Hegemonic Extirpation Day Blues

It’s a ragged sort of heat. The call of the west again. Then a discomfiting sort of rain. It’s my first day out of the house in nearly three weeks. Just 2 days ago I was fetal, on the bed, unable to sweat the thoughts away.

I walk into this:

A litter of puppies feeding in the corner of the living room. Dried shit streaked on the bathroom towels. The, too-early, Christmas tree is canted and some of the ornaments are unfurling their covers revealing the styrofoam balls beneath the loosened string. The last year they had glass ornaments the piles of colored glass shards spread throughout the living room—my cousin wore multiple band aids on his feet. Those styrofoam balls must be 25 years old now. That smell is truly remarkable—sour broiling turkey mixed with wet dog fur, overfull litter box, and Lysol. Happy, happy, joy, joy.

Someone’s cut and paste — forlorn and left out in the desert — cries out for purpose. There is no liability. There is no curse. Caw, caw…

I considered the crow a baleful thing; it darkened my day instantly like a light speed sarcoma. My day, my year, my life was shot in that cut and paste. And in that instant I wrote this, and never wrote again.

Happy, happy, joy.

What I’m Reading:

“Was it better to resist the new language where it stole, de-fanged, co-opted, consumed, or was it better to text thanksgiving titties be poppin to all your friends on the fourth Thursday of November, just as the humble bird of reason, which could never have represented us on our silver dollars, made its final unwilling sacrifice to our willingness to eat and be eaten by each other?”

— Patricia Lockwood / No One Is Talking About This