Memorable Stuff I Read This Week

there’s no Walmart in Afghanistan, said the father, because there’s a
target at every corner

— Aria Aber / “Operation Cyclone, X. Catalogue of Grief” / Hard Damage

If everyone on the planet had agreed to wear a mask and keep six feet apart from one another for a given period of time—and a short time at that—Covid wouldn’t have had a chance, she said. Now it’s too late, and it’s the most vulnerable among us who don’t have a chance.

Years from now, the doctor said, I believe people will look back on all this and see it as yet another example of human barbarism. (Note the hopeful assumption that our descendants will be more humane than we are.)

— Sigurd Nunez / The Vulnerables

hello comrade said the Soviets holding your mother at gunpoint
hello comrade the wind is crisp on my face
holding hands in the bathtub as the red army kicks in the door

if at least the Americans or Brits had colonized our country
if life had been well-meaning and good to us
if you were a kinder person, then

look for the ancient guests in your mind
look for the war in the face of your mother
look for the words, the words that fail you forever

— Aria Aber / “Operation Cyclone, X. Catalogue of Grief” / Hard Damage

Over a hundred thousand people died today. When we try to think about that, we probably forget that a hundred thousand people died yesterday. And a hundred thousand the day before that. There are a hundred thousand people who’ve been dead for three days. The coffee cakes and casseroles from friends are slowly disappearing; the families and loved ones, heading back to work, returning the odd phone call. People are plodding along, in the face of such total… Oh, but we’re not here to mope, right? We’re here to listen to music and drink some grape juice, maybe get a free T-shirt.

— Will Eno / Wakey, Wakey

Light went in a long bright wink upon the knifeblade as it sank with a faint breath of gas into bis belly. He felt suddenly very cold. The dogs had gone and there was no sound in the night anywhere. Minister? be said. Minister? His assassin smiled upon him with bright teeth, the faces of the other two peering from either shoulder in consubstantial monstrosity, a grim triune that watched wordless, affable. He looked down at the man’s fist cupped against his stomach. The fist rose in an eruption of severed viscera until the blade seized in the junction of his breastbone and he stood disemboweled. He reached to put one hand on the doorjamb. He took a step backwards as if to let them pass.

— Cormac McCarthy / Outer Dark

… “Keep safe.” What a ridiculous concept! There is no “safe.” At any moment the fragile thread by which we dangle may break, and we may plummet into the unknown. “Safe,” the word, ought to be outlawed. It gives people false ideas.

— Margaret Atwood / “Widows” / Old Babes in the Wood

What once was your hospital now is ash.
Long, thick layers of it, ash violet
and wayward as snow, so hard, its violence,
it begins to clot. Here, the air

cauterizes even the stones among
us.

— Aria Aber / “Operation Timber Sycamore” / Hard Damage

What I’m Listening To:

Searching for Satori
The kick in the eye
I am the end of reproduction
Given no direction
Every care is taken
In my rejection
Kick in the eye

— Bauhaus / “Kick in the Eye”