The fable persuader
The deep pocket pusher of dreams
Fine line sharpener of fancy and flight
Scrimper and scavenger of marrow-bone pithy and white
Nails plastic lobsters onto dead sycamores
Inscribes chalk circles in the middle of the street
Loves Luci Dead Limb
Cries at the wax of the moon
What I’m Reading:
“Darkness starts inside of things
but keeps on going when the things are gone.”
— Christian Wiman / “Darkness Starts”
What I’m Reading:
“People sometimes come to galleries feeling that they need to understand … when all they need to do is respond.”
— Mike Collier, to Dan Rubinstein / Born to Walk: The Transformative Power of a Pedestrian Act
“I stole the yellow bird
That lives in the devil’s sex
He will teach me how to seduce”
— Joyce Mansour / “I stole the yellow bird …”
“on Sunday after church I took a walk
so I could discuss your nipples
with the friendly woodpecker
who visits the birch tree”
— Wayne Koestenbaum / “David’s Nipples”
“It’s called Cyclone Mocha, but it might as well be called Cyclone Exxon or Cyclone Chevron—they were among the companies that ignored the clear evidence of pending climate crisis and kept pushing their product till the Bay of Bengal was a hot tub. And it’s oil companies that are currently mounting a drive in California to overturn a law that would simply prevent them from drilling directly next to schools, hospitals, and homes. Rage is not an answer, but it is the thing that comes before an answer.”
— Bill McKibben / “Thoughts, Prayers, Rage, Resistance”
“Consider:
the verbal dearth
that is always a main ripple of extinction.”
— RK Fauth / “Playing with Bees”
“I’m feeling excited about writing, but it’s only because I’m not doing it. When I’m doing it, I feel miserable. When I’m not doing it, I can’t wait to do it again. It’s so frustrating to write, and I get so depressed when I’m writing. Right now, I’m not writing and I feel great about writing.”
— Anelise Chen / The Creative Independent interview
“Tender Is the Flesh is a meditation on what capitalism is – it teaches us to naturalise cruelty … Capitalism is a system into which we are all born, we have it inside of us, and patriarchy is part of that system. I tried to work with this idea that we eat each other in a symbolic way. With women it’s so obvious, because you can talk about human trafficking, war and the way women are made invisible in different spheres. Here in Argentina, they kill women every day. Capitalism and cannibalism are almost the same, you know?”
— Agustina Bazterrica / “Bookmarks” / The Guardian
“… the world is violent. Why should fiction pretend it’s not?”
— Ottessa Moshfegh / “Bookmarks” / The Guardian
What I’m Listening To:
“I’m getting sick and tired
Of feeling like I do”
— The Mighty Lemon Drops / “My Biggest Thrill”
another year dead
another dread come to pass
another dashed hope
as you drift to sleep you wretch—
make lemonade tomorrow
What I’m Reading:
“But those were good days … and now like everything else, the cigarettes and the wine and the cock-eyed sparrows in the half-moon, it’s all gone. A sorrow heavier than tar. Goodbye, goodbye.”
— Charles Bukowski / On Writing
Strangely situated in plaid—both real and unreal—the quip ornithologist unfolds clothes (sometimes) and seems like an exile in detriment or, perhaps, emotional involvement in obstructions that compel abstractions.
The calumnies. The culminating fraternity. The serenity, unpredictability, humor, restlessness, and occasional sentimentality of artisanal lies—as well as the mysterious, contradictory praises of the ivory billed woodpecker (really extinct or a ruse?) captured and framed; it is a beautiful beaky beastie!
I pray you debit my impertinence. Forbear nothing. Forgive me nothing. My penetrating trademarks lay listless around my ankles.
What I’m Reading:
“There are so many different people to hate, so I keep things simple and hate everyone.”
— Leigh Lucas / “Dirtbag”
What I’m Reading:
“I have the habit of negative thinking which greatly troubles my writing. As a response to the anxiety caused by my negative thinking I soothe myself through distraction so I also have the habit of enjoying myself too much. I prioritize joyful things instead of writing. I have the habit of not waking up as early as I want to, and I have the habit of social media, which troubles my writing..”
— Anelise Chen / The Creative Independent interview
d.i.y. units
pitter patter and twitter
variable speeds
we move but we do not walk
on hamster wheels for humans
What I’m Reading:
“Outside, even the sun-god, dressed in this life
as a lizard, abruptly rises
on stiff legs and descends blasé toward the shadows.”
— Reginald Gibbons / “At Noon”
What I’m Reading:
“If I feel helpless living a baffling existence on an unfathomable planet in an indifferent universe, my being cries out for redemption, for purpose, for hope, but climate change just compounds the uncertainty and existential misery of day-to-day life lived in this deteriorating shell of an animal body. If that seems grim, well, so it is. But I take great joy in creation …”
— T.C. Boyle / “T.C. Boyle on Surviving and Satirizing the Climate Crisis”
We streamed into the stream
The water we stood in
We stood in
Only once
We eventually returned to where
We came from
A desolate windy place
We began to melt away
We were consigned
I was not sorry
We had been
In time we’ll be again
Or we won’t
What I’m Reading:
“Where does it go, the Sunday angle of sunlight once only yours, wide and open as a window?”
— Debra Allbery / “Sidereal”
“[In this space,] a small fountain of
Concrete. Permanent seasonal
Arrangement disorder.”
— Thea Brown / “The Gardener”
“Some people have asked if I’m on a quest to figure out what to do with my life, but it’s almost the exact opposite. When I’m outside, I get so immersed in wherever I am that it’s sort of impossible to think about my long-term future.”
— Matt Green / “Leaving His Footprints on the City” / The New York Times
“… there must be a better distribution of wealth and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism. Call it what you may, call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all of God’s children.”
— Martin Luther King, Jr. / The Radical King
“It is extraordinary, in a week when record spring temperatures are affecting Europe, and in a year when El Niño conditions in the Pacific could result in the planet coming within a whisker of the 1.5C dangerous climate change guardrail, the government is doing all it can to keep the oil and gas flowing.
You really couldn’t make it up.”
— Bill McKibben / “Cool Earth”
“I have seen the sun own the land. I have seen it bake
into our hands. And I have seen it sleep in a dark coverlet
while the sky opens loose, and the coyotes, in their constellation,
propose a trick.”
— Analicia Sotelo / “Eating the Moon in Cotulla, TX”
“Where did my edges go?
What holds
head to neck, hand to fingers,
brain to sickness?”
— Allison Hutchcraft / “Though from Here I Can’t Smell the Smoke”
“The climate crisis is not really about the climate. It’s about us.”
— Ben Okri / “A Sacred Place”
What I’m Listening To:
“Kiss the boot of shiny, shiny leather
Shiny leather in the dark
Tongue of thongs, the belt that does await you
Strike, dear mistress, and cure his heart”
— The Velvet Underground & Nico / “Venus in Furs”
thee istsfor manity reader 