts us to a stand, but I fear them not.
At night at home I found a letter from my Lord Sandwich, who is now very well again of his feaver, but not yet gone from Alicante, where he lay sick, and was twice let blood. This letter dated the 22nd July last, which puts me out of doubt of his being ill. In my coming home I called in at the Crane tavern at the Stocks by appointment, and there met and took leave of Mr. Fanshaw, who goes to-morrow and Captain Isham toward their voyage to Portugal. Here we drank a great deal of wine, I too much and Mr. Fanshaw till he could hardly go. So we took leave one of another.
who could think the world
should die of heat
the devil our broker
will do what he can
with a body in fever
becoming a war
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 26 August 1661.
Bloodletting
This is a dream: I reach up a hand to the left
side of my neck and feel a body burrowing there—
leech I extract with my fingers. Since it is a dream,
I don't recoil from the soft squishiness of this body
that wants something from me so badly, it clings
with its whole mouth.
This is not a dream:
I could give blood, but my liver harbors
a disease that has taken over my whole
network of distribution.
Back in the dream, I pull
but something is left behind, tenacious as desire.
I barely feel it, since I can't remember when it first
found me, and somehow found me hospitable.
Specimen
What is the name of those little bugs
whose backs are stencilled with
a Mondrian-like design? —squares
within squares in a grid of black and
green, spots of red in between.
They like to linger on the siding
around the mailbox and the lamp,
meticulous as pendants or cufflinks.
Some days, the humdrum walls
look curated, like in museums.
So much amassed inventory,
not all tagged and labeled;
miniature pans of color that look as if
they'd bloom with the merest touch.
Unsettlement
(Lord’s day). At church in the morning, and dined at home alone with my wife very comfortably, and so again to church with her, and had a very good and pungent sermon of Mr. Mills, discoursing the necessity of restitution.
Home, and I found my Lady Batten and her daughter to look something askew upon my wife, because my wife do not buckle to them, and is not solicitous for their acquaintance, which I am not troubled at at all.
By and by comes in my father (he intends to go into the country to-morrow), and he and I among other discourse at last called Pall up to us, and there in great anger told her before my father that I would keep her no longer, and my father he said he would have nothing to do with her. At last, after we had brought down her high spirit, I got my father to yield that she should go into the country with my mother and him, and stay there awhile to see how she will demean herself. That being done, my father and I to my uncle Wight’s, and there supped, and he took his leave of them, and so I walked with [him] as far as Paul’s and there parted, and I home, my mind at some rest upon this making an end with Pall, who do trouble me exceedingly.
alone with my comfort
a pungent necessity
to look askew
to call up a high spirit
to yield to the mother
of all trouble
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 25 August 1661.
Unmixed drink
At the office all the morning and did business; by and by we are called to Sir W. Batten’s to see the strange creature that Captain Holmes hath brought with him from Guiny; it is a great baboon, but so much like a man in most things, that though they say there is a species of them, yet I cannot believe but that it is a monster got of a man and she-baboon. I do believe that it already understands much English, and I am of the mind it might be taught to speak or make signs.
Hence the Comptroller and I to Sir Rd. Ford’s and viewed the house again, and are come to a complete end with him to give him 200l. per an. for it.
Home and there met Capt. Isham inquiring for me to take his leave of me, he being upon his voyage to Portugal, and for my letters to my Lord which are not ready. But I took him to the Mitre and gave him a glass of sack, and so adieu, and then straight to the Opera, and there saw “Hamlet, Prince of Denmark,” done with scenes very well, but above all, Betterton did the prince’s part beyond imagination.
Hence homeward, and met with Mr. Spong and took him to the Sampson in Paul’s churchyard, and there staid till late, and it rained hard, so we were fain to get home wet, and so to bed.
like a species of monster
that understands English
I might take a glass
of straight rain
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 24 August 1661.
Sirenity
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Page 51 from Max Ernst’s Une Semaine de Bonté
Reclining on a pincushion, your needle eyes tethered to their fine threads of dream, how extravagant were you, my siren! A movable feast of wreckage brought the best jetsam, ship bellies opening on the reef, releasing their cargo into the current. Yet we fish in your waters still, drawn by the roar and hiss of surf, applicants for permanent residence in the flow state. Our ships carry factories; our nets are vast and drag weights that brutalize the unseen depths. Our earplugs are made of old age and apostasy. I sing sometimes in the shower, under my breath.
Too Much
At the beginning of time, all creatures of the deep
were summoned to a meeting. And all came, except
for one who claimed it did not have enough bones
in its body that would allow it to cover the great
distance; and so all the other fish gifted it one bone
from their own bodies. When I feel I have too much,
sometimes I remember this story about bangus:
milkfish, nawa, ikan bandung, chanos chanos—
and how its body came to be a minefield of shafts.
Its scientific name derives from the Greek χάνος
which means mouth (though its mouth is small
and toothless). This is a story I was told in childhood,
often as I nearly choked on thread-thin clumps hiding
within mouthfuls of its tender flesh. There's a whole
museum dedicated to bangus in a city in Taiwan,
where schools of sculpted, gleaming milkfish float
above the staircase, held by fishing lines. Then
as now, I want to know why it didn't or couldn't
give back what was clearly too much; and what it learned,
slicing through the waters with its own arsenal of barbs.
Encamped
This morning I went to my father’s, and there found him and my mother in a discontent, which troubles me much, and indeed she is become very simple and unquiet. Hence he and I to Dr. Williams, and found him within, and there we sat and talked a good while, and from him to Tom Trice’s to an alehouse near, and there sat and talked, and finding him fair we examined my uncle’s will before him and Dr. Williams, and had them sign the copy and so did give T. Trice the original to prove, so he took my father and me to one of the judges of the Court, and there we were sworn, and so back again to the alehouse and drank and parted.
Dr. Williams and I to a cook’s where we eat a bit of mutton, and away, I to W. Joyce’s, where by appointment my wife was, and I took her to the Opera, and shewed her “The Witts,” which I had seen already twice, and was most highly pleased with it.
So with my wife to the Wardrobe to see my Lady, and then home.
in a tent I become simple
and quiet with rice
to copy the original joy
in my high
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 23 August 1661.