thee istsfor manity reader

Memorable Stuff I Read This Week

… I’d like to write
a children’s book called everybody dies. Upbeat, of
course, and pragmatic. You only got so many
days. Don’t think about death; when you’re
ready, death will think about you.

— D. A. Powell / “Positivity”

The planet is shaped by the sheer amazing force of human want, which has changed everything, the forests, the poles, the reservoirs, the glaciers, the rivers, the seas, the mountains, the coastlines, the skies, a planet contoured and landscaped by want.

— Samantha Harvey / Orbital

I am a thimble of O blood cells 
bluffing each time 
to let other objects through me 
it is possible for the tender wish to become a bone 
to beckon to tend the animal and temper it 

— Asiya Wadud / “number four”

We know that Earth, if it’s not destroyed by us or an errant asteroid first, will likely be incinerated when the Sun expands into a red giant. Luckily, that probably won’t happen for at least another five billion years.

— Dr. Alastair Gunn / “Here’s how our Universe will (probably) end” / BBC Science Focus

To think there was a time I thought birds were kind of boring. Brown bird. Gray bird. Black bird. Blah blah blah bird. Then, I started to learn their names by the ocean, and the person I was dating said, That’s the problem with you, Limón, you’re all fauna and no flora.

— Ada Limón / “Calling Things What They Are”

Researchers are anxiously awaiting data from the midwestern state about a mysterious bird flu infection in a person who had no known contact with potential animal carriers of the disease. The data could reveal whether the ongoing US bird flu outbreak in dairy cattle has reached a dreaded turning point: the emergence of a virus capable of spreading from human to human.

— Heidi Ledford / “Is bird flu spreading among people? Data gaps leave researchers in the dark” / Nature

Yes, love was time, and it too
splintered and cracked
like the face of our country.

— Najwan Darwish / “A Violet Darkness”

What I’m Listening To: 

Did you read the news? I’m a bit confused
The gun fever is back, the gun fever
Rudeness and gun is the talk of this town
The gun fever is back, the gun fever

— The Valentines / “(Gun Fever) Blam Blam Fever”

aquarium bully pulpit

its faint deception
feint tall taunt
greater aid
to nub octopus
pulpo plinth plinker
sculpture book champ
exterminator of clams
lob oscillator camouflage
thingamajig
conveyor o undersea
expletive bound humblebrags

aquarium bully pulpit poser
eight armed jabmabobs
beakman dredger
fishbone martinet
employing artifice
on nectarine reef
tormented sucker
armed pusher
wad silt sitter
inkfilled ghost

our blood runs chunky
we love u

What I’m Reading:

life does not mean the same to them as it does to us:
i lie on their sweat-embroidery

— Katrine Øgaard Jensen / “Arachnoscientific Salvation”

Blockhead (redux)

Relevance was not his strong suit. Assonance was a mildly strong point. Dissonance was his power alley. So he detuned his lyre and randomly plucked strings. He tuned his dulcimer to F sharp and struck it with claw hammers which were more appropriate for sheet rock installation. He retrieved his banjo from a dusty corner in the basement and pulled on the strings hard enough to feel them loosen. He opened a can of stale tennis balls and threw them at the banjo head and strings. He then found his ukulele in the closet and tore out the E and C strings and went mad strumming at the speed of Johnny Ramone on the G and A strings. He even shouted, “gabba, gabba, hey” once for nostalgia sake. In the office he took his electric guitar off its stand, plugged it in, and maximized the fuzz box and with drumsticks he did a ratamacue on the fretboard until there was a maelstrom of skronk filling the room. After a minute of this, his heart racing and the incipient pangs of a migraine squeezing the sides of his neocortex, he raised the guitar over his head and smashed his acoustic guitar to splinters in its stand — and then started on the walls. In this manner his 3/2 with 2 car became a massive heap of refuse. He was proud to take out his home before the weather got the best of him. “Hurricane that! Fire that! Flood that! Tornado that! Glacier melt that! Sea level rise that! Earthquake that! Virus that! Gas explosion that! Take that! I’m in control!

What I’m Reading:

It is hard to believe the quality of blackness that is the entirety of space around a day-lit earth, where the earth absorbs all the light – yet hard to believe in anything but that blackness…

— Samantha Harvey / Orbital

misdeeds / missives

if misdeeds were missives id send u one a day 

What I’m Reading:

Books are states of consciousness, a record—
What won’t finally kill you, you eat its tongue

— Carolina Ebeid / “Assume the Role of Cassandra, Wearing a Mask, Speaking into the Camera”

im a dream creep

im a dream creep having bug dinner / making errant presentations in the round / converting pathological crab kids in love to arthritic husks / i tease a sickle / a cudgel / all show of course / i aint no aggro-chaperone hypnotist / overnight lows will drop to antiquarian simmer / please wear protective eyewear+sling your colostomy bag over your shoulder for quick escape / im having bullet pie / as everyone these days insists on carrying guns / i insist on forearms / have a quiver full of them / they get me thru the lean times / im a maladjusted tassel in a 1960’s burlesque / please dont touch the asterisks

the sickness doyenne suggests: mindfulness based stress reduction+meditation / bittersweet nightshades / bathing in great excremental deposits / thanks / ill pass / ill start the purgatotrial convolutions instead / the yellow-green resonances like gnashing teeth 

im changing my insoles+increasing my fiber intake / im sorta hooked on imported guano / so maybe the occasional quaff / ill find a tendinitis sweetheart who spits monosyllabic love-tee-dums in basque / become a long-rapier foreman / hedge fund my way thru thee anthropocene / every dream creep for themselves

What I’m Reading:

Every swirling neon or red algal bloom in the polluted, warming, overfished Atlantic is crafted in large part by the hand of politics and human choices.

— Samantha Harvey / Orbital

thru zoetrope eyes

the mandrake sage transmits an incantation / inserts the bulldog queen in heavyweight cream / we have monologue lift-off / the long-rap foreign diplomatic corp spy daylight / the court of weightlifters have protein shakes in hand / teenagers hide in hedges beyond the lecture hall / on-sizzle we be watching the tear-jerker scene playing thru zoetrope eyes / on-off on-off on-off on-off on-off superfast / colorfast dreams abjuring and running fast / we stay monolith watch thru fading vision / spaniel hecklers chip concrete into ohm wafers 

please write soon as im going foreleg gimpy and best-daze inane / ill wait for the courtesan of weirs if you dont respond / daytime tendencies will be tendentious+strident on alternate nights / await your witticisms / or at least your hedgehog face soon / my suppurating sutures weep+await you / all best

What I’m Reading:

Startled eyes of nurses swish by noiselessly,
Orderlies with cropped heads swagger like murderers;
And three surgeons, robed and masked mysteriously,
Lounge gossiping of guts, and wish it were lunch-time.

— John Reed / “Operating Room”

Memorable Stuff I Read This Week

The impact of climate change has been felt in earlier than ever heat warnings and 46 days of heat index topping 100 degrees, a record set last summer.

— Ashley Minazi / “Why does South Florida feel so damn hot? It’s not just the temperature that is rising” / Miami Herald

No, the mother thinks. No, she is not losing it. And, yes, it is normal to feel abnormal, after a body has left your body.

— Tess Gunty  / The Rabbit Hutch

— Meghie Rodrigues / “Who will protect us from seeing the world’s largest rainforest burn?’ The mental exhaustion faced by climate scientists” / Nature

Many climate scientists and professionals face eco-anxiety in their daily work — an issue that is on the rise and is worsening mental-health disorders in the general population. Young adults are particularly affected. In a 2021 survey of 10,000 people aged between 16 and 25 years old in 10 countries, almost half said that climate distress affected their ability to sleep and work.

I think that you think that I think
too much about grief
It’s not only mine—we’re in the same current

— Carolina Ebeid / “Assume the Role of Cassandra, Wearing a Mask, Speaking into the Camera”

Humidity is why medical experts say that South Florida’s climate can be harder on the health and body than a dry climate like Arizona, where a 90 degree temperature doesn’t feel all that oppressive. Sweat is supposed to cool us off when it evaporates from our skin. But when it’s extremely humid, the sweat sticks and the body can’t cool itself off as well, raising the risks of heat exhaustion or stroke.

— Ashley Minazi / “Why does South Florida feel so damn hot? It’s not just the temperature that is rising” / Miami Herald

I didn’t know then that it wasn’t even
love that I was interested in, but my own suffering. I thought suffering
kept things interesting. How funny that I called it love and the whole
time it was pain.

— Ada Limón / “Calling Things What They Are”

Go: get on your bike, slip out into the yawning morning traffic, find your groove, and get there. It’s the start of a new day for so many of us, all around the world-in forward-thinking cities like Amsterdam, bicycles already account for 35 percent of all trips taken. In Groningen, a Swedish city of 180,000, it’s 60 percent.

— Sam Tracy / Bicycle!: A Repair & Maintenance Manifesto

What I’m Listening To: 

All the things he couldn’t have
All the things he couldn’t see
Little man with a gun in his hand

— The Minutemen / “Little Man With Gun In His Hand”

thee stillbirthed republic

hit me on thee settee
leave your fingermarks & hot
welts rising on my twisted back

be my grand inquisitor imperious
in ermine & red velveteen
your incandescence / the wean
of duchess-induced melancholia

i call you weasel fingers
& you coo like a showroom dummy

its a luminary anthropocene summer
in the waning years of thee stillbirthed
republic listing rudderless

let us hedonistically drink
apple cider vinegar
& chew our appleseeds to splinters
piercing our swollen tongues

our brand is mint!
mintry fresh & pressed
with the privilege of inquisitors

if we need to rape & extirpate
why not be best
we’ll be great again

in oblivion

What I’m Reading: 

The classic idea of the compassionless psychopath is outdated. Research is revealing how people with dark personality traits can also have high levels of empathy … Science shows us that people with such traits simply think and feel differently, enabling them to act in morally corrupt ways. 

— Miriam Frankel / “Inside The Mind Of A Dark Empath” / BBC Science Focus