She mistook her aeonian harp for her aeolian harp. She mistook her bemusement for amusement. Her confoundment for profoundment and her conclusion for inclusion. Nothing seemed to be what it needed to be and her mind kept elapsing and prolapsing into a crater like protrusion into the black hole nimbus that was her brain. From now on nothing would be what it should or sound like its meaning; rather things would be tinged in a greenish patina and sound like rods and cones and retinal shrieks of retinues with concubine purrs. Nothing like what she was accustomed to. She would have to reeducate herself in the ways of wares and the forms of norms. Much would be ochre now, because there was no sense in being saffron about it. At least that’s what the older boys meant, or what she thought they meant, when they claimed she was immature. Now was the time for ripening. The moment was upon her. Now is the only thing that’s real. And sassafras be damned!
What I’m Reading:
“I like the feeling of words doing as they want to do and as they have to do when they live where they have to live that is where they have come to live which of course they do do.”
there is something louder than your heart it supersedes the asperity of your bones
a wind forced through an aperture moans it sounds like a death rattle, an agonal breath
this which your mind fastens upon will always remain impermanent even the sun is a transient thing it will engulf half its own planets in 5 billion years what is your worry now?
there is something stranger than knowledge there is ritual and belief
a dry voice remains a dry voice a hollow head remains a hollow head
this matters not find solace where you can get it
What I’m Reading:
“I sang the way I still talk.
Every song was the worst way I could think of to ask for what I did not yet know how not to want.”
he cries little bits of her heart at a pivotal point in a pair of boxes full of higher figures where all thoughts of airsickness rockets up the throat
infundia : infused sollozaba : sobbed truhán : rogue aborrecido : abhorred sayete : a short frock or skirt
say what you mean to say—
say: the first time my mom checked my hymen was when I was 13 years old this accomplished nothing but creating fear and doubt
this : esto abhorred : aborrecido scratched : rasguñada i’m angry : estoy enojada
cuerpo directivo y docente : governing and teaching body
What I’m Reading:
“From time to time I show up in myself just long enough for people to know they are not in the room alone. Usually, these are people who expect something from me a near future, a not-too-distant future … Everything I say is to the best of my knowledge and next to nothing. It comes nowhere close.”
You ain’t seeing what I’m seeing on the horizon of this new year.
I ain’t saying what I’m seeing on the horizon of the new year.
I ain’t writing about what I’m seeing on the horizon of the new year.
I ain’t skewing the horizon line of the new year.
I ain’t setting to skew the horizon line of the new year.
But eventually I’ll tell you, and then I’ll write about it, and then you… you will… you will skew the horizon line of the new year.
Horizons are meant to be horizontal as long as you look at the horizon in a particular way.
I ain’t looking at it in that particular way.
What I’m Reading:
“Why is it we speak of unreliable narrators, but not of unreliable readers? A reader freely judges the author, but the author is not allowed to judge the reader. Except, of course, in the Bible.”
“I couldn’t stand being seen as data: everything I did or said, everywhere I went, usable, profitable, predictive data. That invisible record, it accumulates, and you drag it around with you even though you can’t see or feel it. I couldn’t stand the idea that every little choice I’d made, however thoughtless or dumb, was now part of my history.”
— Jonathan Dee / Sugar Street
“she’s been places in her small world big butter for their american dreams”
—Nikki Wallschlaeger / “Cows in the Evening”
“So the poetry community was able to thrive even in isolation, and that was really beautiful to me. Poetry became a kind of anchor for people who were feeling completely alone and distraught, and full of anxiety and fear. But as we move forward to more public and social settings, I think it’s important to recognize that poetry will be one way to tell each other about what we’ve been through.”
— Ada Limón / “Q&A: U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón” / Poets & Writers
“When my mother was dying of breast cancer, a priest came by to tell her that the pain she was experiencing was equivalent to Christ’s on the cross. But Jesus Christ had no breasts. 36 degrees.
There’s a lot of sadomasochism inherent in the Catholic Church, witness St. Sebastian or the cannibalism of transubstantiation.”
— Bernadette Mayer / “April 18”
“Owners never want to see their hardback babies pulped. Bibliocide seems particularly painful in this fraught era of banned books. Hence, the sprouting of Little Free Libraries everywhere, and donations to public ones for resale, which enable staff to purchase new books.”
— Karen Heller / “We’re drowning in old books. But getting rid of them is heartbreaking” / The Washington Post
“Politically, I guess you could say that I’m a progressive. I firmly believe that everything in and about human society is progressing toward its end.”
— Jonathan Dee / Sugar Street
“Sometimes I just sit like this at the window and watch the darkness come. If I’m smart, I’ll put on Bach.
I’m thinking now of how far it always seems there is to go.”
— Jim Moore / “The Need Is So Great”
What I’m Listening To:
“Away, you swagpot! Lick the floor, you dog! Squeak out your dying wish, you pig!”
— György Ligeti & Michael Meschke / from Le Grand Macabre
For $20 someone phones me and spits insults, in Cuban-inflected Spanish, through my earpiece. I also invest in seed packs for vanity, narcissus, and temerity. My fingers are refracted in the water backing up in the sink. A clog formed at the center of my soul. I’m unable to plunge it or dissolve it with caustics. The acoustics of these apartments are poor, the walls porous and sound travels easily through the heat ducts and vents. This is abrasion by the light of the full moon on the television downstairs; the Ligeti anti-aria from Le Grand Macabre tamping down from the stereo upstairs; and the constant woohooing by the spectrum kid next door; the neighbor across the hall has the scents of camphor and chicken soup, and Dave Brubeck wafting down the hall; and the elevator squalls Floor 16 too loud. The clog in my soul is not dispatched with celerity. It’s not dispatched at all. The hole in my head is a constant cavil. Then, I missed the alignment of the planets last night. So I pay to have someone call me a comemierda. I eagerly and promptly answer the phone each night at 8:31.
Hello 2023
What I’m Reading:
“Stick to what you believe in because you’ll be just as wrong as everyone else.”
— Arnold Roth / The Creative Independent interview
I am the keeper of the Doomsday Clock. I know what will happen to us. I know how the world ends, but I don’t tell you. I’ll keep you in the dark. I stopped the hands on the Doomsday Clock at 11:59. When we met I thought I would turn back the hands on the clock, that I might set the pendulum in reverse. But you said our fate was sealed and it was fatal. I was drawn to that. I was afflicted. I set the works in motion once more, the cogs thunder. I have chosen this minute.
What I’m Reading:
“The idea that humanity can somehow triumph over what’s most awful about itself is narcissism. We’re the poison, we’re the virus, we’re the fire, and the only way to stop it is to let it run its course.”
December rush, eh? Rebarbative bedfellows, yes? Assuage the babblative, no?
You’ve got another December rush going and no guardian of the journal yet—you… you… you see… you see men hovering outside your window 15 & 1/2 storeys up—what phantasms these? What dour inflections of second sight? What third-eye astigamtismus, those shimmering Fata Morganas? Weren’t the visitations supposed to happen Christmas Eve? It’s two days after Christmas, man! Be damned masts! Confound the mast climbers! Rock the rock pigeons in their hidebound pinnacles! At the end of the year I see a procession of all the dead things seen throughout the year. What queasiness this? How quizzical. How illogically logical that this would appear before me on the day of the supernovae—on the day of multitude earthquakes—and dozens of volcano borborygmus…(or is it my stomach?) Be off visions—be off, you hovering homunculi, before I pincer you with forefinger and thumb—you pin-tailed wren (assassins). Vape elsewhere into the winds. Count the years conquests in slower measures, and hushed(!) tones, by the edge of tsunami quay—and take long steps toward the end of that miniature pier. Your eye sockets full of garter and indigo snakes compel me toward viper thoughts. This door prize of papercuts bores me in the standard modes. Note the batch and quantity—mark the name and model! Inspector 13 was here, and he hung from his neck a single use noose—17 centimeters from the ground, and he drowned in 9.5 centimeters of water. Take your excellence wherever you can find it…
Yours sincerely,
The Gibbous Red Star
What I’m Reading:
“please take a piece of me back home, each piece is anti-war and don’t pay your rent, in fact remember: property is robbery, give everybody everything…”
thee istsfor manity reader 