Alcoholics by Appointment

Tectonic plates nimbly moving between the two of us — threads separated by upsetting intertitles.  I understood wanting — the fist unfoldings like investigating what I wanted from life.

A propensity for unrelated stretches of boredom respectively interspersed with terror and subterfuge — a disenchanted evening of critical extensions of ourselves.  

We’d escaped the stultifying and mundane confines of the American dream. We marveled at the nothingness in every direction. 

Alcoholics by appointment, short on doorways and long on crashes. What are you doing on the floor, you said.

I’m a new admirer of your ruthless cankles, I said. 

You remind me of that pendejo from the capitol flanks, you said.

I really have grown to dislike your flans, I said. They fill me with buttermilk inertia.

Your voice tips up two octaves, little mermaid-style.

I’ve grown to love your threats of leaving me —  the dynamic prompting an existential jump in my gonads. 

Our lives chatter across that echo divide — the poles galvanized — our fists — threats arising in unison strands, like unspooled dice, and popcorn ceilings estranged.  

Your brasses and my ramen noodles forever spiced with the peppery taste of hickory paste on fire. Here, though, the motifs relate loosely on symbolic resonances of iterative knock-knock logic. 

I’ll forge your signature on my birth certificate, despite your roundabout glares and slight variations of tonal displeasure.

We’ve grown accustomed to get what we deserve.

What I’m Reading:

Why don’t you drive & arrive up here
In your reversing Lochinvarish Chrysler Reliant
I’ve got my period & bleed in my Plymouth Horizon
Like when we went to the cave in your Volkswagen bus

— Bernadette Mayer / “A Catskill Eagle”

Memorable Stuff I Read This Week

My parents took me to Red Lobster to tell me they were getting a
divorce. Parents always take you to Red Lobster when they need to
tell you something awful and important, like failure. They figure if
they’re going to ruin a restaurant for you, it should be somewhere
lame, like Red Lobster or Olive Garden.

— Richard Siken / “Albondigas”

In the midst of life we are in death.
In the midst of the service station we are in death.
In the midst of the service station we are in
life.
In the midst of death we are in the service
station.
In the midst of death we are – we are.
We are.

— Samantha Harvey / The Shapeless Unease: A Year of Not Sleeping

For most of this century, Israel and its allies have fought desperately to avoid any comparison with apartheid-era South Africa, recognizing that such an association would harm Israel’s standing in the world. For all its sins, however, the Afrikaaner government was never accused of fomenting a genocide. Israel’s government now risks being lumped together with Rwanda’s Hutu regime, Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge, Mao’s China and, yes, Nazi Germany.

The question to ask is whether, in a world of dissolving norms, the genocide label matters anymore. But however you answer it, the very fact that the discussion is taking place is a sign of a significant shift in political tectonics that should be worrisome both for Israelis and American supporters of Israel.

— Daniel W. Drezner / “Americans Are Changing Their Views of Israel. That’s a Problem.” / Politico

The cicada’s dry monotony breaks
over me. The days are bright
and free, bright and free.

Then why did I cry today
for an hour, with my whole
body, the way babies cry?

— Jane Kenyon / “Three Songs at the End of Summer”

Targeted rumours that spread like a virus across France in 1789 were at the heart of the ‘Great Fear’ — a period of panic and upheaval among peasants that laid some of the groundwork for the French Revolution. Using documents from the time period, researchers used modern epidemiological models to trace how false stories about roving gangs of bandits spread from one location to another. The team found that fearmongering deliberately targeted areas where peasant uprisings would be more consequential and that those with higher levels of literacy were more likely to be ‘infected’, which suggests that the false information had rational, not emotional, roots.

— Jacob Smith / “Fearmongering fuelled revolution in France” / Nature Briefing 

Why not just go on into Canada? someone said.

It was how the border had appeared so quickly when my experience was

that the roads that were the way over were

always further north than I had figured when I’d set out.

In my experience—waking

life—nothing had readied me for such an arrival.

— C.S. Giscombe / “Second Dream”

After the 2016 presidential election, many of my artist clients said things like, “Maybe I should quit making art,” “It’s kind of selfish for me to focus on my art now,” and “I should help people in a more effective way.” These are expected grief responses to the shock and horror of our times, but I beseech you: DO NOT STOP MAKING ART. I need it profoundly.

We all do.

— Beth Pickens / Your Art Will Save Your Life 

What I’m Listening To:

Ain’t got a cow, but I’m still a boy
I love my friends, and I love my toys
Mother says she misses me
She don’t get my life is poetry

— Ty Segall / “Another California Song”

FORMATTING: (redux)

press the eject + cut the tape

“… if the story is starting to feel very forced, or if you become excited about an alternate possibility for your story, feel free to abandon or modify one of these constraints”

the wild is where we belong

“I find myself writing about family and the little betrayals that can occur between parents and children, brothers and sisters. The family is such fertile terrain for fiction, because there’s shared history there, such intimacy and love, and yet our families are forced on us. No one knows quite how to push our buttons like our family members, and small gestures can take on huge resonances.”

enough of that

“Often my entry into a story is a pair of characters…”

buried alive

“FORMATTING: All manuscripts for this class should include your name …”

hot with fleas & filled with rats

What I’m Reading:

You don’t end up changing the system, the system ends up changing you.

— Omar El Alkad, to Dan Sheehan /“Omar El Akkad on Genocide, Complicit Liberals, and the Terrible Wrath of the West“/ Lithub

textures are failing

it is impossible to fail
if u don’t neglect the watershed
inspiration to exasperation

the black bile
of a black age coursing
thru ur vena cava

inflamed + debased
with the glory of thee
all mighty failure

fail fail again fail
until the cows come
willingly to the abattoir

these blues are the hotbed
of a mind colonized by the fraud
of fraternity

textures are failing
to elicit a response
the boulder is cracked + immovable

we are arthritic
the plague is upon us

we are impotent

What I’m Reading:

You know, the reason I find myself having had such a hard time talking about this is because I’m just so preemptively furious at the moment, many years from now, when we’re gonna get all of those, you know, “Hiroshima”-type stories. The after-the-fact shared grief, the how-could-we-let-this-happen type stuff. I’m just so furious that we’re going to do it again. You know, we’ve got the president of the United States talking about mass ethnic cleansing as though it’s a tourism opportunity and we’re all going to sit around and wait until the taking is done and the killing is done and everything colonialism needed it has gotten. And then we’re all going to feel sad about it afterwards. And I find myself so furious about that all of the time. 

— Omar El Alkad, to Dan Sheehan /“Omar El Akkad on Genocide, Complicit Liberals, and the Terrible Wrath of the West“/ Lithub

disengagement / engagement 

. . . and with a deep suspiration she set her thumbs to tapping on the gorilla glass:

a disconnect with attainment of desired goals
a disconnect with engagement of daily responsibilities
a disconnect with realizing this awareness and affecting change

an over engagement with the virtual world
a disengagement with the physical world

few, if any, goals are actuated by the aforementioned

it’s fight or flight time . . .

then on with the headphones, on with her iphone, on with sic alps’ message from the law
and on she danced to a new transcendence . . .

What I’m Reading:

Pantalone, like a parrot,
Sat and grumbled in the garret—
Sat and growled and grumbled till
Moon upon the window-sill
Like a red geranium
Scented his bald cranium.

— Edith Sitwell / “By Candlelight”

Memorable Stuff I Read This Week

The men who carry the stretcher move with urgency, as if the doing of care, of gentleness, can undo what has happened to this girl, to this place, to the bodies yet to be dug from beneath the rubble. Someone nearby asks God for revenge. Perhaps God is here somewhere, also searching.

— Omar El Akkad / One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

You’ll still try to destroy me in your own way

Maybe with your hands
Maybe with your silence
Maybe with your tacit approval of this machine

— Joshua Jennifer Espinoza / “It Doesn’t Matter If I’m Understood”

. . . follower counts on social media compress your importance to a single number judged by humans and algorithms alike. Want to be a writer? Be prepared to tell publishers how many TikTok followers you have. Want to sell handcrafted soaps? The number of Instagram followers you have is likely more important than the number of weekends you spend at the local farmer’s market. I’ve seen applicants for a teaching position beat out others for an interview by having a larger YouTube following. Even the importance of politicians is now sometimes measured by the number of social media followers they have. Real impact, meaningful personal connections, and deeper forms of friendship all become secondary to this shallow game of online quantification. Social media is pushing us all to act like social influencers— whether we want to or not.

— Noah Giansiracusa / “Ruled by Numbers: How Data Dominates Every Facet of Our Daily Lives” / Lithub 

I’m a traitor. A confirmed traitor. And happy.

— Reinaldo Arenas / “Goodbye Mother” 

I can’t tell you if this is a good book or bad book. I don’t know if any of my writing is worth a damn, but the process of writing it has forced me to contend with my own complicity within the empire and how with much being within the empire has shaped me, because my knee jerk reaction has always been dependent on this idea that, no matter what, the Democratic Party is better on every issue. That no matter how awful or grotesque they may be, you should always just pick up the ballot and vote for the person with the D under their name, right? I can’t do that anymore, and that has messed me up quite a bit, both in terms of how I think about being in this part of the world, pragmatically and strategically, but also in terms of having to come to terms with my own cowardice, and my own intellectual and moral laziness. I’d been fed this story that, no matter what, you have to vote Democrat because the alternative is so much worse. Maybe that’s still true, but I can’t commit to it anymore.

I find that my fury is directed more at people who looked away than the people who actively cheered this on.

— Omar El Alkad, to Dan Sheehan /“Omar El Akkad on Genocide, Complicit Liberals, and the Terrible Wrath of the West“/ Lithub

Listen, crying bird:
To live without this grief is to see the mountain
without its weight, rivers without depth.

— Zhang Xian / Departure: To the Tune “Mu Lan Hua: Magnolia”

One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.

— Omar El Akkad / One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

What I’m Listening To:

Manifesting his destiny
He says to me, “It’s cold outside”
Cold outside
So naturally I humble thee
Who come to me to be alive
Be alive

— Ty Segall / “Alive”

Dilatory Prelate (redux)

The prelate drafts an encyclical announcing that the werewolves and camellias will be delivered on Friday to all diocese in the mountainous regions. It encourages all Englishmen and yogis to traipse about nude and re-stage the highlights of the Inquisition.

The document goes on to explain that castanets, “fingertip cymbals” (for he has forgotten that they are called zills) and censers will be distributed liberally among the cairns about the ridge tops—“Help Yourselves,” he flourishes in his complicated calligraphy.

He insists that discussions of reincarnation will not be part of the programming. And furthermore, that “Virgins Need Not Apply.”

He’s buoyant with his ideas, they come to him in torrents. He surmises that it must be something about that moldy bread at breakfast. He continues with momentum:

“Recently 50,000 perforations were distributed throughout the bishopric. The adhesives which bound them were of an open-ended and mysterious nature—lacking in optimism and alternating and overlapping in swells of violin trills when touched or added to morning cereals. They are altogether too piquant and picaresque for our flock’s conservative constitutions—Please Avoid! Toecaps and personal backyard derricks will be distributed in their stead. A recurrence of tedium and inefficiency is all that is required and asked of you. OBEY!”

But a sort of boredom swamp bounded by alienation hammock islands spread out before him. Never has he been gripped by such a visceral ennui—as if it was bequeathed to him as a grand heirloom that he should wear around his neck. 

And he does! He wears it around his neck. 

And it is heavy, baby. A ‘heavy-o-sity’ he’s never experienced—or maybe once, when he missed the 1847 College of Cardinals’ sabbatical.

He considers the Ancient Mariner and the awful pestilential albatross crawling with monosyllabic bird mites (wa, wa, wa, wa, wa…they stridulated) around his neck, and the ‘heavy-o-sity’ becomes too much to bear.

He tears up the draft encyclical, inkwells his pen (he never liked the damn thing anyway) and laments, Why’d I ever take up writing? He descends to the cellar for a bottle of wine.

There is no remuneration in fermentation, but the bottom of a bottle is as good as any place in this world, he reasons. 

And he adds: At the least I’m not in Florida, so I have that going for me. But there was something poetic about werewolves and camellias…

He’ll eventually come round to that.

What I’m Reading:

The Earth wobbling on through space, riddled with life,
from the thickening mothers of vinegar
to insomniacs anonymous who see
a future of unscheduled meetings with death,
from sap-green bamboo for Shanghai scaffolding
to an old dog running away in his dreams.

— Chris Andrews / “Prop”