image: paul fürst / “doctor schnabel [i.e dr beak], ca. 1656 / image in public domain
splotch
the score and mail dictator given to distraction and destruction his personal colonial wrapper on golden cigarettes cork of bookworm and mechanical writing— automatic writing is so 1923— a pedigree of tousled hair wings and ear flaps in the buttercup of his sustained limp the announcement of a new disease— the fraudulent picaresque perquisite— supernatural and supine arms akimbo lumberjack style a life of conquest undone by an upended strut and a corn stalk husk of a preambled mailboxed splotch
image: p. remer
What I’m Reading:
It’s August finally and no one knows that August isn’t really a month. It is one long day.
Building fictions is an addiction not easily quenched. A need, psychological and physiological that renders one a hamster inside the wheel—no stopping until you’re ejected into the corner where all the soggy piss-chips accrue. Bring pleasant talk of men and women disrobing into their pustules and scales. I have needs carbuncular and crepuscular toward the end of the day. Fill me with honey black, induce the truce of Medusa, ‘cause I want to turn quartzite and brilliantine (a little dab might fuse you!). Chuff and huff until I’m diamond sharp and lenticular, see through me the shards that elude your third eye. I went cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs in my ninth year on this melting and acidifying death orb—endless amounts of psychobabble and psychotropics didn’t make a lick of difference. So salivate and join me while I play the soundtrack of my life for you: hiss, crackle, pop, skronk, white noise, metal machine whir, cacophonic bursts… SILENCE
hometown issues— and other distresses— long ago happy to be rid of it’s gravity is one of unique attenuated sadness the pull inexorable— stuck in a spiraling orbit
What I’m Reading:
your own life is a chain of words that one day will snap
It is day infinity of everyone wanting me dead. People are having fun bringing lemon squares and automatic artillery to the anti-trans community meetings.
— Jackie Sabbagh / “Having a Great Time Being Transgendered in America Lately”
Hurricane Beryl claimed at least 22 lives in the Houston area. Recent additions to the list include 11 people who died from hyperthermia, or overheating, after sitting without power for days in homes pummeled by a feverish Texas summer. At the height of the outages, CenterPoint, Houston’s main power distributor, had over 2.26 million customers with no electricity . . . Beryl’s official death toll will likely continue to climb, but experts said the final number is expected to have major gaps, especially among those found dead in powerless buildings with triple-digit temperatures.
— Rebekah F. Ward / “Hurricane Beryl killed at least 22 people in the Houston area. More than half were heat-related deaths.” / Houston Chronicle
I’m not certain which is the correct version, but what stays with me is the leaving, the cry, the country splintering.
— Chen Chen / “First light”
Monday was the hottest day ever measured by humans, beating a record set the day before, as countries across the globe continue to feel the heat, according to the European climate change service . . . Climate scientists say the world is now as warm as it was 125,000 years ago because of human-caused climate change. While scientists can’t be certain that Monday was the hottest day throughout that period, average temperatures haven’t been this high since long before humans developed agriculture.
— CBS News / “Monday was hottest day ever measured by humans, beating Sunday, European science service says: ‘Uncharted territory’”
I used to think my body craved annihilation. An inevitability, like the slow asphyxiation of the earth.
— Ally Ang / “Masculinity Ode”
I’ve not attended a protest or done a goddam thing for anyone save a distracted vote or a self-serving donation.
I am a fucked-up citizen of a fucked-up country.
— Eugene Lim / “What We Have Learned, What We Will Forget, What We Will Not Be Able to Forget” / New Yorker
If you love where you’re from god help you stay there. Here in the heat
is where I need to be. This world is frightening; I’m trying to enjoy it.
— Jessica Abughattas / “Eureka!”
What I’m Listening To:
You were my oxygen The thing that made me think I could escape This is a “Thank You” song for Les and Ray
sun city sinking into the ocean—built on tequesta middens— vain and thick with avarice so high on its own supply
(glug … glug … glug… glug…)
What I’m Reading:
In 20 or 30 years, someone is going to find a solution for this. Besides, by that time, I’ll be dead, so what does it matter?
— Real estate developer, Jorge Perez to author Jeff Goodell / The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World
those of us who fled our southern hometowns because of disingenuousness because of intolerance because of hyper-conservatism because of the heat and the hate because of hypercapitalism because of retrograde and regressive tendencies
(we know all of the above are not endemic to the south… BUT)
we’ve been replaced with alien and invasive species
green iguanas, pythons, peter’s rock agama, nile monitors, tegus, land snails, u get the drift…
only the cold blooded and unempathic could survive in this heat
cultists to the orange strident they drape themselves in red white and blue bunting and erect 10 foot crosses in their front yards
in weather fit only for birds and iguanas in an atmosphere only tardigrades could tolerate
all of this beauty in a state that dangles like an impotent penis—a flaccid handgun—at the southeast corner of this blundered and plundered cracking republic
What I’m Reading:
To those inclined toward kindness, I say Come out of your houses drumming. All others, beware: I have discarded my smile but not my teeth.
I see you across the barren parklet. You are eating bits of soft pink flesh.
My hair wilts. Your curls frizz.
I lick the hot sauce off my fingers. You yell that you are an arriviste.
I scream that I was once part of the noblesse oblige and waved banderitas.
You warble an Edith Piaf song. I huff gas out of a brown paper bag.
You sing two registers too low. My viscera gurgles. I pee my pants where I stand — mud puddles form around my feet.
Tomorrow you will sign away your inalienable rights for a used 78 rpm record of “Thee Infanticide Blues.” I will strum The Hits of the Borscht Belt Songbook tonight on my ukulele.
The gloaming hour.
I leave a minute after you do.
You to your elevator shaft. Me to my abandoned mine.
Dark. Wasteland.
We may meet again next year.
What I’m Reading:
When I go back to my unhappiness, I’m sure to cook it a meal. My sin?
Someone said to her: “Are your avocados in the oven?”
To which she said: “Excuse me. Do I know you?”
“You are very angry, aren’t you?”
“Again, do I know you, sir?”
He moved about her in a drunken semi-circle and professed: “I am a visionary, missy. I see things you can’t imagine. Hexagons. Bike routes to heaven. Heathen paths to perdition and desolation.” He adjusted the rope he wore as a belt and riled himself up for a jeremiad, but she turned and walked away.
Clarity would wait another day. Another day in the southern city. Clear as a cross-oceanic Saharan dust storm—which are becoming regular fixtures of this anthropogenic age.
What I’m Reading:
On the Brighton Beach boardwalk men sit in the rain shelters smelling of piss, shouting drunk genius into the afternoon sun.
— Gala Mukomolova / “On the Brighton Beach Boardwalk”
thee istsfor manity reader 