Memorable Stuff I Read This Week

I forget Palestine

has a kind way of
remembering
those who mark it for
slaughter,

and those it marks for life.

— Fady Joudah / “[…]” / […]: Poems

A poem is supposed to be upsetting—a poem is for upsetting the status quo. 

—Terrance Hayes “The Art of Poetry No. 111” / The Paris Review 

US National Institutes of Health (NIH) officials have warned researchers not to mention mRNA vaccines in their grant applications, reports KFF Health News. Despite messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines against COVID-19 having been safely administered billions of times, and saving millions of lives, the Nobel-prizewinning technology has been the subject of conspiracy theories that have gained traction among the Trump administration and its supporters. “There is a real climate of fear in academia about this now, especially among vaccine scientists,” says an anonymous senior scientist, who says that he was told by an NIH official to avoid even mentioning the term.

— Arthur Allen / “Scientists Say NIH Officials Told Them To Scrub mRNA References on Grants” / KFF Health News

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along

— W. H. Auden / “Musée des Beaux Arts”

The shriek of glass on glass peeled my skin. The screech of all things scorched around me. The brassy, tinkled detonation. Shards of wronged birds. Real birds impaled and writhing. Even the sun had hid its eye. We were several layers under now. We could not think of other times. We called truce and splayed our fingers. The sky would not forgive. 

— Blake Butler / Scorch Atlas

No clouds on the skyline,
the sunlight awful and brutal.
A motorcycle rips the day open
with its wretched and intentional sound.

— Adam Clay / “Some Mood”

the fact that there’s a lot you have to blank out if you want to get through life

— Lucy Ellmann / Ducks, Newburyport

What I’m Listening To: 

The roar of unceasing traffic in my head—morning, noon, and night. I’m destined to be hearing deficient on my left side by the end of this ride… who has time to listen to anything under these circumstances… I don’t!

— The unceasing din / “ceaseless traffic in my head” / US 17