Via Negativa

February 1, 2026January 31, 2026 by Luisa A. Igloria

Questions, with Animal Footprint and Stingless Bee

river in November light between bare woods and mountain

Not yet erased from a stone  
slab in the yard: a single 

footprint of an animal, visible 
in the almost dark just as snow 

has started to fall. Was it lame 
or hurt, or bounding away from 

some pursuer? We too move through 
this uncertain space that every 

day feels more abandoned by light. 
But somehow our bodies carry us in

the dark, and we stretch our arms 
forward, feeling for the shape 

of something solid or a hand to pull 
us in the right direction toward 

home. Isn't that what we all want? 
If stingless honeybees in the rain-

forests of the Amazon have been granted
the legal right to exist and thrive 

and be legally represented when harmed
or threatened, why should our breaths

and voices not rise above a hum or leap
toward sounds that call to us in welcome?

January 31, 2026 by Dave Bonta

Ball field

Up and to my office, and there we sat till noon. I home to dinner, and there found my plate of the Soverayne with the table to it come from Mr. Christopher Pett, of which I am very glad. So to dinner late, and not very good, only a rabbit not half roasted, which made me angry with my wife. So to the office, and there till late, busy all the while. In the evening examining my wife’s letter intended to my Lady, and another to Mademoiselle; they were so false spelt that I was ashamed of them, and took occasion to fall out about them with my wife, and so she wrote none, at which, however, I was, sorry, because it was in answer to a letter of Madam about business. Late home to supper and to bed.

at home plate
only a rabbit

the evening
in her pelt

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 31 January

January 31, 2026January 30, 2026 by Luisa A. Igloria

Introduction to Literature

Nineteen pairs of eyes train
themselves on the front of the room,
perhaps on me, perhaps on an interesting
spot on the whiteboard. We are doing 
close reading, and already I see some  
slumped slightly in their chairs or leaning
toward the end of the hour. They want to know 
what it is exactly they should know to pass
this course, what it is exactly I am
supposed to want from them. These days
the world is always using words like
faster, more efficient, and optimize—
as if the mind were a flat rate box
stuffed with content on an assembly 
line, then taped and pushed down 
a chute. I long for those times we
lingered over the pages of a favorite 
book read more than once, for mornings 
unspooling toward afternoon and evening 
along with sentences so brilliant, I 
couldn't get them out of my head.

January 30, 2026 by Dave Bonta

Creation song

A solemn fast for the King’s murther, and we were forced to keep it more than we would have done, having forgot to take any victuals into the house.
I to church in the forenoon, and Mr. Mills made a good sermon upon David’s heart smiting him for cutting off the garment of Saul.
Home, and whiled away some of the afternoon at home talking with my wife. So to my office, and all alone making up my month’s accounts, which to my great trouble I find that I am got no further than 640l. But I have had great expenses this month. I pray God the next may be a little better, as I hope it will. In the evening my manuscript is brought home handsomely bound, to my full content; and now I think I have a better collection in reference to the Navy, and shall have by the time I have filled it, than any of my predecessors. So home and eat something such as we have, bread and butter and milk, and so to bed.

we keep more than we take
into the heart

all alone making
up a god

a manuscript is better
than bread and butter

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 30 January

January 30, 2026January 29, 2026 by Luisa A. Igloria

Microchimeric

In the tissue-lined channels of my body, 
the cells of my children drift like lanterns.
They flicker with messages encoded long ago,
carrying bits of story that remain on this
side of the water. Outside, they row
in the wind through their own cartography,
sometimes returing to the port of their first
origins. Sometimes I am the lighthouse keeper,
and sometimes I am my own vessel, trying
like them to breach treacherous depths
to reach a calmer sea. Across the years
and all this distance, I want to believe
there is still a quiet hum of signals at 
cellular level, and that as long as they 
are there, none of us could ever be lost.

January 29, 2026 by Dave Bonta

On leave

Lay chiding, and then pleased with my wife in bed, and did consent to her having a new waistcoate made her for that which she lost yesterday. So to the office, and sat all the morning. At noon dined with Mr. Coventry at Sir J. Minnes his lodgings, the first time that ever I did yet, and am sorry for doing it now, because of obliging me to do the like to him again. Here dined old Captn. Marsh of the Tower with us. So to visit Sir W. Pen, and then to the office, and there late upon business by myself, my wife being sick to-day. So home and to supper and to bed.

hiding in bed
a waist lost to time

I am sorry for
no use in me

like a cap of the pen
off by myself
if sick

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 29 January

January 29, 2026January 29, 2026 by Luisa A. Igloria

The Child Sleeps

The child sleeps 
in his father's arms
still wearing the clothes 
he was taken in. We pray 

he can still dream 
of bread and the soft 
pillow on his own bed, 
at home where someone 

is trying to stitch 
their fears into 
marigolds and leaves. 
We try to gather our

courage into kindling: 
speaking and naming, 
watching and witnessing. 
We know we can hold

silence and words in 
the same hand, that knees 
can sing on the hard 
streets packed 

with snow. The child 
sleeps with his mouth open. 
Look at that kind of trust 
his body still has.

January 28, 2026 by Dave Bonta

Anti-arcana

Up and all the morning at my office doing business, and at home seeing my painters’ work measured. So to dinner and abroad with my wife, carrying her to Unthank’s, where she alights, and I to my Lord Sandwich’s, whom I find missing his ague fit to-day, and is pretty well, playing at dice (and by this I see how time and example may alter a man; he being now acquainted with all sorts of pleasures and vanities, which heretofore he never thought of nor loved, nor, it may be, hath allowed) with Ned Pickering and his page Laud. Thence to the Temple to my cozen Roger Pepys, and thence to Serjt. Bernard to advise with him and retain him against my uncle, my heart and head being very heavy with the business. Thence to Wotton’s, the shoemaker, and there bought another pair of new boots, for the other I bought my last would not fit me, and here I drank with him and his wife, a pretty woman, they broaching a vessel of syder a-purpose for me. So home, and there found my wife come home, and seeming to cry; for bringing home in a coach her new ferrandin waistecoate, in Cheapside, a man asked her whether that was the way to the Tower; and while she was answering him, another, on the other side, snatched away her bundle out of her lap, and could not be recovered, but ran away with it, which vexes me cruelly, but it cannot be helped.
So to my office, and there till almost 12 at night with Mr. Lewes, learning to understand the manner of a purser’s account, which is very hard and little understood by my fellow officers, and yet mighty necessary. So at last with great content broke up and home to supper and bed.

painters work with light
who is playing with it

never loved nor allowed
in the temple

is my heavy shoe
a vessel of purpose

answering another
on the other side

a way out could be a way in
under the bed

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 28 January

January 28, 2026January 27, 2026 by Luisa A. Igloria

On Softening

Days of freezing cold, nights
listening to sleet scratch vertical
dashes on the roof and windowpanes. 
And yet, besides the tiny icicles
that hang from the limbs of the fig
tree, you've seen packed green nubs
that will purple into fruit in summer.
For now, every edge gleams sharp
as the grief of the mother scouring
the earth for the daughter taken into 
the underworld. But even now, the light 
is already changing. The hard, 
packed earth softens after thaw.

January 27, 2026January 27, 2026 by Luisa A. Igloria

Correspondence

In faded photographs you don't have 
but still clearly remember, everyone 
is facing straight at the camera but not 
smiling: uneasy truce after noisy
quarrels behind closed doors, lips 
drawn tight as the secrets they took 
with them into the grave. You can smell 
the must of the grandmother's lace mantilla, 
the wool of the father's coat. You can see 
the carefully filed points of the mother's 
nails, the veins that were starting to show 
on her hands. Each of them could have been 
a key to a row of doors, each of them 
could have been a yellowed note slipped 
into a secret pocket or the inside of a hem.   
They've left, but now and again they appear
in dreams, in the sudden craving for a taste
from another time, in the lines of an old 
song whose refrain seems familiar
though it was all before your time.