thee istsfor manity reader

The Best Stuff I Read This Week

“The most important thing we learn at school is the fact that the most important things can’t be learned at school.”

— Haruki Murakami / What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

“Someone forgot to whisper your death to the bees
And so all the bees have left
And the fruit trees have died.”

— Ansel Elkins / “Someone Forgot to Whisper Your Death to the Bees”

“You’re stepping on your father, my mother said,
and indeed I was standing exactly in the center
of a bed of grass, mown so neatly it could have been
my father’s grave, although there was no stone saying so.”

— Louise Glück / “Aborigonal Landscape”

“This raises the inevitable question: What’s your policy
on fog? When it gets in bed with you, who’s on top?
Dances with you, who leads?”

— Bob Hicok / “Elements”

“If you touch it between the legs,
the splendid body will quicken
like bubbles in a just-on teakettle.”

— Rebecca Lindenberg / “The Splendid Body”

“… AS YOU STAND THERE AND GRILL HALAL

NOT JUST A REFUGEE WITH A BIG BEARD AND TRACKSUIT

NOW A DRAGONFLY LANDS ON YOUR ARM”

— Yahya Hassan / “Ramadan”

“Wonder is where it starts, and though wonder is also where it ends, this is no futile path.”

— Herman Hesse / Butterflies: Reflections, Tales, and Verse

What I’m Listening To:

“He grew up in a trailer, by the time he was nine
Rolled off to join the circus, telling fortunes on the side
Hail, hail, the Eyeball Kid”

— Tom Waits / “Eyeball Kid”

What I’m Reading:

“Four wheels swerve to avoid a sheer cliff, southbound on the 101.
The fat sun slides its yolk into the glass ocean. Slow down, see
an empty nest of woven round sticks in the praying tree.”

— Melinda Palacio / “The Praying Tree”

Everything, Everything

Everything ran down,
Everything went off,
Everything derailed,

Everything—the last two months—

Everything must pass,

Everything, now,
Everything reset,
Everything anew,

Everything restarts.

What I’m Reading:

“We must live life forward and attempt to make sense of it backward. So we fail in both directions.”

— James Hannaham / Pilot Impostor

after the storm

animals were rescued
three weeks later

desperate townspeople
ate them

container ships lost
across the hemisphere

forlorn people victims
of hunger

nothing else
possible

no
one

redeemed

What I’m Reading:

“We are expecting in the coming two years to have a serious increase in the global temperatures.”

— Wilfran Moufouma Okia / U.N. World Meteorological Organization

The Best Stuff I Read This Week

“To be an oppressor is dehumanizing and anti-human in nature, as it is to be a victim.”

— bell hooks / Ain’t I a Woman?

“Some humans say trees are not sentient beings,
But they do not understand poetry—“

— Joy Harjo / “Speaking Tree”

“To me feminism is not simply a struggle to end male chauvinism or a movement to ensure that women will have equal rights with men; it is a commitment to eradicating the ideology of domination that permeates Western culture on various levels—sex, race, and class, to name a few—and a commitment to reorganizing U.S. society so that the self-development of people can take precedence over imperialism, economic expansion, and material desires.”

— bell hooks / Ain’t I a Woman?

“In Japan, there is a white phone
Booth overlooking the sea &
Inside is an old black rotary phone
Not hooked up to anything.
People go there & call their dead.
There is always a line to get in.”

— Sylvie Baumgartel / “Saving”

“No matter how much I write, though, I never reach a conclusion. And no matter how much I rewrite, I never reach the destination.”

— Haruki Murakami / What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

“But what I am left with is the wish
that inside is a piece of the creator
who will weave me a great dream catcher
to snare the nightmares this world is braiding.”

— Julene Waffle / “Without Consent”

“For how does one overthrow, change or even challenge a system that you have been taught to admire, to love, to believe in?”

— bell hooks / Ain’t I a Woman?

What I’m Listening To:

“I fray like worn-out threads
The more I fret, the less I mend
I’ve lost faith in everything
Everything, everything”

— Bob Mould / “Lost Faith”

the high rattles

the wean of lifetime—
avoiding the limelight

the constriction strings of lob
a radiator for a sofa
a poor heartbeat
a marginalized adult

reshuffle, hardscrabble, uprising
of three yes-men on third gear
as 300,000 pregnant woodcutters
can, and do, attest

send your epaulets for a wash
of explosive hybridity & astringency
gas for the vast disposables
in infidel mosaic rattles

hey! backcloths die
more than twice as often
the high rattles of teen promise
die in a lingering smolder

What I’m Reading:

“In an imperialist racist patriarchal society that supports and condones oppression, it is not surprising that men and women judge their worth, their personal power, by their ability to oppress others.”

— bell hooks / Ain’t I a Woman?

Death in Spring (redux)

The sheets of virus still
Quiet strafes the air

Hubei or Lombardy
New York or New Orleans

The daffodils trumpet
Death in Spring

Death in Spring
See those naked bodies

Death in Spring

What I’m Reading:

“It knows it can’t exist forever, so
it’s collecting as many flavors as it can—
saffron, rainwater, fish-skin, chive.”

— Rebecca Lindenberg / “The Splendid Body”