Via Negativa

February 3, 2026February 2, 2026 by Luisa A. Igloria

The Body as Source of Light

river in November light between bare woods and mountain

A thousand meters deep
     in the zone called mesopelagic, 
a lanternfish lifts its tiny row
     of photophores, offering to slip it 
into the ocean's voluminous sleeves. 
     Nightly it rises toward the surface
to feed on plankton. By itself,
     its gleam is a sliver. But millions
of them shimmer the water with
     tinfoil. Their light is endogenous—
meaning they produce it with their own
     bodies. What an astonishment: to find 
inside of us two sticks or flint and steel, 
     what it might take to start a flame.

February 2, 2026February 2, 2026 by Dave Bonta

Poetry Blog Digest 2026, Week 5

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: yellow plastic whistles, white matter, inhabiting unfamiliar thoughts, eating ice, and much more. Enjoy.

February 2, 2026February 1, 2026 by Luisa A. Igloria

The disco clam lights up

 
from the quartz synthesized in its body.

When danger approaches, strobe lights 
bounce from one side of its crimson mantle 

to the other, like a disco ball. Don't
eat me, it seems to say— not in the middle

of my party, and you're not invited. Perhaps 
this is another way to live one more day— 

to stun with the unexpected, startle instead 
of cower and hide. Sometimes the chain of tiny 

adrenaline synapses fires up inside us, 
so that we step forward instead of back 

even when we're frightened. Performance 
and technique, but also timing. In front 

of such astonishment, the chance for reprieve, 
even applause, in a dark ocean full of teeth.

February 1, 2026 by Dave Bonta

Edifice

(Lord’s day). Up and to church, where Mr. Mills, a good sermon, and so home and had a good dinner with my wife, with which I was pleased to see it neatly done, and this troubled me to think of parting with Jane, that is come to be a very good cook. After dinner walked to my Lord Sandwich, and staid with him in the chamber talking almost all the afternoon, he being not yet got abroad since his sickness. Many discourses we had; but, among others, how Sir R. Bernard is turned out of his Recordership of Huntingdon by the Commissioners for Regulation, &c., at which I am troubled, because he, thinking it is done by my Lord Sandwich, will act some of his revenge, it is likely, upon me in my business, so that I must cast about me to get some other counsel to rely upon.
In the evening came Mr. Povey and others to see my Lord, and they gone, my Lord and I and Povey fell to the business of Tangier, as to the victualling, and so broke up, and I, it being a fine frost, my boy lighting me I walked home, and after supper up to prayers, and then alone with my wife and Jane did fall to tell her what I did expect would become of her since, after so long being my servant, she had carried herself so as to make us be willing to put her away, and desired God to bless [her], but bid her never to let me hear what became of her, for that I could never pardon ingratitude. So I to bed, my mind much troubled for the poor girl that she leaves us, and yet she not submitting herself, for some words she spoke boldly and yet I believe innocently and out of familiarity to her mistress about us weeks ago, I could not recall my words that she should stay with me. This day Creed and I walking in White Hall garden did see the King coming privately from my Lady Castlemaine’s; which is a poor thing for a Prince to do; and I expressed my sense of it to Creed in terms which I should not have done, but that I believe he is trusty in that point.

sand on sand
like a prayer
with no familiar words

this white castle
is for no one
but I believe

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 1 February

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

Questions, with Animal Footprint and Stingless Bee

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, 2026February 1, 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