This is not a planet you want to be on—trying to make sequins of the ineffable.
Try the bipedalon—cedar straightaways—and sprinkle my flaymakers.
This is not a planet you want to be on—layer the burrs on the willful lads and some such.
Try the bipedalon—mutton chop my sincerity whiskers—and say you love the smell.
These are plasters—cover your fledgling cuts with wonder and don’t soil yourself.
Try the bipedalon—a grand hold on your last playlist—play it out through the left speaker.
This is a warning— I screech at the superintendent holding thee syringes.
Try the bipedalon—cedilla straightaways as wrong weavers—spore at bold cedillas.
This is a scud of cretinism—be free—you thinker and imbiber of crease coalitions.
Try the bipedalon—get your backpack—get your censors fixed and your vanity documentaries filmed.
This will be a long quadrennial.
Sequester yourself in snags and scurrilousness.
What I’m Reading:
It was one of her last long essays, and she wrote it at a time when she—like many people now—was shocked, concerned for her country’s future, and wondering how best to respond.
Americans have voted for a politics of fear, anger, and hatred, and those of us who oppose this politics are now trying to figure out how we can oppose it usefully,” she wrote. She wanted to defend her country but was wary of the potential of outrage to draw well-meaning people into vicious circles of action and reaction. “I’m looking for a place to stand, or a way to go, where the behavior of those I oppose will not control my behavior.”
— Julie Phillips / “The Way of Water: On the Quiet Power of Ursula K. Le Guin’s Activism” / Lithub.com
d de debt d.e.a. detox detune détente detonate detonator detonation deordination deontological deoxygenated depalatalization departmentalize despiritualization deindividualization
dada dada dada dada de lunatico inquirendo de mortuis nil nisi bonum de do do do de da da da
demythologization deuteranomalous deterministically denaturalizatize dendrophagous demonetization demoralization desertification demoniacally defenestrate depredation derogatory desecrate denigrate deprave deploy desex deny dev da d
What I’m Reading:
Winter is on us now, and will return: soiled snows will choke the city streets again, bleak twilights dull the windows as before, dark hurrying crowds push towards lit rooms in vain. One day we shall not kiss or quarrel any more.
Clothes hoist. They can’t stop every time it gets windy or they’ll never finish the job. Don’t disturb Papa. He’ll rage out of the room and throw darts at us. I wish we’d never given him that dartboard as a present—it doesn’t matter how professional grade a set it is. We’re the ones who have been the targets of those darts. Look at that welt on your temple—it still looks angry as hell…
A kind of ode to money for which the widower shines. I’ve been drinking and my alexandrines are sleek by the dozen, she said. Here, look, a whole armada of alexandrines. For food I had guayaba and queso blanco—the breakfast of conquistadors with too much time on their hands, and hairs on their hides. We’ve run out of auto-da-fe candidates, he says. Go bugger yourself, she says. Do you live beyond quotation marks now?
i live beyond grammar and orthography she said rules are for rabbits dont u know and philology is the is valium of the gods i will go on as i wish making myself seen and heard by the dusty corner of our southwest wall i become unmoored an a syntacticle mispeleing fer pleashur n shur to pleace no von im a lower case werd person with nuthin 2 loos
¿Que tu dices?
What I’m Reading:
Feb.10.2022 The river is in crisis, no horizon dares to go near it. Today my father is in a small jar.
I LOST MY LEFT ARM today. It came off clean at the shoulder. Janice 2 picked it up and brought it back to the hotel. I would have thought it would affect my balance more than it has. It is like getting a haircut. The air moving differently around the remaining parts of me. Also by turns a sense of newness and lessness—free me, undead me, don’t look at me.
— Anne de Marcken / It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over
One wants to shout to Hammerstein and his cohorts, Go ahead, take over the government! Arrest Hitler and his henchmen, rule for a few years, and then try again. It won’t be as bad as what happens next. But, of course, they cannot hear us. They couldn’t have heard us then.
— Adam Gopnik / “The Forgotten History of Hitler’s Establishment Enablers” / The New Yorker
What I was is vanished.
I came back home but I came back gone.
— Cynthia Cruz / “Dark Register”
He said, “You’ve experienced a significant loss.” He said, “It isn’t just your arm.” He said,
“You’re grieving your life.” Since he broke off his penis he’s Mr. Wisdom. When he left, I closed the curtains again.
— Anne de Marcken / It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over
The US moves to a different form of imperialism, which we can think about as neoliberal hegemony.
Still plenty of military adventures, so all through the period 1970 and on up. We’ve been at war basically since I would say 1776, roughly without interruption. . . but now the US began more dominantly using financial institutions to achieve similar ends. The IMF, the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, NAFTA, many other multi- and bilateral trade arrangements to force open financial markets around the world and continue to exercise US dominance.
— Noam Chomsky and Marv Waterstone / Consequences of Capitalism: Manufacturing Dissent and Resistance
We see through a glass darkly, as patterns of authoritarian ambition seem to flash before our eyes: the demagogue made strong not by conviction but by being numb to normal human encouragements and admonitions; the aging center left; the media lords who want something like what the demagogue wants but in the end are controlled by him; the political maneuverers who think they can outwit the demagogue; the resistance and sudden surrender. Democracy doesn’t die in darkness. It dies in bright midafternoon light, where politicians fall back on familiarities and make faint offers to authoritarians and say a firm and final no—and then wake up a few days later and say, Well, maybe this time, it might all work out, and look at the other side! Precise circumstances never repeat, yet shapes and patterns so often recur. In history, it’s true, the same thing never happens twice. But the same things do.
— Adam Gopnik / “The Forgotten History of Hitler’s Establishment Enablers” / The New Yorker
I was thinking about golems. I was thinking that I am like a golem. I feel more like earth now than like an animal. Mud and sticks and rags that look and act something like a live thing. And I thought: But really I’m more like an owl pellet. A boney, furry, coughed-up turd that walks and talks.
— Anne de Marcken / It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over
What I’m Listening To:
They are children playing with guns They are children playing with countries Mining harbors, creating contras The games they play The lives they take
— The Minutemen / “Untitled Song for Latin America”
i lost all my teeth after i registered at the community college • the dictum was flounced airs and a lack of calcium • everly the dredge came by the apartment bearing good tidings and tarwater • mighty good stuff if you know your actuarial tables • our body mass indices were 17.1 combined • stomach contents were prone to tornadic episodes and love was always one casing off • one might say it was all evidence of the presaged flood • the grackles liked to stare at their reflections in the living room window • everly the dredge and i took to the road • westbound • like all the good american palimpsests loquated in the good books of frisson • frisson is a word best uttered by a muted tv • a muted tv is best left turned on • im shaping some rocks in the shape of new teeth • like genesis p orridge teeth • my pretty mouth is gonna shine •
What I’m Reading:
The end of the world happens so quietly. Things as large as glaciers are so quiet.
— Anne de Marcken / It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over
im taking a shower and everybody keeps opening the door every time they open the door the water pressure drops
im taking this shower everybody opens the door the water pressure drops
i scream at everybody to stop opening the door the water pressure
drops
i dont know who everybody is
What I’m Reading:
Nothing was where it was supposed to be or even where it was twenty minutes ago, one of the only times I’ve understood what nature was trying to say to me.
— Sasha Debevec-McKenney / “I Went Out to See All The Downed Trees”
a red circle a red circle interlaced with a yellow square a red circle interlaced with a yellow square and interlaced with a blue triangle interlaced with the yellow square
picture freedom see
What I’m Reading:
Where there was something and suddenly isn’t, an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space. I begin again with the smallest numbers.
winter darkness on short day spleen light the candles in the gloaming ring the cider press with dead lilies throttle your fully illuminated deaths festoon with snacks + libation
i come to you pixilated of course off-course to see you off to a new year o happy day
What I’m Reading:
… A day will come when my body will no longer open like a suitcase to take myself on a journey where I’ll dream of never being found, where I’ll dream of never finding what I’ve lost.
