a tongue that withers—
my native tongue sent packing—
hegemonic curse.
What I’m Reading:
the walls of my voice, pronounce me
Ashamed
so I bury my native tongue
beneath a borrowed one
— Kathy Jetn̄il-Kijiner / “On the Couch with Būbū Neien” / Iep Jāltok: Poems from a Marshallese Daughter
the two avant-gardes
gardens of impassioned afterimages
two claps for toe taps and mushroom caps
i propose sieves for dinner
i propose we clamber on gravestones
there are captious eucalyptus there rescinding
next year’s ready to wear line
i’ve seen the theoretical theologian trailing
pages of canted kant—
imagine schopenhauer happy
i can’t—
so i propose a modern palpitation
let’s reduce the population
by exactly one, an exacting choice
u must make—
choose
What I’m Reading:
The relationship of Latino people to North American ideas about race is one more chapter in this country’s convoluted and contradictory race story. Latino people can think of themselves as white, and many of our unenlightened relatives believe lighter skin makes them superior human beings.
— Hector Tobar / Our Migrant Souls
Blindly devote yourself to formulary Z-074. Make triplicate copies send one to me, one to Human Resources, and one to the Department of Repressive Operations. Sing, glory be! Gloriole and halo benders and everything is ordinary until it is not. Then we’ll have to consider how I melt multiphasic multiplying the meaning of nothing this is something unseen… what doesn’t kill you makes you spastic and ekphrastic. Please don’t embarrass me in front of my secular pilgrims, they’re in a hurry and flying fast. They’re fasting at the speed of light, grasping at the site of blight. Remember the feeling you had when your teeth were removed with a mallet. Remember the pity you felt at shaving your beard with a hatchet? The nicks and the deep lacerations from running in place with shaving cream in your eye sockets and one hand in your pocket? Well, that’s what I’m feeling now.
What I’m Reading:
“… choose a place where you won’t do very much harm and stand in it for all you are worth, facing the sunshine.”
— E. M. Forster / A Room with a View
magical thinking—
the vegetation is thick
the smoke is thicker
heat appears like a cougar
there is no air—no escape
What I’m Reading:
Like a blind dolphin, the night of the new moon silently drew near.
— Haruki Murakami / The Strange Library
He produced phosphenes that smelled of mandarin oranges — a strange synesthetic effect that followed the orange-rimmed yellow spots that exploded in his closed-eye vision.
He thought this was an improvement on the phosphenes of his youth that smelt of rotting meats and animal carcasses, and filled his nights with monstrous nightmares.
He finally felt like an adult. He thought he’d arrived at the happiest point of his life, but he felt his brand was in peril. Only the whip smartest YouTubers and TikTok’ers could make the scene, and his phosphenes were falling behind.
So he really pressed down hard on his eyes this time and they fell into the center of his head, down his sinuses, and mysteriously into his esophagus, and through his digestive tract.
His vision was something spectacular now — 12K Supreme! It was like a Haight Ashbury psychedelic oil light show at a Grateful Dead concert, c. 1966 — every time another enzyme, bile, or gastric acid washed over his eyes making their way through this world of gastrointestinal wonder — phosphenes like he’d never seen before exploded through his eyeless head — sending bright yellow sparks out of his vacant eyeholes.
Man, it blew him away.
And when the peristalsis finally evacuated his eyes into the depths of his own rectum— the time was now! Now he knew he’d be the supreme influencer to all mankind.
He tapped out a telegraph to his mother: “Success, Mother! I’m finally in my own rectum and about to be born again!
What I’m Reading:
Synapses are electrical messages, didn’t they say. Crackling colours like northern lights or deep-sea creatures, floating miles below and right inside us.
— Megan Hunter / The End We Start From
Our mother grows angry
Retribution will be swift
We squander her soil and suck out her sweet black blood to burn it
We turned money into God and salivate over opportunities to
crumple and crinkle our souls for that paper, that gold
Money has spent us
Left us in small boxes, dark rooms, bright screens, empty tombs
Left investing our time in hollow philosophies
To placate the fear of our bodies returning back into our mother
Demand awakening
But the path we have taken has rotted
Ignite, stand upright, conduct yourself like lightning because
The retribution will be swift
—Tanya Tagaq / “Retribution”
What I’m Reading:
“Nature, for me, was a way of taking me out of my own mental chaos, and the surroundings that fed into that. But I always tell people it doesn’t have to be hiking. It can be any activity, or just a place in nature that’s quiet. A place to confront your demons or your darkness and a way to take steps towards growth.”
— Jesse Cody, to Nate Weitzer / “Thru-hiker Jesse Cody is going the distance for mental health” / The Boston Globe
Words float up the stairs like so many childhood letter magnets. Endgame, civilization, catastrophe, humanitarian.
— Megan Hunter / The End We Start From
Those who witness extreme social collapse at first hand seldom describe any deep revelation about the truths of human existence. What they do mention, if asked, is their surprise at how easy it is to die.
— Paul Kingsnorth / The Dark Mountain Manifesto
Throughout the year we exist in dazzling drought.
When the rare cloudburst occurs, we complain
about getting caught and drenched in the rain.
— Harryette Mullen / Urban Tumbleweed
Evidence from long-lived marine sponges suggests that the planet has already passed 1.5 °C — a milestone of global warming that nations pledged to avoid in the 2015 Paris climate agreement . . . and is on track to surpass 2 °C in the next few years.”
— Bianca Nogrady / “The world has warmed 1.5 °C, according to 300-year-old sponges” / Nature
A farcical and inhuman history turned us into “brown” people and “Hispanics” and “illegal aliens” and “spics.” But when we spend time living inside that history, and untangling the roots of the racist ideas about us, we can feel stronger and more centered. We can see that the insults directed at us have increased the more dependent the country has become on our labor.
— Hector Tobar / Our Migrant Souls
Makeshift sign. Uncle Sam
white as the lines on the flag in hand mouths
love it or leave it. You must admire
the gall of white men in carjacked country …
… How does one undrown
from the incivility of this world?
— Niki Herd / “The Stuff of Hollywood”
I have read that, when someone knows they are going to die, the world becomes acutely itself.
— Megan Hunter / The End We Start From
What I’m Listening To:
This is all a hallway to another empty room but you can’t go without me
Who will save you from the darkness in me?
— Birthmark / “Snowflake in My Palm (Not for Long)”
stack of tsundoku
towers leaning out of time
so much potential
What I’m Reading:
Any chance they get, my dreams unfurl in their allotted small space. They are origami, they are Japanese pod hotels. They fit it all in.
— Megan Hunter / The End We Start From
Tarnish your creativity. Spout rejoinders on repeat and impress your casual acquaintances during cocktail circles. Piddle about in aimless banter. Don’t glow, but please wear your goalkeeper stilettos and your mattock face. Speak in errant arpeggios—say much: mean nothing. You are the epitome 21st century stylist. The earth grows green, without really greening—it’s just a bunch of Cyanobacteria clogging our oceans and waterways: farm run-off, stimulants, depressants, and tinges of lead and mercury addenda for all—and take those nitrogen-fertilizer-carbon-bomb bon-bons for humanity as a chaser. Drink up! Bring scissors and rungs. Climb the ladder of life as you cut the helixes free from your DNA strands. Bring your lighters, goalposts and mattresses. We’ll provide the stillbirths and paradigm mutations. We’ll make all the medical journals! Use this cut-up to center your clergy. They don’t pay much mind anyway—they’ve got the godheads on the payroll. Otptional covenants for those in sequins and lamé. The brighter the better—be an endless go-getter. Get yourself got in the land of plentiful weapons and manifest destiny. Better yet, stay home.
What I’m Reading:
Between the waves of disembowelling wrench the world is shining. I feel like Aldous Huxley on mescaline. I am drenched in is-ness.
— Megan Hunter / The End We Start From
he presents alienation — charities, cleavages, chimeras and ramifications
her winger where the finch was showered and dubbed in the larch that cannot be read today
they receive a seminal matchbox in aubergine and reveries
his revoke and drink — a howler in antipodes upon maelstrom and waltzing matildas
her, artisan, she is subjected to grueling work decentering with white charts foregrounded
the coots, clergymen and ranchers their chips—with abrupt cults—from wide shots to close-ups
outside her winnow is where the fingernail has purchase
she never opens her mud heart — voiceovers dubbed in a deep listening she cannot read
it is wretched, noting that upon its remedy, there is nothing but accounting
and evacuated bomb shelters have the sharpest resonances
What I’m Reading:
“Where does California’s produce go?”
shoppers ask in supermarkets stocked
with Mexican avocados and Chinese garlic.
— Harryette Mullen / Urban Tumbleweed
thee istsfor manity reader 