My heart is shrapnel —
Incised, excised, in your wake —
Fragments, incomplete.
“My work is to believe in grace even though I don’t believe in God. To realize that all of my greatest fears are things that are definitely going to come true. My father will die, my mother will die, my brother will, my niece, my nephew, me.”
— Ayşe Papatya Bucak / “An Address to My Fellow Faculty Who Have Asked Me to Speak About My Work”
Strictly speaking I’m not saying what you think I’m talking about. You’ve got your facts correct but your theme is enjambed with my leitmotif. I’m schooling you with malevolence, and secretions waiting, in sketchy, skittery, and toothsome fashion. I’m chomping and slavering, and you seem to be missing that fact. I’m a bad mood guy. Drop your Sharpie. Don’t bring that reductive redaction act my way. I will smite you, askance of oblation, in obloquy. It won’t cost you more than a thorough humiliation in front of Carmelite nuns. But as you’ve run short of Thirteenth Century crusades, and your words dissipate before they form in the back of your throat, and you claim to need more encouragement … here, come here, step closer to this open window I have something I’d like to show you.
“They’ll declare America a carnage. They’ll call immigrants ‘animals’ and other countries ‘shitholes.’ They call themselves ‘nationalists.’ They’ll say they can make America great again. Their history will be a fiction. They will say that they alone love this country. They will be wrong.”
— Jill Lepore / This America: The Case for the Nation
Do you want me to make dinner now? It seems to be what you are saying. I’m saying that the guys over there fighting about whether U.S. Girls is “rawk” enough—maybe in an indie way—but no way “traditional rock” … Why do they waste time? Why do they make these distinctions? Just enjoy the friggin’ music, guys. What’s with the polemics? There’s a pandemic still afoot—a calm before the storm—there’s racism run rampant, food shortage, debt crises of every sort, there was even a wreck — the Edmund Fitzgerald. And on you guys go about Meg Ramey’s too disco, too pop now. You remembered when it was noisy lo-fi DIY. You’re about to come to blows because you say she was better in Philadelphia in 2008, but you prefer her earlier sets from 2011. And isn’t it a shame how she ruined “Red Ford” all these years later. You guys need to relax. Get a room. Wear your god damned masks correctly, not down around your chins, and stop exhaling all this blowhard air into the atmosphere. There. Now what are your issues with Dry Cleaning again?
“We’re headed for empty-headedness,
the featureless amnesias of Idaho, Nebraska, Nevada,
states rich only in vowel sounds and alliteration.”
— Lynn Emmanuel / “Out of Metropolis”
I.
Sole lox lunchbox
Bite full o’ soul
Tar by the shoreline
Bisected by sandbank
Oil derricks ablaze
Gas flames in the ozone grey
II.
Stamp your heel in the sand
The tar ball forms a toothy edge
Blasted by seagulls drunk
On gas fumes thicken
the horizon line stitched by a tanker
To sky and sea
A uniform wash of concrete
At the end of sight
III.
Site specific
And septic like the weak
The week you crushed black ants
And drooped them into the Pre-K
Pea soup and followed with lead
Flakes shingling off the window
Sills silly and smeared black
And white and black
Back to Mighty Mouse blaring
In the desolate spaces
“No one should go into debt to study creative writing. It’s simply not worth it. Do not think of it as an investment in yourself that you’ll be able to recoup later on. This is not medical school.”
— Ann Patchett
It’s only divisible by itself.
I don’t understand.
Help me understand.
Why won’t you help me understand?
“Friluftsliv Nei
Saying that you’re going to go for a walk in the crisp, wintry fresh air and then it suddenly being nighttime without you even having put on pants.”
— Susanna Wolff / “Beyond Hygge”
the modified claim
it should say zero
file an amended excuse for lethargy
i’m subverting the judge’s luncheon by torpedo
you laugh like a wimple wearing super coquette
leave me alone in my misery and lack of awareness
such a misanthrope
nothing surpasses this
other than fey incels
or psychopaths
go away mental illness
go back to your cool places—
the dark bat caves—
and bay leaf bazaars
i finger a pair of ears in my pockets
hold on, son, you say—
are those your grandfathers ears?
(silence)
because if it was good enough for grandad,
it’s good enough for me
the meatloaf gives
me burps
you click your heels and sing
fuckity fuck, fucking fuck
remember the modified claim …
it should say zero
“There’s nothing worse than having someone hand your fears to you gift-wrapped.”
— Betina Gonzalez / American Delirium
(After Jessica Bruder’s Nomadland)
“The last free place in America is a parking spot.”
Sell-o-rama!
Are you fascinated by the blurring
Of class lines?
You need not file yellowed papers
In triplicate.
You don’t need.
We don’t need.
We don’t need no stinking badges!
Everyone’s angling for a pay day.
We don’t offer much in the way of culture,
But we have skin like burnished leather.
We got a nude boogie woogie pianist.
We got men in codpieces
And bare asses.
We got women in coconut bras.
Sometimes wifi, sometimes cable TV.
We have:
Telephone pole size saguaros,
Kangaroo rats and roving packs
Of coyotes.
We got landscaped tattoos—
Salty Spiral Jetty
Surrounded Pink Islands
Stony Sheepfolds
It’s an indifferent human
Festival in camel costumes—
Come and sink
Into obscurity.
“The capitalists don’t want anyone living off their economic grid.”
— Jessica Bruder / Nomadland
The snow turns to slush,
Overnight a sheath of ice,
A foreboding step.
A death threat in Denmark
Over the telephone and emails
The children should all be killed
Using a bolt pistol then skinned
And fed to the lions to prevent
Inbreeding and scientific knowledge.
The part of the sea,
Wet, failing to flood upstream
East of the river.
Losing Again as Overflow
The river burst upstream, the latest bout,
Places the water east of this week.
Part of the sea, wet since 1766,
Has been under criticism
For failing to visit the flood.
Black capped chickadee,
Dead, fell from the barren oak
Frozen on the grass.
(02.13.14)
-make a connection/word for foot noting the sections in Belkys
(02.14.14)
-the letters in a book leave the pages and blind and become lodged in the throat of the man who is reading it
(02.15.14)
-here comes a headache in my lower brain
I’ve come untethered
Three days lost and out of sorts
Now the correction
Sitting on the train
The snow blows blinding outside
Heavy wet and sad
The Wailers’ singles
Provide the syncopation
Propelling the day
The evil power of sixteen electroshocks,
Pluck the sun from the sky
In a casual soporific manner.
The moon in its infinite darkness
Is a devil on an aureole
Limned in a blinding fire.
On the balcony
In yellow afternoon light
A thrush in the snow
Pink skies cede to blue,
Melted snow transformed to ice,
Anticipation.
Placed in the security bin,
No problem, thank you.
Serving compliments, complaints and suggestions:
E as in Edward, please listen carefully catch and check.
I will work for tripe
Pepper pot is beautiful
Visceral goodness
(audio intercept)
That is awesome, the guy in the gray
Cuff him and zip it
I saw you guys intertwined
We’re trying to drink and have a good time
No tolerance, you three are going to jail
As the night wears on
A man possibly intoxicated, no teeth,
Is trying to go home but there are only remnants
Of trash and we call it a successful weekend.
My mother’s birthday
Brings me to Miami heat,
A long tepid trip.
West, the dream maker bicycles.
For all ages, a unique paradise
Only one mile by sought after
Fingertips.
“Nations, to make sense of themselves, need some kind of agreed-upon past. They can get it from scholars or they can get it from demagogues, but get it they will.”
— Jill Lepore / This America: The Case for the Nation
I am awkward in appearance. A sea oat blown near-horizontal. I will grow this beard as long as I want. I doomscroll as a default setting. I get excited when the gales cause these walls to creak. My minions deserted me long ago. Every alternating day silence and dread is all I get. And I get it, you know? No one wants to hear this, even less, no one wishes to read it, but I’ll tell you: you can’t be dead if you wanna’ make bread. That’s a sure thing. Money’s in the breakbeat. Mandrake’s in the shoals. Lost souls. That guy sang, “they keep calling me!” Lost Souls. I remain ungainly.
What I’m Reading, or: What I Just Finished Reading (a continuing series)
Old in Art School / Nell Painter (2018)
Respected Ivy League historian leaves cushy professorial job to get a BFA and MFA in painting, at the age of 64, because she desires to leave no stone unturned in a fully engaged, examined, and actualized life.
KUDOS that!
Said ex-professor/painting student wishes to become a canonized and collected professional painter, and gain entry into “Thee Art World” after 5 years of quasi-full time art making, (amidst dying parents, commuting cross country to Oakland, and fulfilling outstanding professional commitments) and make art tastemakers bend to her will.
DELUSIONAL that!!
Simultaneously inspiring and trying. Ends up being a long-winded whinge-o-rama.
Ebook & Audiobook, 03/09/21.
“I just regret everything and using my turn signal is too much trouble. Fuck you. Why should you get to know where I’m going, I don’t.”
— Mary Robison / Why Did I Ever
What side effects should I expect tonight?
Really? Seriously? Today?
What is this filth?
What are the chances we become an intelligent and empathetic country?
Is this a poem or a story?
Where are these silverfish coming from?
When will I get back to revising that novel?
When was the last time I ate steak?
Is this layer of dust really dead skin cells?
Just what is this?
What I’m Reading, or: What I Just Finished Reading (a continuing series)
The Inland Sea / Madeleine Watts (2021)
A notable debut novel about a quasi-dissociative young woman coming of age while routing emergency calls across Australia. She is caught up in her own family’s disintegrating history as the country burns, floods, and seemingly cracks apart—paralleling her own behavior, affairs, and mindset. Incisive, sardonic, and appropriately dark.
Ebook, 03/09/21.
“Looking at the swimming pool I could forget the emergencies, my confused plans, all the men in leather jackets or thongs or tattered dressing gowns who laid their hands on my body whether I wanted them to or not.”
— Madeleine Watts / The Inland Sea
thee istsfor manity reader 