thee istsfor manity reader

exploiter wrangles his tweeds

see here thee arsehole of shambles
mesmerizing and haunting his possessives
paranoia flexing in bicentenary splendor
he’s mr. touchdown incandescence
from exertion to everyday lift-off

the crisp thrush of academic sentimentality
comforts his tweeds
elbow patches as cemetery of heroism
thee beautiful blighter of nationalist desaturation
homilies need not apply

his mastery complete
his lechery a comfort to him
his debtor deficiency and colored doubloons
on vitrine display at home
transfixed in his private room and immortal

What I’m Reading:

Abstraction and euphemism also protect us from having to look into the eyes of the victims. They are removed from our consciousness. They do not speak . . . Americans are never shown what it actually looks like when a US drone strike hits a wedding party, or a child is crushed by a US tank. They are rarely exposed to the accounts of those who have witnessed such gruesome spectacles, or to the voices of the family members who mourn the victims.

— Noam Chomsky / The Myth of American Idealism

Memorable Stuff I Read This Week

You pride yourself on being a realist, I told myself, so face the facts. There’s been a coup, here in the United States, just as in times past in so many other countries. Any forced change of leadership is always followed by a move to crush the opposition. The opposition is led by the educated, so the educated are the first to be eliminated.

— Margaret Atwood / The Testaments

Each forward movement of the clouds leadens
The cupola covering the great men
A bit more.

— Hédi Kaddour / “The Answer”

Half the world was flooded and the other half parched and the crops kept failing and failing again. People were starving, even here in California. There were refugees everywhere. The wine tasted of ash.

— T.C. Boyle / Blue Skies

To throw ourselves down
helplessly, into happiness,
into an age of our own, into
our own days.
There where the Pestilence roars,
where the empty riders of the horror go.

— Robert Duncan / “Ingmar Bergman’s Seventh Seal”

There is no proven vaccine or treatment for infections with the virus, which is closely related to Ebola virus and causes similar symptoms . . . It is an outbreak of superlatives. One of the deadliest known viruses, Marburg, has emerged in Rwanda, killing 13 people and sickening 58 in one of the biggest Marburg outbreaks ever documented. Scientists expect the outbreak to be curtailed quickly — but they warn that, overall, Marburg is on the rise.

— Saima Sidik / “Lethal Marburg virus is on the rise in Rwanda: why scientists are worried” / Nature

If there’s a temple beyond glands and bone
for all that goes blank in a lifetime, maybe it resides in the body
of a poem, in meanings left between the spread knees
of enjambment.

— Idra Novey / “Value City”

My life might have been very different. If only I’d looked around me, taken in the wider view. If only I’d packed up early enough, as some did, and left the country—the country that I still foolishly thought was the same as the country to which I had for so many years belonged.

Such regrets are of no practical use. I made choices, and then, having made them, I had fewer choices. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and I took the one most travelled by. It was littered with corpses, as such roads are. But as you will have noticed, my own corpse is not among them.

— Margaret Atwood / The Testaments

What I’m Listening To:

You’re rereading a book
To feel reassured
By the life of your favorite hero
But don’t worry, honey, don’t worry
This is just a fairytale
Happening in the supermarket

— The Raincoats / “Fairytale In The Supermarket”

unspool

the tulip finally came out / this was an ingenuous hoist / powered by fairlight synthesizers and fogsmoke

two-stud american amour full of resignation and striving / fascination and cupidity on matchstick wings / with a well-practiced press of a thumb / gyroscopes on swivel / a bloody eyewash

another cornice-scrounger eliminated / weather clear doze / a wisp of cirrus /  he made a lobe / a hose trailer / a caribou cheerleader mount / he was either imbecile / as contingencies attested / or /  by his own ache / a voracious reappearance of a mouthbreather t•bone / he married his nightmare with his last look in the mirror / cloudy there 

when she was sixteen a theological literalism angered him / he was thirty something / a precondition / to carve his name on her lower back / no / she said in detonation / the scene detritus now / he left decanting his viscera / throwing sticks at a whirring machine / i saw this / as i tell you now / a hummingbird so incensed / so raging with fire / all was dust for minutes 

later / it occurred to me / he shouldnt have played with tinderboxes

these are thee behemoth stories of old / they still play out today / they will unspool tomorrow

What I’m Reading:

… when so much weather is raging inside you, and Twitter is cawing the news. Gunfire, murder, oil spill, terrorism, wildfire, abduction, bombing, floods. Funny video in which a woman opens her car to find a brown bear sitting in the driver’s seat snacking on her groceries. Murder, murder, war. The internet is upset. To experience reality as a handful of tap water, at a time like this, is to find oneself in good company.

— Tess Gunty  / The Rabbit Hutch

reign of imperfection

la niña is coming / a perfect possum of a viper in the same northernmost armchair driven by a similar detail to carcass the roadsters and traipsers of rehearsals / rocky, barren lands imperative / vivid green presses inured / a tent and a deeply enthographic personal molester of cisterns / reversions to dogleg cans in fair ballrooms and intoxicant subjectives / is this irreconcilable with logic and comprehension / only you can say

virago armfuls of carcinogens and millions of pounds of listeria riddled meats as your prize / the reign of imperfection to the nth degree / elements of magnitude in play/ the roadways soon barren / the larders soon empty / don’t be a stranger in the time of the corpses / here’s some balm for your tentacles / all best

What I’m Reading:

All that was necessary was a law degree and a uterus: a lethal combination.

— Margaret Atwood / The Testaments

snouter

i am a parasitic acarologist
hosting a tick and a bacterium
an entomophage pullulating amongst legions of others
looking for a parasitoid wasp
im a beaky toothed sort of snouter
out and about for a ladybug finger or two
the dog never knew what hit it
and neither will you
(microbes are where the action is)

What I’m Reading:

I’m no more your mother
Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow
Effacement at the wind’s hand.

— Sylvia Plath / “Morning Song”

clang of bombs update

dear sirs,

please regard our mangrove from this promontory / premonitory backfilling will fracture pillars on monday / keep your sunday receipts beneath your oilskins / drone quintets will perform on contingency / feel free to discombobulate with nefarious natterings / this is no way to start the week / but we must start it anyhow / with the clang of bombs in the morning

What I’m Reading:

It would be a quieter holiday, no fireworks
or loud parades, no speeches, no salutes to any flag,
a day of staying home instead of crowding away,
a day we celebrate nothing gained in war
but what we’re given—how the sun’s warmth
is democratic, touching everyone…

— John Daniel / “Dependence Day”

Memorable Stuff I Read This Week

All night your moth-breath
Flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen:
A far sea moves in my ear.

— Sylvia Plath / “Morning Song”

I think women run things better. Women are much more sensible and collaborative—they are life-givers. Even in modern times, when you look at governments—there’s Angela Merkel, Sanna Marin, Jacinda Ardern. That’s why I want a woman President.

— Francis Ford Coppola / “Francis Ford Coppola on Books That Influenced ‘Megalopolis’” / Empire

But for your dollar, your dirty dollar, 
    Your greenish leprosy, 
It’s only hatred you shall get
    From all my folks and me;
So keep your dollar where it belongs 
    And let us be!

— Salomón de la Selva / “A Song for Wall Street”

Upwards of one million Cubans have left the island since 2020, roughly a tenth of the population, in an exodus demographers say has few parallels outside of war . . . “It’s going to kick off again at any moment.”

— Dave Sherwood / “In a migrant exodus to the US, many Cubans are disappearing at sea. They leave a painful void” / Reuters

Poetry is what you find
in the dirt in the corner

— Elizabeth Alexander / “Ars Poetica #100: I Believe”

A key region of Antarctica is getting greener with alarming speed — a trend that will spur rapid change of Antarctic ecosystems. Researchers looked at satellite imagery of one of the continent’s fastest-warming regions: the Antarctic Peninsula, which juts north towards the tip of South America. They found that the area covered by plants increased by almost 14 times between 1986 and 2021. “It’s the beginning of dramatic transformation,” says remote-sensing specialist and study co-author Olly Bartlett.

— Alix Soliman / “Believe it or not, this lush landscape is Antarctica” / Nature

Are we here to prepare
for our death, to begin to make our farewells as we
arrive—do we exist to mourn the earth?  

— Sharon Olds / “Blossom Trees”

What I’m Listening To:

I’ve had a hard, hard landing
I really should duck and roll out
Out of my life

— Kim Deal / “Coast”

dazzled bear armistice

an avant-garde plateful / a dazzled bear armistice / computers full of soybean gas screaming soylent green is people / a rubber stamped law / vortex concubines exploring the playtime quartos of lime habits as sculptural embargo

stay at home yogis falter / writing becomes authorless if the author is removed as a potential safety issue / welcome to the unique kitchen of cinematic spasms / shut down freedom and replace it with equivalencies of harsh aleatoric frequencies / lap dissolve / we’re expanding your freedoms to include briar fingertips in runny egg yolks / jump cuts / simmer your moral panic on the back burner / splice here / call me / never

What I’m Reading:

I learned at birth to smile

                        where my teeth are not. And I learned after:

everything that opens is a mouth.

                        Every mouth will spit you right out.

— Aliyah Cotton / “Plastic Bag from Corner Store Laments the Self”