Memorable Stuff I Read This Week

I’ll tell you diasters might die out
if you stopped feeding them firewood. . .

— Asmaa Azaizeh / “Reflection”

The collective wealth of the top 10 US billionaires has soared by $698bn in the past year, according to a new report from Oxfam America published on Monday on the growing wealth divide.

The report warns that Trump administration policies risk driving US inequality to new heights, but points out that both Republican and Democratic administrations have exacerbated the US’s growing wealth gap . . . Meanwhile, over 40% of the US population, including nearly 50% of children, are considered low-income, with family earnings that are less than 200% of the national poverty line.

When pitting the US against 38 other higher-income countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the US has the highest rate of relative poverty, second-highest rate of child poverty and infant mortality, and the second-lowest life expectancy rate.

— Lauren Aratani / “Top 10 US billionaires’ collective wealth grew by $698bn in past year – report” / The Guardian

There are sixty days
to explain to the children
who do not yet know hate:

today The Nation weeded
and counted us among
the invasive species.

— Layla Faraj / “Sixty Days”

The name Equator refers to the crossing of boundaries that have been policed for too long, but also to placing equal weight upon ideas and experiences that have long been marginalised. We take the world as it actually is—not as European and American editorial boards imagine it should be. We reject the assumption that a handful of Western capitals should set the terms for the global conversation on politics, culture, and the deepest questions of human existence.

— The Equator team / “Welcome to Equator” / equator.org

My father taught us not to lie
then dropped us
into a wilderness that kills
the truthful

— Haidar Al-Ghazali / “I Left My Sorrows in the Laundry Basin”

The thing about living with someone is that even though you see them every day and can predict all their gestures in a conversation, even when you can read intentions behind their actions and calculate their responses to circumstances fairly accurately, even when you are sure there’s not a single crease in them left unexplored, even then, one day, the other can suddenly become a stranger.

— Valeria Luiselli / Lost Children Archives

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:

Somebody here is older
Macbeth times 2
A lazy suit and bloody hands
Come taste your faith in every street
The sound of money just kissed me in the face
My trousers aren’t the right size
I go straight to pocket
Take one step up and back to business
My mind is closed so my body speaks
My mind is clothed, my body squeaks

— The Wolfgang Press / “Raintime”