image: detail from anne samat’s wide awake and unafraid (a new beginning) / mass moca
shoehorned
headdress for a coup coolness —- alien june air mother harangued into impromptu three days —- national piled into our small 800 miles dysfunction sloughs
marriage at this 500th of a second june is inarticulate defiles of the truth like family
mountains recede us greens drain to grey anonymously we low at fair weather aerodynamic flashes
vague parallelograms angle shoehorned pregnancies —- edge of safety feet dangle —- she flashes emptiness
image: detail from carrie schneider’s sphinx / mass moca
What I’m Reading:
“Puke yellow pandesal, / sour orange Tang left my throat in chunks / You will feel better now / We’re almost there / The horizon was still far away / I hate enduring”
“I’d put on twelve pounds eating steak and doughnuts, and my face was screwed up and tight from chain-smoking Chesterfields and trying to talk at a faster clip. I was feeling a bit antisocial, and I was underdressed.”
image: detail from jenny holzer’s the living series / clark art institute
What I’m Reading:
“The shadow of the axe hangs over every joy. Every road ends in death. Or worse. Every friendship. Every love. Torment, betrayal, loss, suffering, pain, age, indignity, and hideous lingering illness. All with a single conclusion. For you and for every one and everything that you have chosen to care for. There’s the true brotherhood.”
image: detail from joseph griegley’s “blueberry surprise” / mass moca
The Best Stuff I Read This Week
“We have a narrow window for change … and the projections from our research suggest that the window is closing fast.”
— Climate Scientists at the SCAR Biology Symposium / “Antarctica’s heatwaves are a warning to humanity—and we have only a narrow window to save the planet” / The Guardian
“Such beauty that for a minute death and ambition, even love, doesn’t enter into this. Happiness. It comes on unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really, any early morning talk about it.”
— Raymond Carver / “Happiness”
“Waste body / garbaged / while I was anaesthetically asleep / naked under medical fluorescence / — intubated dead bits cut off / — dead bits deemed / “biohazard”: / waste / feet/ ankles / fingers / Uterus / biohazardbodyparts / all go into their fucking garbage can”
— Therese Estacion / Phantompains
“I can’t explain it. She broke something loose in me and swept away the splinters. I didn’t blush or bat my eyes or do anything as I spoke. I was saying things I’d never said before, and yet I felt nothing. That was Elizabeth’s power. That was her magic. I felt absolutely nothing around her.”
— Ottessa Moshfegh / “When Stars Collide”
“She just turned fifty. I tell her wait ten years—you won’t know more, but you will get closer to forgiving, because it is all happening on a wheel that spins so fast.”
— Sheila Black / “The Earth”
“We’re in a mess, but together we have some chance of working our way out of it.”
— Bill McKibben / “Where Should I Live?” / Substack newsletter
“This is a critical moment, impacting our well-being, future generations and ecosystems globally. Confronted by this evidence, we urgently call on nations to intensify and exceed their current commitments to greenhouse gas emissions reductions. An immediate increase in ambition is required to reach net zero and to go beyond it. Pledges are not enough.”
— Climate Scientists at the SCAR Biology Symposium / “Antarctica’s heatwaves are a warning to humanity – and we have only a narrow window to save the planet” / The Guardian
What I’m Listening To:
“Zun’s a feeble lamp O’er leery land Stares a’chat in code Lark a meagre note”
In the montage I ascend from the dashboard— depart on the window dressed of spaniels— and like the nude descending the staircase
I’m aggrieved.
For I know not where the primordial matter in the skin sack I’m in intends to go.
My watchword is wrecker—I’m a kickback president of threats.
There is a poet in my pocket that only manages: humbug! amidst the glossolalia.
I have an earwig in a sachet that transmits opioid messages of dis-illusion.
I am not my vertigo—I intone in my inclination.
I’m the slacker that darkens as I upend—the king of stalemate bequests!
There are eddies in the rivulets that course thru my coagulated blood.
I am a godson among the startled—and humming a turd-tune I know . . .
Violin-leaves tar at the wings— Dew-drug sinners eat garnet stopgaps— There be rodent chocolates in the chinaberry cabinet—and three clear tools of destruction.
(I intend to use)
Come. Appease.
What I’m Reading:
“I hate it when they say, ‘If anyone here has reason to object to this marriage.’ I always want to stand up and yell, ‘This will be the end of you both! When stars collide, they make a black hole!’”
eye can see the division lines in the atmosphere the elemental lines that divide this particle from that the swirls in space those lines which order the world + universe our perspective—mine anyway
eye see the invisible bullseye the lineations in the hawk’s current the particulate pixels streaming from it’s red tail the rust to brown eddies in the convection the wake diluting to hiss
eye see the sharp arrow of declination as it strikes the mourning dove
What I’m Reading:
“The time for critical action is right now. What we do today will determine our future for centuries.”
— Climate Scientists at the SCAR Biology Symposium / “Antarctica’s heatwaves are a warning to humanity — and we have only a narrow window to save the planet” / The Guardian
Head bound with electric tape— Mario / hostage / Asphyxiates in the dark.
A business deal gone sour? To this day, no one knows why.
image: detail of daniel giordano’s my scorpio i / mass moca
What I’m Reading:
“I don’t believe in God. Can you understand that? Look around you man. Cant you see? The clamor and din of those in torment has to be the sound most pleasing to his ear … And justice? Brotherhood? Eternal life? Good god, man. Show me a religion that prepares one for death. For nothingness. There’s a church I might enter.”
images: details from daniel giordano’s love from vicki island / mass moca
What I’m Reading:
“The darker picture is always the correct one. When you read the history of the world you are reading a saga of bloodshed and greed and folly the import of which is impossible to ignore. And yet we imagine that the future will somehow be different. I’ve no idea why we are even still here but in all probability we will not be here much longer.”
I am the day’s encryption / I am nylon whir on fetid skronk / I am must + disequilibrium / I am growth opportunity / I am terror in the grass / I am green bastion in silence / I am the shock of slice before sanguinary / I am bloodlust / I am carnivore. I am chaos + confusion. I am / eye.
What I’m Reading:
“In the end we all come to be cured of our sentiments. Those whom life does not cure, death will. The world is quite ruthless in selecting between the dream and the reality even where we will not. Between the wish and the thing, the world lies waiting.”
thee istsfor manity reader 