Memorable Stuff I Read This Week

How could I forgive myself if I left you alone in the crowd. The sky rains down
iron and the earth’s an old carpet getting shaken out. From the crowd, the
hospital is far, the sky persists in its deliriums, blue and green are gone, and
there’s only ashes in my eyes.

— Nasser Rabah / “The Hospital is Far Away”

But then, here she was. Living in the minor corner of the real. In a forgotten country. Without TikTok edits or multiplayer games. Barely even a meme. 

— Lydia Millet / “Tourist” / Atavists

every shout from any distant window
wakes me from my deepest dreams so I follow it
like the blind man who raids the air with his hands
toward enemy territories
where his eyes were smuggled and a ransom demanded
I hear the wind in my fingernails

— Sargon Boulus / “Story Without a Moral”

It turned out the plastics industry was well aware that many products marketed as safe BPA-free alternatives actually release other damaging chemicals. For years, corporate scientists had been studying the problem and burying their own damning findings. At the same time, the industry had worked to cast doubt on research from outside scientists-often employing the same methods and consultants that the tobacco industry had used so successfully to discredit the science on smoking.

— Mariah Blake / They Poisoned the World: Life and Death in the Age of Forever Chemicals

I’ve sold my hair, bowed to the brogue
of dreams and agreed as a mermaid
would to walk on knives.
Good dagger be good to me.

— Tory Dent / “Ocean Park”

Two things are simultaneously true:

1. The Iranian regime treats its people with extreme brutality and cruelty, and we should honour the citizens seeking to overthrow it.

2. A US attack on Iran would turn a crisis into a catastrophe.

— George Monbiot / Bluesky post

When he laughed, respectable senators burst
with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in
the streets.

— W. H. Auden / “Epitaph on a Tyrant”

What I’m Listening To:

The world’s changing, no it ain’t
You’re just scared to death through hate
Scared to death through hate
Scared to death through hate

— Sleaford Mods / “Flood the Zone”