Via Negativa

January 7, 2026January 4, 2026 by Luisa A. Igloria

Small Graces

river in November light between bare woods and mountain

When I push open the screen door, plop
the garbage in the bin and snap the lid 

back shut, the neighbor's dog two 
houses over starts to bark. How tuned in 

it seems to the smallest shift in its universe. 
The sound it makes in reciprocation is either 

alarm, question, or warning. The crows, too, 
startle at my approach, though they are 

quicker to size me up and dismiss me 
as of no consequence to their foraging 

in the gravel. I wish I could meet 
the world with that kind of unerring 

intuition, prickle to a presence that could
either be kind or unkind, well-meaning or

mean— and in that heightened watchfulness, 
be more present. I know I've made my share of 

wrong judgments, been ungenerous when I 
could have shown more forbearance, less 

defensive snarl. The cold afternoon light 
still is light. The harsh weight of darkness 

is hours yet away, and like mercy, 
the moon makes an early show of its face.

January 6, 2026January 6, 2026 by Dave Bonta

(Twelfth Day). Up and Mr. Creed brought a pot of chocolate ready made for our morning draft, and then he and I to the Duke’s, but I was not very willing to be seen at this end of the town, and so returned to our lodgings, and took my wife by coach to my brother’s, where I set her down, and Creed and I to St. Paul’s Church-yard, to my bookseller’s, and looked over several books with good discourse, and then into St. Paul’s Church, and there finding Elborough, my old schoolfellow at Paul’s, now a parson, whom I know to be a silly fellow, I took him out and walked with him, making Creed and myself sport with talking with him, and so sent him away, and we to my office and house to see all well, and thence to the Exchange, where we met with Major Thomson, formerly of our office, who do talk very highly of liberty of conscience, which now he hopes for by the King’s declaration, and that he doubts not that if he will give him, he will find more and better friends than the Bishopps can be to him, and that if he do not, there will many thousands in a little time go out of England, where they may have it. But he says that they are well contented that if the King thinks it good, the Papists may have the same liberty with them. He tells me, and so do others, that Dr. Calamy is this day sent to Newgate for preaching, Sunday was se’nnight, without leave, though he did it only to supply the place; when otherwise the people must have gone away without ever a sermon, they being disappointed of a minister but the Bishop of London will not take that as an excuse. Thence into Wood Street, and there bought a fine table for my dining-room, cost me 50s.; and while we were buying it, there was a scare-fire in an ally over against us, but they quenched it. So to my brother’s, where Creed and I and my wife dined with Tom, and after dinner to the Duke’s house, and there saw “Twelfth Night” acted well, though it be but a silly play, and not related at all to the name or day. Thence Mr. Battersby the apothecary, his wife, and I and mine by coach together, and setting him down at his house, he paying his share, my wife and I home, and found all well, only myself somewhat vexed at my wife’s neglect in leaving of her scarf, waistcoat, and night-dressings in the coach today that brought us from Westminster, though, I confess, she did give them to me to look after, yet it was her fault not to see that I did take them out of the coach. I believe it might be as good as 25s. loss or thereabouts.
So to my office, however, to set down my last three days’ journall, and writing to my Lord Sandwich to give him an account of Sir J. Lawson’s being come home, and to my father about my sending him some wine and things this week, for his making an entertainment of some friends in the country, and so home. This night making an end wholly of Christmas, with a mind fully satisfied with the great pleasures we have had by being abroad from home, and I do find my mind so apt to run to its old want of pleasures, that it is high time to betake myself to my late vows, which I will to-morrow, God willing, perfect and bind myself to, that so I may, for a great while, do my duty, as I have well begun, and increase my good name and esteem in the world, and get money, which sweetens all things, and whereof I have much need. So home to supper and to bed, blessing God for his mercy to bring me home, after much pleasure, to my house and business with health and resolution to fall hard to work again.

at this end of town we talk
highly of hope

the woods scare us silly
night sings in the day there

we have a God to eat as sweet
as health and hard work

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 6 January 1662/63. (For the Monday 5 January entry, see my erasure from ten years ago.)

January 6, 2026January 3, 2026 by Luisa A. Igloria

Hunger Wakes Me

In the hours between midnight and morning
I dream of shadowed hills, the scent of night-
blooming datura spilling over our old home.

What was the question that nudged
me awake, that I know still
has no answer? 

I have a memory of pork 
smoked over embers, the mumbled
prayers of mambunong, rice

wine scattered on the ground 
for blessing; knives slicing meat
to dress in a bowl with lime and pepper.

My tongue is always bathed
with longing. Daughter, I can't remember 
anymore what it was that severed 

us from each other. The language
for what I want to say scrolls
into the ether but its root

is still there. I want to believe
the broth hasn't cooled. I want to believe
we still drink from the same bowl.

January 5, 2026January 5, 2026 by Dave Bonta

Poetry Blog Digest 2026, Week 1

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: wolf moons, egg-life, the voice of a middle-aged witch, a linear accelerator in a radiation bunker, and much more. Enjoy.

January 5, 2026January 3, 2026 by Luisa A. Igloria

Wonders of the World

Someone counted to seven, then
stopped. The great pyramid, the hanging
gardens of Babylon, a statue of Zeus.

The Temple of Artemis, the Colossus 
of Rhodes, the Lighthouse at Alexandria, 
the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus. 

Such grandeur. But how does the tiniest snail 
never scrape its head on the lintel no matter 
how many times it goes in and out the door?

Who taught the tuberose and the night
phlox to dress themselves with scent
after the sun goes down?

While you sleep, your brain eats up 
the debris it creates from doing all 
the complex things it does.  

A chicken was nearly beheaded 
by an axe which missed its jugular 
and most of the brain stem. 

For over a year it was fed 
with an eyedropper through
the odd-shaped hole in its neck.

Thousands of exhausting miles 
from the sea, salmon and trout 
struggle upstream to spawn.

Something about home— Wonder 
in the ordinary stones, the astonishment 
at how much the body can remember.

January 4, 2026 by Dave Bonta

Cured

(Lord’s day). Up and to church, where a lazy sermon, and so home to dinner to a good piece of powdered beef, but a little too salt. At dinner my wife did propound my having of my sister Pall at my house again to be her woman, since one we must have, hoping that in that quality possibly she may prove better than she did before, which I take very well of her, and will consider of it, it being a very great trouble to me that I should have a sister of so ill a nature, that I must be forced to spend money upon a stranger when it might better be upon her, if she were good for anything.
After dinner I and she walked, though it was dirty, to White Hall (in the way calling at the Wardrobe to see how Mr. Moore do, who is pretty well, but not cured yet), being much afeard of being seen by anybody, and was, I think, of Mr. Coventry, which so troubled me that I made her go before, and I ever after loitered behind. She to Mr. Hunt’s, and I to White Hall Chappell, and then up to walk up and down the house, which now I am well known there, I shall forbear to do, because I would not be thought a lazy body by Mr. Coventry and others by being seen, as I have lately been, to walk up and down doing nothing. So to Mr. Hunt’s, and there was most prettily and kindly entertained by him and her, who are two as good people as I hardly know any, and so neat and kind one to another. Here we staid late, and so to my Lord’s to bed.

a lazy piece
of powdered beef

a salt cure
for a lazy body

doing nothing to eat
one another

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 4 January 1662/63.

January 4, 2026January 4, 2026 by Luisa A. Igloria

Here, Now

Your life is a length of cloth
whose measure you can’t 
calculate. Your shape has changed 
so many times: at sixth grade, when you
turned eighteen, before childbirth, after
childbirth, when your eldest child reached
the same age you were when you remarried.

Or it is a labyrinth of rooms filled
with various artifacts— birthday candles, 
a pair of orthopedic shoes, braces;
communion veil, mismatched socks.
You find your mother’s recipe for soup
but not for fruitcake, her thimble
and needle threader but not 
her sewing machine. 

Nights, in winter, you stand at the counter 
sifting flour, measuring salt and sugar, 
proofing the dough. It takes time 
for bread to rise, and no time at all for it 
to be sliced, toasted, eaten. You roll pork into 
a log studded with eggs, sausages, raisins.
How else will you be remembered 
besides through taste?
 
Lately, departure has been on everyone’s minds. 
The news is thick with war and terror, the deaths
of young and old. It takes effort to declare 
I just want to survive, even more to live it. When
you press your mouth against another’s and say 
Good night or Good morning, how simple
it feels, this belief that small, ordinary 
things might still save us.

January 3, 2026January 3, 2026 by Dave Bonta

Age of extinction

Up and to the office all the morning, and dined alone with my wife at noon, and then to my office all the afternoon till night, putting business in order with great content in my mind. Having nothing now in my mind of trouble in the world, but quite the contrary, much joy, except only the ending of our difference with my uncle Thomas, and the getting of the bills well over for my building of my house here, which however are as small and less than any of the others. Sir W. Pen it seems is fallen very ill again.
So to my arithmetique again to-night, and so home to supper and to bed.

with all the nothing
now in the world

how small others seem
fallen to arithmetic

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 3 January 1662/63.

January 3, 2026 by Dave Bonta

Soup

Lay long in bed, and so up and to the office, where all the morning alone doing something or another. So dined at home with my wife, and in the afternoon to the Treasury office, where Sir W. Batten was paying off tickets, but so simply and arbitrarily, upon a dull pretence of doing right to the King, though to the wrong of poor people (when I know there is no man that means the King less right than he, or would trouble himself less about it, but only that he sees me stir, and so he would appear doing something, though to little purpose), that I was weary of it. At last we broke up, and walk home together, and I to see Sir W. Pen, who is fallen sick again. I staid a while talking with him, and so to my office, practising some arithmetique, and so home to supper and bed, having sat up late talking to my poor wife with great content.

soup alone
in the afternoon

simply to stir
some little purpose

broke and sick
and having to eat

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 2 January 1662/63.

January 3, 2026January 3, 2026 by Luisa A. Igloria

Ride

The new year is a horse neighing in the field,
ready to race toward the future. 

It wants me to slide into the saddle and leave 
my baggage behind. 

A gate swings open on hinges of light. 

When we step through, the press and weight 
of yesterday is still palpable in my arms— 

persimmons and figs reddening in summer, 
wind tearing every leaf off the trees in fall. 

Sometimes ice and snow but mostly sleet, 
driftwood, and packed sand on the shore.

On one side is the river, and on the other 
trains travel the rails carrying coal.

I don’t know what the horse wants or if it wants
the same things I do but it carves tracks in the ground.

There is no standing still.

Perhaps our breaths, braided together,
will carry us toward whatever comes next.