Via Negativa

December 9, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Catastrophist

Lay long with my wife, contenting her about the business of Gosnell’s going, and I perceive she will be contented as well as myself, and so to the office, and after sitting all the morning in hopes to have Mr. Coventry dine with me, he was forced to go to White Hall, and so I dined with my own company only, taking Mr. Hater home with me, but he, poor man, was not very well, and so could not eat any thing. After dinner staid within all the afternoon, being vexed in my mind about the going away of Sarah this afternoon, who cried mightily, and so was I ready to do, and Jane did also, and then anon went Gosnell away, which did trouble me too; though upon many considerations, it is better that I am rid of the charge. All together makes my house appear to me very lonely, which troubles me much, and in a melancholy humour I went to the office, and there about business sat till I was called to Sir G. Carteret at the Treasury office about my Lord Treasurer’s letter, wherein he puts me to a new trouble to write it over again. So home and late with Sir John Minnes at the office looking over Mr. Creed’s accounts, and then home and to supper, and my wife and I melancholy to bed.

my wife going
I dine with my own hate

my mind going
I am rid of the charge

in a melancholy letter I write
to my melancholy bed

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 9 December 1662.

December 9, 2025December 9, 2025 by Luisa A. Igloria

marbled

river in November light between bare woods and mountain

flame-colored and obsidian spokes, trapped in marble orbs—

children flick these into a circle, serious but at play. 
 
to be ground-level, eye-level, and sense the tremble

of what you can't see beneath the only surface

you know: echos of passing traffic, daily clamor

from rushing to or from some important purpose.

describe this strange vessel which we inhabit,

our feet rushing to or from some important purpose.

you know the echoes of passing traffic, daily clamor

of what you can't even see beneath the only surface.

meet it ground-level, eye-level, sense the tremble

as childen flick globes into a circle, serious but at play.

flame-colored and obsidian spokes, trapped in marble orbs—

December 8, 2025December 9, 2025 by Luisa A. Igloria

Apnea

A high pile of pillows in bed, tufted 
mattresses, double-lined quilts. Side 

sleepers, face-down sleepers, flat-on-
the-back sleepers chasing the elusive

dream of sleep. But we lose count: sheep 
show no signs of quitting their high jump

marathons. The moon keeps training
its too bright spotlight through 

the window. Is it that we've grown  
too soft, too dependent on the idea 

of sinking as release? In one museum 
alcove, shelves of wooden and porcelain

takamakura, curved to cradle the neck and
head of the sleeper in such a way as to 

provide both a cooling effect and preserve
elaborate hairstyles. Perhaps they were on

to something, all those geishas and others
who lay on a mat and rested their heads

on these pillows, even while entertaining
the suitor that slid into the chamber at night,

having first slipped a poem of supplication
into the hands of a lady-in-waiting. Soft 

light from the moon filters through screens 
as though it did not have an iron core 

and a silicate mantle. When I purchase 
a sobakawa or pillow filled with buckwheat 

hulls, I'm thinking only of how tilting 
the chin upwards lifts the tongue away from 

the back of the throat, straightening the airway 
to better aid the flow of air into the lungs. 

Breathlessness can be involuntary; can 
also be the climax of heightened emotion.

December 8, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Vague rant

Up, and carrying Gosnell by coach, set her down at Temple Barr, she going about business of hers today. By the way she was telling me how Balty did tell her that my wife did go every day in the week to Court and plays, and that she should have liberty of going abroad as often as she pleased, and many other lies, which I am vexed at, and I doubt the wench did come in some expectation of, which troubles me.
So to the Duke and Mr. Coventry, and alone, the rest being at a Pay and elsewhere, and alone with Mr. Coventry I did read over our letter to my Lord Treasurer, which I think now is done as well as it can be. Then to my Lord Sandwich’s, and there spent the rest of the morning in making up my Lord’s accounts with Mr. Moore, and then dined with Mr. Moore and Battersby his friend, very well and merry, and good discourse. Then into the Park, to see them slide with their skeates, which is very pretty. And so to the Duke’s, where the Committee for Tangier met: and here we sat down all with him at a table, and had much good discourse about the business, and is to my great content. That done, I hearing what play it was that is to be acted before the King to-night, I would not stay, but home by coach, where I find my wife troubled about Gosnell, who brings word that her uncle, justice Jiggins, requires her to come three times a week to him, to follow some business that her mother intrusts her withall, and that, unless she may have that leisure given her, he will not have her take any place; for which we are both troubled, but there is no help for it, and believing it to be a good providence of God to prevent my running behindhand in the world, I am somewhat contented therewith, and shall make my wife so, who, poor wretch, I know will consider of things, though in good earnest the privacy of her life must needs be irksome to her. So I made Gosnell and we sit up looking over the book of Dances till 12 at night, not observing how the time went, and so to prayers and to bed.

go down go out
of doubt

in some expectation
of an elsewhere

let the rest of them slide
on the ice that will take
any place

there is no running
in the book of dances

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 8 December 1662.

December 8, 2025December 8, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Poetry Blog Digest 2025, Week 49

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: bearing witness to old rhythms, the laptop singing to life, a postcolonial flâneuse, the slow harvest of mindfulness, and much more. Enjoy.

December 7, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Consensus

(Lord’s day). A great snow, and so to church this morning with my wife, which is the first time she hath been at church since her going to Brampton, and Gosnell attending her, which was very gracefull. So home, and we dined above in our dining room, the first time since it was new done, and in the afternoon I thought to go to the French church; but finding the Dutch congregation there, and then finding the French congregation’s sermon begun in the Dutch, I returned home, and up to our gallery, where I found my wife and Gosnell, and after a drowsy sermon, we all three to my aunt Wight’s, where great store of her usuall company, and here we staid a pretty while talking, I differing from my aunt, as I commonly do, in our opinion of the handsomeness of the Queen, which I oppose mightily, saying that if my nose be handsome, then is her’s, and such like. After much discourse, seeing the room full, and being unwilling to stay all three, I took leave, and so with my wife only to see Sir W. Pen, who is now got out of his bed, and sits by the fireside. And after some talk, home and to supper, and after prayers to bed. This night came in my wife’s brother and talked to my wife and Gosnell about his wife, which they told me afterwards of, and I do smell that he I doubt is overreached in thinking that he has got a rich wife, and I fear she will prove otherwise. So to bed.

snow was
our first church

a congregation
turned store
of common opinion

like an after-
supper prayer
in each rich ear

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 7 December 1662.

December 7, 2025December 7, 2025 by Luisa A. Igloria

Losers, Finders

What you lose that someone else finds:
a note slipped into a fold in the cloth 
of time; another that slipped your mind.

Not the first time you feel as if blind,
flightless as a domesticated silk moth. 
But what you lose, someone else finds—

Luck had nothing to do with your state of mind.
Gravity pick machine, numbered balls in the broth 
of time. One after another they slip in your mind.

In thrift store bins, jumbles of left-behinds.
Atlases, maps; mismatched crystal, dish cloths.
What you lost that someone else finds

one bleak day, rummaging idly only to find
luck that flew out of your hands. It sprang forth 
out of time that for a moment slipped your mind.

One day, will you catch up to find
it accidentally broken, changed in worth?
What you lose that someone else finds
at another time slips into your mind.

December 6, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Committed

Up and to the office, and there sat all the morning, Mr. Coventry and I alone, the rest being paying off of ships. Dined at home with my wife and Gosnell, my mind much pleased with her, and after dinner sat with them a good while, till my wife seemed to take notice of my being at home now more than at other times. I went to the office, and there I sat till late, doing of business, and at 9 o’clock walked to Mr. Rawlinson’s, thinking to meet my uncle Wight there, where he was, but a great deal of his wife’s kindred-women and I knew not whom (which Mr. Rawlinson did seem to me to take much notice of his being led by the nose by his wife), I went away to my office again, and doing my business there, I went home, and after a song by Gosnell we to bed.

I sat all morning alone
with the ice of time

a clock thinking
me kindred

being led by the nose
by my business

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 6 December 1662.

December 6, 2025December 6, 2025 by Luisa A. Igloria

Process Analysis

Relief 
at finding a bathroom  
       
                    She says she feels
                 almost like a new person

If we are always tethered
to some idea or state

                          when are we most
                       ourselves

Pauses show
how silence is a palimpsest 

                   of meanings
                         The instability of

surfaces and intentions
At the end we are rendered into

              pulp and bone 
                   Only some things sift

completely into ash 
A practice in which the exterior
   
                                makes the interior
                             visible at last

December 5, 2025December 5, 2025 by Luisa A. Igloria

Long Night Moon


Bodies of water with a menace of teeth
beneath the surface. 

Silvered arms of trees, unleafed, suggest 
a longing for taxonomy— 

How to remember origins, 
where we began. 

Trace them back to the root.

And farther back,
past the level of groundwater—

where there's less evaporation in deeper 
layers of soil. 

While we're asleep, our hearts 
send telegrams into the frozen skies.