thee istsfor manity reader

lyre liar

bicker brown by the stairwell, narcissus—
favor the divine!

headlong into big-bangle jerkins—
sumptuous and melancholy

quaff a fifth of ale
potent, plangent, and honeyed

doubter of gallows rumors
shatter-shifting and reborn

as a loyalty subcontractor
a wistful adaptor, weaving tamarisks

into the hearty shapes
of your face — traipsed and lyrical

you bicyclist of stake narcotics
and jerky divinities

talent-ridden geomancer, you!
you, organ-grinder addict

What I’m Reading:

“I acknowledge that I will never achieve Inbox Zero”

— Gemma Correll / “Affirmations for Modern Life”

How I Move

Yikes! Woke up choking this morning at 4:33 a.m. One of the last conscious thoughts I had, before chuting into rem sleep, concerned Mr. T’s “hovering pack of wolves.” (Maybe it was all that wolf/coyote cha-cha in the tabasco). So I don’t know how I ended up dreaming of being alone in some dark and desolate lean-to with a pack of white lab rats burrowing in my throat.

Maybe it was cat hair from my two cats; after a while, cat hair mysteriously forms into mean little tufts that roll about the apartment like “mini-ruffian” tumbleweeds—a nasty reminder that it’s time to (literally) dust off the vacuum; or maybe it was phlegm, a bug, or some other unknown cavorting beastie that sparked the dream.

Anyway, it was an unusual way to start the day (although I went back to sleep). When I woke up I riffled through one of my trusty Norton Anthologies (remember lugging those around in your college bookbag?) in search of the Shelley quote that I couldn’t remember verbatim (it’s been years since English Lit. 2) but knew was appropriate:

“We rest. — A dream has the power to poison sleep;

We rise. — One wandering thought pollutes the day;”

— Percy Shelley / “Mutability”

So I’ll spend the rest of the day listening to Mark E. Smith and The Fall grouse about “Psycho Mafia” or “Kicker Conspiracy.” I’ll flick soda can tops into empty pudding cups. Because … America. I’ll clip my toenails—got open-toed shoes and sandals to wear. Huff some cake batter. Because that’s how I move through this world: “Don’t want to be a victim.”

What I’m Reading:

“I don’t know what I would have done without punk rock … It made me feel like I could do anything I wanted.”

— Mike Galinsky / The Creative Independent interview

heliotropism

my heart distills my blood
heliotrope
looking for a sun

a plantation of hateful
verdigris
factors out to flow

out big star not too far
severance
runs rampant over

my tripartite welcome
parse
the light hiding from guards

foiling the crowds
out
in the rain

i care
less
each passing year

What I’m Reading:

“ :  when water undresses into tar sands / and to one long tune acacia trees dance some / as in alder reach / anything is worth the rain …”

— Jake Skeets / “Anthropocenic”

One Raw Manifold

This isn’t your house. You don’t belong here. You can’t come in here anytime you want and go in that room. The Muscovy duck eggs have failed to hatch — a marten’s been at them and taken some whole. My precious ducks: I feed them and chase them away as the whim overtakes me. My storks — not to return through the hole in my roof. My squirrels, running along the base of the house, imbibing their 32 grams of protein in their muscle milk. All is one raw manifold coming at me without pause, without distinction. I could have been in the shower when the ceiling collapsed. I couldn’t go to the funeral as it conflated with the unveiling. My daughter-in-law is my son; my son is my daughter; my daughter: the executioner. The executioner absconded with my ducks. Life is a proto-groats quorum forum. Life is full of strangeness and parthenogenesis.

What I’m Reading:

“The hug, the pit of the stomach, salivation—
I convince the horse
There are pleasures in being human.”

— Sandra McPherson / “Night Vision”

What You Don’t Wish To See…

… midway through a 20-mile bike ride…

What I’m Reading:

“Castrated socks. (Her name was words)
Anemia cells. your expression is also like the legs of a sparrow.”

— Yi Sang / “Au Magasin de Nouveautes”

The Best Stuff I Read This Week

“The chicken truck passes with its load of small-brained misery.”

— Kim Addonizio / “Kansas, 4 a.m.”

“I am vulture-heavy.  
My stories are caskets filled with black feathers…”

— Diane Seuss / “Folk Song”

“Whenever I come across, say, a rat or a fox, and I meet its eyes, I can sense a whole cosmos behind them,”

— Olga Tokarczuk / “The Art of Fiction” / Paris Review

“april is the cruelest month etc. what remains?
brian jones bones. jim morrison’s friend.
jimi hendrix bandana. sweatband angel.
the starched collar of baudelaire.
the sculptured cap of voltaire.”

— Patti Smith / “picasso laughing”

“Now it is back, it is back much worse – this is in America. It is back so much worse than it was in the 80s. Because it’s become political.”

— Judy Blume / “Judy Blume: book banning now much worse in US than in 1980s” / The Guardian

“How did you go wrong? With only blind faith
& a dead star left in your eyes, where’s North
America?”

— Yusef Komunyakaa / “Night of the Armadillo”

“Why does this trembling

pull us?

A: Beneath the surface we are one.”

— Toi Derricotte / “Black Boys Play the Classics”

What I’m Listening To:

“But they say, ‘Write what you know’
Don’t know much at all”

— Urika Spacek / “Accidental Momentary Blur”

Sumerian Script

I scarify my soul in the humorless moon of a long night in a clean well lighted place—which is a bullet ridden cafe in Lesotho during a monsoon month of dust and quiet whippoorwills.

I prune leafy trees leafless, hot with fleas, fleecing your sister’s sake.

You said, “I got mine and you’ll be fine.”

I said, “summer is sister’s fate in her shizophrenic haze in the strength of a weakness in her occipital lobe.”

You say my comedy was sublimely written, like it was written in Sumerian script in a Mandarin world.

What I’m Reading:

“Here all is strange.”

— Samuel Beckett / Happy Days

the night became an elipsis …

What I’m Reading:

“You look around and they are teaching CREATIVE WRITING at some university. Now they think they know how to WRITE and they are going to tell others how to. This is a sickness: they have accepted themselves. It’s unbelievable that they can do this.”

— Charles Bukowski / On Writing