a jack-in-the-box of new perspectives ready and able to spew prose capes and clang the punchbowl pronouns we prefer bamboo soloists to instant hobble confederates
call the department of vital fractures send for the ensign of contested stunts we got an election to settle
don’t vote for the tinker of dimwits!
What I’m Reading:
The globe has experienced 12 months of record warmth, with temperatures consistently exceeding the 1.5C rise above preindustrial levels that has been touted as the limit to avoiding the worst of climate breakdown.
— Damien Gayle & Dharna Noor / “Antarctic temperatures rise 10C above average in near record heatwave” / The Guardian
dollops and dogmas the commandment zone oil well an outdated mule out to pasture / in the drum something off-key this way hums
all is commercial— the conifers / the lightning sponsored by exxon / flooding brought to you by shell / wildfires subsidized by us
a dash of access a collection of comforts slushy cowardice / paralyzing nutrients / the unspeakable
a death like goldenberry
What I’m Reading:
… Unfortunately, most sectors are still terribly underprepared for the changes that need to take place, and harmful fossil fuel industries are still receiving subsidies of $1 million every minute.
— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus / “Health and Climate” / The Climate Book: The Facts and the Solutions
I just got a voicemail from Freesia Scandalmonger she was calling about the work reservoir. I am at work and when I tried to call back I got the fry detector.
I called you and a lemming a methodology answered just now. If they can still come today Freedom Scalp is there waiting. If they want to schoolmate something for tomorrow please have them call the salesgirl or the clergy.
You may have “closed” this work organ rescue for your badger, but this, now 2 yes-man-old, rescue was just simply ignored.
The work was never done.
No one contacted us about the rescue.
The work is still outstanding.
No one has been brought up for ordination to honor the organ-grinder.
What about love?
What I’m Reading:
… I told my therapist I’m through with villain portraiture but I keep leaving promises to wilt.
— Ty Chapman / “Alone in bed thinking about another breakup”
The dying day teethes On the tinny taste of bus exhaust. Eight O’ Eight roars away. Bayside shadows cast and reel back nothing. And now the toothy breeze Seizes the silver weeds With a violent shake, And rasps the bayside clear. Distant machines whir. The muted stars reappear, Briefly, in refracted waterlight. Then, bared, the incisors of the night.
What I’m Reading:
Like all hotel rooms, this one’s asking you to cry. You wait until you’ve left the large bed, the elevator dings open and you’re on West 46th passing long October coats.
Mango and Malefactor are aware that their bullfinch-wide jackets are taking on water.
Our vermouth rubies too sanguine to make the needed replies. We apologize for this indication and indigestion. All gestures are pointless and rutting began early this season. Mango will keep you updated to the restoration of sense.
Don’t hold your breath.
The fence is in the pudding and the backpack is full of oppressor misconstructions within 30 to 45 parsecs. Lightseconds need not apply. The dictator’s airplane is on stand-by. We appreciate your patience while your chastity belt rusts.
Please construe your continental frustrations as deficiencies should you have any pasties at the dry cleaners.
You may hold your breath now.
What I’m Reading:
Large moon the deep orange of embers. Also the scent. The griefs of others-beautiful, at a distance.
In Florida, even the cold is warm by comparison We sit at the ocean’s lip as it licks the sand from our toes . . . . . . I ask the lifeguard not to hang the purple flag For jellyfish and sting rays and the floating terror
— Julie Marie Wade / “Atlantic Elegy”
as a child, i learned while killing, do not think about being killed
— Ollie Schminkey / “The First Rule of Buoyancy”
The 10 years with the highest daily average temperatures have occurred between 2015 and 2024, Copernicus researchers found.
— Andrew Freedman / “Earth just likely set its hottest day on record in thousands of years” / Axios
i write about urban bleeders and breeders, but am troubled because their tragedies echo mine. at this moment I am sickened by the urge to smash.
— Wanda Coleman / “American Sonnet (95)”
Theres a new kind of extreme weather scorching the planet. Soaring temperatures now go hand in hand with monstrous humidity levels, and together they can make it almost impossible for the human body to regulate its own temperature. As the frequency of these humid heatwaves increases, so does the risk to human life.
— Bill McGuire / “Too Hot to Live” / BBC Science Focus
You know what it feels like to hold a burning piece of paper, maybe even trying to read it as the flames get close to your fingers until all you’re holding is a curl of ash by its white ear tip yet the words still hover in the air? That’s how I feel now.
— Dean Young / “Belief in Magic”
When the tendrils of human society retreat from you so that you are no longer within the warmth of the tribe’s embrace but also no longer ensnared within the mesh of its netting—you can get a little kooky.
— Eugene Lim / “What We Have Learned, What We Will Forget, What We Will Not Be Able to Forget” / New Yorker
What I’m Listening To:
Maybe a long dark night is coming down Maybe a long dark night, my precious one Maybe a long dark night is rolling around my head
three aliens put me in a moralist’s mood something drastic this way plumbs
i weigh drachmas and lacerate the heavens in heaves of heat dome reflected hotness
two rectories are empty smelling of fear and carnal loathing backhander deals glisten and tingle repeated and incessant cufflink droppings
syncopating through sycophant hallways blackened by last year’s incendiaries panegyrics of the dead / heather showing / bookworms at the fist i can’t take it
drop it along with all apostrophes from this point forward the corporal of spaceship strips daubs and hallmarks a planetary weave— miami seems like centuries ago eons of paeans in a minor key
peons in a peonage preposterous a peonage so colonial so parochial so full of disparity and shanty display so reminiscent of footstools and pince-nez so categorically non-monocular
lenticular and lent on a lend lease lasseiz faire lagniappe for the soul for the soulless
call some time
and see
nothing there
What I’m Reading:
Psilocybin, the hallucinogenic compound in magic mushrooms, temporarily resets entire brain networks that are responsible for our sense of time and self. After seven volunteers took a huge dose of psilocybin, groups of their neurons that normally fire together became desynchronized. Most of these changes lasted for a few hours, but one key link between different parts of the brain remained disrupted for weeks. “I’ve never seen an effect this strong,” says psychiatric neuroscientist Shan Siddiqi.
— Max Kozlov / “Your brain on shrooms — how psilocybin resets neural networks” / Nature
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.
thee istsfor manity reader 