She is Splooting on the Sward (When Shooting Won’t Do)
One strong throat emerges to tell the straitjacket-story of a gifted and complicated mandible:
Her despots are both deeper and weirder—splooting rib-deep on American fangs. Her handguns—blue steel euphonies—flexible, transcend fanfare fortifications.
Her epistles rifle in candid installments. Her work seamless on the paintbrush—especially on maxims of broiler politicians about to lift-off, gerrymandered igloo divots, and ferret interiority. The most passionate voice ever on the matter.
Her pantoums never show properly on the third Tuesday of the month—on lesser tongues they sound tinny and pedantic—rhyme schemes rhizome into the fallow earth.
She is thee chaplain-malingerer: tormentor of numbskull litanies and bittersweet honesties. She is the genuine curve. The careful reproof. A committee of candid insteps not bound to overpronation.
She is an amphetamine throwback that emerges without deficits—a profound tonal restoration.
She is a healthy octave above will.
What I’m Reading:
“When I say ‘man,’ I mean ‘mankind,’ ” explains Moses. “Your speech is codified in patriarchal microaggressions.”
1. Wild dogs, squirrels, feral hogs, and bear were constant staples of our cook pots. We used them to supplement our two pounds allotment of rice each month.
2. “I brought everything but that. I deny the existence of that. I would bring anything but that thing,” she said.
3. So if you’ve got a family of four you’re spending $1000, just on entrance fees?
4. “Maquis- Resistance groups. Maquis (World War II), predominantly rural French guerrilla groups… The network of rural bases operated by the Communist Party of Kampuchea prior to the Cambodian Civil War…”
5. Luna moths were another treat I learned to eat, with its wings removed and roasted over an open fire it made for the perfect bite.
6. I imagine all this through the mind of a sick, desocialized, and dissociative woman, who lost her family. Her children taken by the state. Her husband accidentally decapitated at work. Her only remaining family burned to death in a wildfire.
7. When we came upon the carcass of a moose we thought it a godsend. And we all ate the better pieces that had not been scavenged or turned to rot. It was after that day that we eventually all became sick and most of our party perished.
8. Just as he was dying, I set a mangy dog to disemboweling him, so the last thing he felt and saw were the teeth of a ravenous cur at his intestines.
9. We staggered along, one wet day after another, we learned to control our hunger. We had to keep moving to make our monthly rice pick-ups. We barely had time for concerted hunting. If we came upon something we quickly killed it and slogged along.
10. She, in time, became untethered and violent. She fantasized of fixing his larynx in some way so he couldn’t scream any more. Perhaps tie him up and deprive him of food and water until he wasted away, sharp and angular, into a bony effigy.
11. We made a desperate attempt to make the food cache before it was removed by the enemy. We succumbed slowly, one or two of us a day. At the end of two weeks only Cruz and I were left alive, but we were in a very bad way and then you found us near death at the banks of the river.
12. The newly moved-in family next door with an over abundance of everything doesn’t sit right with her. The neighbor child was overly loud, had ADHD, and couldn’t control himself.
13. The tall man, dressed in black, sitting in the first row, removed his mask and said, “So this is how a loving god looks over his children?”
What I’m Reading:
“Mercy is not frozen in time, but flits about frantically, unsure where to land.”
Stumble down clowns On an anfractuous journey Wandering up & down, Up & down, up & down, Mountainsides never willing To stop—
Pause—
On a ridge atop a vision Of violent beauty: crags jagged, shadows knifing A light incessant, While the sun divests Itself of solitary Responsibility for Devouring our Planet.
What I’m Reading:
“The world is burning; how, then, shall we live?”
—Lisa Wells / Believers: Making a Life at the End of the World
I once cracked a book Open to dayglo nightmares— A wormy apple.
What I’m Reading:
“Stories don’t care how we tell them. Stories take any shape they want. Not all stories happen with a beginning, a middle, and an end. I’ve come to understand maybe they never do. End, that is.”
“… economic injustice will stop the moment we want it to stop, and no sooner, and if we genuinely want it to stop the method adopted hardly matters.”
— George Orwell / The Road to Wigan Pier
“Eventually, out of deference to that stubborn reality, Columbus did two things. First, he modified his original assumption. Cuba was not Cipangu, but Cathay, or mainland China. (Columbus died more than a decade later, still never having come to terms with the fact that Cuba was simply Cuba.) Second, when the island disappointed him, he did what many continue to do to this day: he left.”
— Ada Ferrer / Cuba: An American History
“Connecting and healing has never been more important. I truly believe in the power of reading to bring people together, to help us see things from different points of view.”
— Ottessa Moshfegh / goodreads.com email
“We could destroy the machines that destroy this planet. If someone has planted a time bomb in your home, you are entitled to dismantle it … This is the moral case which, I would argue, justifies destroying fossil fuel property. That is completely separate from harming human bodies, for which there is no moral case … We are deep into the catastrophe; the hour is late, but the escalation has only just begun. We don’t know what exactly will work. The one thing we can be certain of is this: we are in a death spiral, we have to break out of it, and we must try something more. The days of gentle protest may be long over.”
— Andreas Malm / “The Moral Case for Destroying Fossil Fuel Infrastructure”
“In time, I began to doubt my individual capacity for effecting even the most minor change. I drifted into adulthood and into this strange modern-day condition: that of an average, well-meaning person who daily participates—however grudgingly—in a system that is bringing the planet she loves to the brink of destruction.”
— Lisa Wells / Believers: Making a Life at the End of the World
“Home is everywhere on this planet.”
— Liam Cox, as reported by Naomi Klein / On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal
What I’m Listening To:
“Scarecrows are all dressed in rags Out at the edge of the field I lay And all I’ve gots a pocketful Of flowers on my grave”
— Tom Waits / “Back in the Good Old World (Gypsy)”
life in the key of thee (the god clears his throat) a fine fissure appeared overnight you left a paper trail (please do not touch the glass) you smudged the fossil record you mar everything you consider
thee istsfor manity reader 