My blood has become ink. It was necessary to stop this revulsion at all costs. I am poisoned down to my bones. I sang in the dark and now that song frightens me.
Today I broke my vow of silence when I broke the glass in case of emergency. I croaked in a muttering fashion most embarrassing, “Ra… rah… run. Run! There’s a moth infestation.” We had moths. We were underground in our hermetically sealed glass boxes, and here we were with an infestation of moths. How was this possible? Had we not paid our alms, and made our ablutions in the appropriate manner? Had we not made cretinous burnt offerings—I was always against this affectation—pungent and breath-taking like good little pawns. For our troubles, for our conceits to our deity … we get moths! Was it worth breaking 137 days of silence over? Documents were signed, codicils initialed, an ascetic’s vow taken. The pomp. The sacrifice. Moths! What does this mean?
What I’m Reading:
My enemy keeps a bowl of anemones on my bedside table and this cruelty has killed my will to perform even the duties of an invalid
the strangest, most riveting fists found purchase at my temple a familiar scenario
a rough patch— a dispatch—
aggression unmoored this land is not mine / not yours it belongs to all / to none
so take your right cross & elbow shuck listen as i convert it to poetry for the empathically challenged suck on hardscrabble knuckles tattooed
“H A T E”
a brusque burlesque of mutual disdain convened long before the season of fake fascist spray-ons
all these deft scraps of ignorance a cutting shorthand of petty grievances dyspeptic interlocutions & prickly retractions unretracted unredacted — i remember last year was so hot
this will be hotter
this year will demarcate — forthwith — the honeymoon croon from hell
the detonation nation
plug your ears it’s coming
What I’m Reading:
Our lives are spinning out from world to world; the shapes of things are shifting in the wind. What do we know beyond the rapture and the dread?
i googled white nationalism— flashes of congealed bacon
you play the tragic heroine toothy femme fatale
dont judge my painting until i finish my ropa vieja
dont cut your hair before tinting it blue
i fix you a tongue on rye my marbles gather dust
we wait for slide guitar solos on an unmoored pontoon bridge
in darkness your voice has the timbre of rime
the choice you say—love love
is love
What I’m Reading:
. . . the world is always ending for each of us and if one begins to withdraw from the possibilities of experience, then no one would take any of the risks involved with love.
When I consider the curious habits of man, I confess, my friend, I am puzzled.
— Ezra Pound / “Meditatio”
A record-breaking heat wave is baking Europe, hot on the heels of unprecedented temperatures in May. “Heatwaves are here to stay, until we turn the tap off to global emissions,” says Samantha Burgess, deputy director of Europe’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. “They’re more frequent, they’re more intense and they’re lasting longer.” Europe is heating up twice as fast as the global average, and scientists are trying to understand the complex factors that will determine whether this year’s sweltering heat should be considered ‘the new normal’.
— Flora Graham / “Does Europe have a new climate?” / Nature Briefing
Days are dams. Each week posts a sign above the water. This week: Goodbye. Last week: The Possible. I close the dam of The Possible, open the dam of Goodbye.
— Lily Brown / “Venus Transit”
Trust in science has collapsed — right? The evidence says that it’s not necessarily so. From a global perspective, public trust in science and scientists is high. Trust has dropped in certain groups, notably among Republican-leaning people in the United States. And research in the United Kingdom shows that the proportion of people who have “a lot” of trust in science tends to be lower among politically right-leaning groups than those on the left. In many countries, people are also increasingly questioning definitive evidence on divisive issues such as vaccines, partly because scientific information is being drowned out online.
— Flora Graham / “Trust in science: what’s really happening?” / Nature Briefing
Poverty is violence. We know the look of dead things behind pinned drapes and how to make history in one day.
— Silvia Bonilla / “Bone Harp”
Blatant lobbying, not for the sake of our country, but for the fossil fuel industry, in which almost all the ultrarich – including, in all likelihood, the proprietors of these newspapers – are heavily invested. These people are not and never will be your friends.
— George Monbiot / Bluesky post
Nothing can ever happen twice. In consequence, the sorry fact is that we arrive here improvised and leave without the chance to practice.
— Wisława Szymborska / “Nothing Twice”
What I’m Listening To:
If nothing means anything And I’m just a little big nerd Floating in the ether (Ether) Crying in the bathtub Metaphorically speaking, of course I’m lost, we We lost our minds, our marbles
I see you across the barren parklet. You are eating bits of soft pink flesh.
My hair wilts. Your curls frizz.
I lick the hot sauce off my fingers. You yell that you are an arriviste.
I scream that I was once part of the noblesse oblige and waved banderitas.
You warble an Edith Piaf song. I huff gas out of a brown paper bag.
You sing two registers too low. My viscera gurgles. I pee my pants where I stand — mud puddles form around my feet.
Tomorrow you will sign away your inalienable rights for a used 78 rpm record of “Thee Infanticide Blues.” I will strum The Hits of the Borscht Belt Songbook tonight on my ukulele.
The gloaming hour.
I leave a minute after you do.
You to your elevator shaft. Me to my abandoned mine.
Dark. Wasteland.
We may meet again next year.
What I’m Reading:
Every nation is scared of the truth of what they have done to others.
(First, you’ll find intercalated pustules of censer smoke ringed by ferrules of frankincense in your heart. They were placed there by us. Do not panic.)
Travel.
And when lost abroad …
You’ll find mussels in Malmo in an impossibly dry place.
Dresden is everything it’s cracked up to be, you’ll find Friday morning virgins there on Sunday afternoon.
Milan is … well … Milanese—and that is inauspicious—the rain incessant and the shops shuttered.
Don’t waste your time in Barcelona. You’ll find the last remaining speaker of Njerep there, displaced, and waiting for the placement of the final trencadis tile at the pinnacle ofthe Sagrada Familia.
Avoid the French.
In Lisbon the fog is impossibly thick and it smells of something long forgotten.
Decamp for home from the marshes of London.
Practice the cathecism of free markets, derivatives and tranches.
Breathe deep the smells of amok-capitalism in the morning (essence of napalm available for an additional fee).
AND sing the anthem—early and often.
Oh, the places you’ll go!
What I’m Reading:
Where do you find the parts to make yourself into some other kind of person? Can it be something you read in a book, a gesture you see on the street? Half-smile of a teacher, the walk of a girl on the beach.
thee istsfor manity reader 