thee istsfor manity reader

return

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

— Ai / “Conversation”

Memorable Stuff I Read This Week

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

— Le Tigre / “Les and Ray”

those of us

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.

— Rita Dove / “Incantation of the First Order”

Your Ruff Collar, My Millstone (redux)

We live under the heat dome.

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?

I care about myself
without being kind to myself.

— Jessica Abughattas / “Eureka!”

No Easy Way Down

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”

ire

just ain’t content
with anything at the moment—
what more to say?

What I’m Reading:

We are now in an era of loss and damages.

— Saleemul Huq / “Life at 1.1 C “ / The Climate Book: The Facts and the Solutions