What I’m Reading:
Summer dilates time. It has a way of taking foreeeever to get here, and once it arrives it seems like there’s months and months ahead of you, and enough time to do all the things you dreamed of. Then you blink… and it’s almost August.
I don’t think I’ll never get the hang of it.
— Paul Theriault / Brookline Booksmith Newsletter
Like thunder, I’m a foreign-borne cloud that’s
drifted here, I’m lightning, and the balm of rain.
Como tú, our blood rains for the dirty thirst of this land. Like thirst, like hunger, we ache with the need to save ourselves, and our country from itself.
— Richard Blanco / “Como Tú / Like You / Like Me” / How To Love A Country
In part because their stories deemed their God the one “true” God, Christians believed that they were given the right to spread the word of God wherever they found nonbelievers. But there was more than spirituality at play: there was land, and the wealth it could bring. Christian nations acted based on a belief in their right to “discover” and claim any land, as long as they converted — read “saved” — those living on it.
— Tanya Talaga / The Knowing: How the Oppression of Indigenous Peoples Continues to Echo Today — A Native American History and Canadian Memoir of Intergenerational Trauma
The dead eyes of the iguanas, keeping vigil… will never / see the asteroid of their extinction…
— Martin Espada / “The Iguanas Skitter Through The Cemetery By The Sea” / Jailbreak of Sparrows
Climate scientists say the extreme weather ravaging the world is in line with what models have long predicted, though some disasters appear to be striking earlier and with more strength than expected. The underlying relationship between fossil fuel pollution and global temperatures was well known even to oil companies, who were at the forefront of corporate efforts to stymie action to cut pollution, as far back as the 1970s . . . “What people are not getting is that we can’t turn this back – the CO2 to a large part remains in the air for thousands of years,” said Rahmstorf. “Some people think we can wait and, when it gets too bad, then we reduce emissions and things will get better again. People don’t realise that we can’t make it get better again. We can only prevent it from getting much worse.”
— Ajit Niranjan / “‘We can’t make it better again’: what Europe’s wildfires tell us about the climate crisis” / The Guardian
Even the caged, tame goat can dream
of a distant mountain, inclines mauve
from the blossom of heather smelling
sweeter than any bagged feed; memories
of a mountain he has never been near,
moving from gene to gene like the yellow
of an eye or the kink in course white hair.
— Patrick Cotter / “Goat Dreaming”
Air conditioners are one option to keep people cool during increasingly frequent and intense heatwaves, but the technology has too many drawbacks to be the sole solution, say scientists. Instead, materials that are designed to passively cool buildings could be the way forward, they suggest. Materials that are layered, contain bubbles and air pockets or combine radiative cooling with evaporation could achieve the same effect as air conditioning without using energy, says architecture researcher Matthaios Santamouris. But many of these materials are still in prototype stages, and would require policies to encourage their use.
— Jacob Smith / “The alternatives to air conditioning” / Nature Briefing
He hates his neighbors’ flowers, claims his
are redder, bluer, whiter than theirs, believes
his bees work harder, his soil richer, blacker.
He hears birds sing sweeter in his trees, taller
and fuller, too, but not enough to screen out
the nameless faces next door that he calls
liars, thieves who’d steal his juicier fruit, kill
for his wetter rain and brighter sun.
— Richard Blanco / “Dreaming A Wall” / How To Love A Country
What I’m Listening To:
God, Zeus, Allah, Buddha
Bob Dylan on a motor scooter
Allah, Buddha, God, Zeus
Gotta get me a red caboose
— Butthole Surfers / “Mexico”
a swash papaya rolls gently onto my toes—
desolate place this—
oil sheens in eddies on sand once white
just what is that color now?
the swash papaya inedible
soft and blackened on its equator—
equality evanesces much like a savage republic
replaces what it once paid lip service
this swash papaya will never touch my lips
as otiose as an indian summer
when everyday is hotter than the next
this island is thee heatdome
swash papaya rots—
oiled and poisoned—
i eat air
no sustenance here
What I’m Reading:
Death alone
takes what is left
without protest, criticism
or a demand for more
than one can give
who can give
no more than was given:
doesn’t even ask,
but accepts it as it is,
without examination,
valuation,
or comparison.
— Alfred Kreymborg / “Dirge”
Massive heat dome come
Down on me — I’ve run myself
Ragged — nobody knows
What I’ve done to my family.
As the Fata Morganas shimmered away —
I dug a hole as big as could be
Dropped them in, one by one,
In the dark maw of atavistic iniquity.
Released to the night crawlers —
Oh, Lord, please, let them take root
By the leprous shagbark hickory —
I did unto them as they unto me.
In the dead of the morning
When the tree glowers over me
I’m gonna hang myself
On that gnarled branch
Of the family tree.
What I’m Reading:
Firefighters in Oregon and now France are battling wildfires big enough to generate spectacular, dangerous pyrocumulonimbus clouds (pyroCbs) — huge storm clouds that form in the hot updraft of big fires, generate wind and lightning, and exacerbate dangerous conditions. These fire storms also loft smoke into the stratosphere, where it can spread more readily around the globe, eat away at Earth’s protective ozone layer and influence weather and climate. That’s why scientists have just launched an airborne mission to observe these rare storms like never before, using a specially modified jet and a high-altitude NASA plane.
— Flora Graham / “Fire-chasers take to the sky” / Nature Briefing
• the sun is a dayglo disc . . .
take a cudgel to the kludge
frou frou in the bijou •
What I’m Reading:
In little-noticed court documents, federal officials acknowledged this month that they had terminated the funding “based solely” on political criteria, targeting projects in states that were represented by Democrats and had voted for Kamala Harris, the party’s presidential nominee, in the 2024 election.
The admission showed how President Trump has weaponized the provision of federal education, energy, health, housing and infrastructure aid in his second term. Far from rooting out the sort of misspending that Mr. Trump sees as rife in Washington, the White House has instead sought to leverage the budget as a tool to assist its allies — or as a cudgel to hurt the president’s foes.
— Tony Rumm & Brad Plummer / “Trump Administration Admits Canceling Grants to States That Did Not Vote for Him” / The New York Times
I am the day’s encryption /
I am nylon whir on fetid skronk /
I am must + disequilibrium /
I am growth opportunity /
I am terror in the grass /
I am green bastion in silence /
I am the shock of slice before
sanguinary /
I am bloodlust /
I am carnivore.
I am chaos +
confusion.
I am /
eye.
What I’m Reading:
As they slept-the bikers and the cops, Uncle Sam and the Statue of Liberty,
the millionaire on his magic pillow-adolescents from Guatemala scalded
the killing floors at the slaughterhouse in Grand Island, Nebraska, their hoses
like snakes spewing rivers that bubbled in the steam. Around them, the blades
of skull splitters and bone saws waited for their fingers to slip, fangs lurking
in the murk of early morning, in the daze behind the goggles on the faces
of adolescents from Guatemala, sleeping the next day at Walnut Middle School,
shaken awake by teachers who spotted the acid burns on their hands.
— Martin Espada / “The Snake” / Jailbreak of Sparrows
stelae and sediments
rough as chip seal
rolled flat and torn up
what are you going to gain
why is she crying
not bad saving alkali balls
from demolition — devotion
and diminution — that’s depraved
pontificate in your jodhpurs
wail in your pith helmet
there’s something trapped
and spasmodic in the smoke tree
now taut — now frozen in time
unnatural — gone dark
throat tight — send help
What I’m Reading:
Clouds of dust settle on the coughing
neighboring houses—
their noses swollen by the heat
of the scorched air.
A girl passes by, sees the bleeding door, opens it.
A corpse lies beneath.
The earth weeps.
— Mosab Abu Toha / “Door on the Road”
the fear bitterness & hatred
the witch fellow falters
the work the starkest darkest &
the most sharply subversive pair of shoes
the wartime years self maneuvered & censored
the jingoistic pension conditional
the use of memory & his own words
the struggling fellow & his eleven existential roadblocks
the ensuing disarray & immiseration
the annoyance laced travails
the low key lighting
the austere camerawork
the crossfade to black
the avant-garde soundtrack
the elbow to the side of the head
the endorsement of filial piety followed by
the kick in the eye
the filth
the pith
the pit
the the
What I’m Reading:
He hates his neighbors’ flowers, claims his
are redder, bluer, whiter than theirs, believes
his bees work harder, his soil richer, blacker.
He hears birds sing sweeter in his trees, taller
and fuller, too, but not enough to screen out
the nameless faces next door that he calls
liars, thieves whơ’d steal his juicier fruit, kill
for his wetter rain and brighter sun.
— Richard Blanco / “Dreaming A Wall” / How To Love A Country
Is my attention on loving,
or is my attention on
who isn’t loving me?
— Andrea Gibson / “Wellness Check”
There is a feeling I get in my mouth after reading writing produced by a large language model. It reminds me of the oily, filmy coating I used to get at Friday night dinner after eating parev ice-cream: the sense that I haven’t really eaten anything. I’m not left with a taste (AI writing doesn’t have a taste) but with a texture; or to be more precise, a lack of it. This texturelessness, and the filmy feeling it generates, is my synaesthetic reaction to something that, at the moment, remains uncanny: the knowledge that I am trying to parse meaning from something that, while grammatical, has no motivation to carry it.
The problem is not so much that AI has no intent, no feelings to communicate (to fall short of articulating), but that we have built a world in which language is depersonalised and so often uncoupled from meaning as to erode our expectation that the two exist in a relationship of symbiosis. We do not expect all the language we encounter to carry meaning. Most language is not poetry or a conversation with a friend, it is advertising.
— Matt Greene / “On the Rise of ChatGPT and the Industrialization of the Post-Meaning World” / Lithub
Nests fall like dry leaves.
Peeled eggs
are no window onto life.
A rainstorm of darts.
Migrant flocks
drag their defeathered bodies.
This is when I swallow my words.
— Elvira Hernández / “Cross-Armed”
Every day as a cyclist, I witness gobsmacking displays of lawlessness, road rage, and distracted driving on our streets. But you know the scariest part? All it takes is a few minutes behind the wheel for me to be the one cursing under my breath, cutting corners, and putting others in danger. Cars and traffic just have a habit of bringing out our absolute worst tendencies as humans.
— Rami Abou-Sabe / “My bicycle could save the world … if you’d all just stop trying to kill me” / Boston Globe
I had a calling
to be a nun. My forehead was
that criminal. For heaven,
I’d grind my knees into
pavement until they’d bleed,
stare unblinking at the sun.
Pain’s blaze simplified me,
gave me a bone to break.
— Amy Thatcher / “Unholy”
Europe is the world’s fastest-warming continent and many scientists say human-driven climate change is increasing the intensity of heatwaves, droughts and wildfires, while also creating conditions for sudden, destructive storms.
The continent has endured three stifling almost back-to back heatwaves so far this year. Intense heat has also been blamed for thousands of excess deaths in the May to June period.
— Renee Maltezou and Michele Kambas / “Fires in Spain and France, hail in Balkans; Europe’s erratic weather persists” / Reuters
Live hidden
Without a sound
Not seen
Nor heard
Be not
From this earth
But from nothing.
— Cecilia Vicuña / “Ex Nothing”
What I’m Listening To:
And I shouted out an apology
And then I felt like a twat
And then I hugged the track of naked stone
Where the glacier used to be
Her eyes filled with tears
The glacier feeds the river
As she said
The river feeds the lake
Which plants grow from ash?
— Dry Cleaning / “Grass”
time and space yield to no one
tho anthropogenic change has slowed
the spin of the earth
milliseconds of fat
water around the equator
you and your grandchildren’s grandchildren
may not note it but the meta—
verses will: a financial irregularity
a capitalization a millisecond too late
mega millions missing or lost
and so, no matter how far away
i move from my hometown
the places stay the same
but imperceptibly changed
in a tangential but indelible way
way too often i return
nothing is ever really the same
the more i come back the more
i change
the song remains the same
What I’m Reading:
A car slides on our asphalt street, like an iron
running on an ironing board.
But in my city, streets are never flat.
Potholes from bombs are everywhere, like
crows’ nests in a forest of noise.
— Mosab Abu Toha / “Forest of Noise”
thee istsfor manity reader 