thee istsfor manity reader

the final finch

x. is a naturist who’s grown disenchanted
with her fellow ornithologists —

she’s on the fringe —
she loves a rouge finch

a house finch
with a particularly ruddy head

her disability —
she rubs the promenade of her femurs

her frontal lobe
abuts her occipital lobe

she finds herself lurking in shadows
and kicked a well-known addiction

for rondos without recurrences
and she surfeits epiphanies

she hatches a finch
it won’t be like other finches

it will be the final
finch.

What I’m Reading:

“In the presence of a crow it is incredibly difficult to pretend to inhabit a world in which all else is passive background to human lives and dramas. If we pay them even the smallest bit of attention, crows burst the anthropocentric bubble with spectacular flair.”

— Thom van Dooren / The Wake of Crows

What I’m Reading:

“I walk in order to somatically medicate myself against the psychosis of contemporary urban living.”

— Will Self / The New York Times

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