New Hampshire flies by in a couple of hours as one hugs the short length of Atlantic coast in the “Live Free or Die State.”
That was quick.
Maine and 135 miles in the rear view—home state is next.
Onward with furiously pumping legs before the nor’easter moves in…
What I’m Reading:
“Nothing prepared me for your absence,
except, perhaps, the wind rattling stalks of autumn corn.”
— Craig Crist-Evans / “Heron”
What I’m Reading:
“However, the most intense of all problems for the human race is that we are too many on this planet: nine billion or eight billion is too much. So we have to procreate responsibly.”
— Werner Herzog / “‘I am not that much in pursuit of happiness’: Werner Herzog on beer, yoga and what he would ask God” / The Guardian
the perineum—
cries—ode to saddle sores: bane!
of the cyclist’s ride
What I’m Reading:
“Chaos is merely order waiting to be deciphered.”
— Jose Saramago / The Double
Apropos of nothing
I’ll tell you
I was born in Jim Crow Miami +
Grew up in the age of white flight—
When the ubiquitous bumper sticker
Read: Will the last American leaving
Miami please bring the flag—
I lived the punk ethos in mind + speech
But never wore the costume—
So in lieu of some dramatic denouement—
I’m going for a bike ride
What I’m Reading:
“Here where the trees tremble with your flight I sit and braid thin whips to beat you down.”
— Djuna Barnes / “She Passed This Way”
What I’m Reading:
“It is America’s greatest promise and its greatest lie: that the past can be erased.”
— Beejay Silcox / The Guardian
“A sharp cough recoils to peel the corn:
Save me the husk of myself?”
— Lewis Meyers / “Going to Chicago”
“We have, in effect, turned September into July. That’s not hyperbole, that’s just data. And in so doing, September smashed through the 1.5 degree Celsius warming mark that the world set as a target in Paris just eight years ago. We’ve been talking about it ever since, and now we’re there.”
— Bill McKibben / “The Rays of the Sun” / Substack newsletter
“you work with words, which unlike the wallet, is not a material you touch, but you wonder if in reordering them you might disrupt what is presupposed, if you might work something other than emptiness from their grooves. you’ve only failed at this. you are not yet a skilled enough practitioner of failure, and so you keep reordering them, to see what casts a shadow.”
— Chaun Webster / “[by way of entry you sit with an object]”
“Women have been under-represented in the workplace for at least the past two centuries and continue to earn, on average, 13% less than men — an injustice as well as a puzzling ‘market inefficiency’.”
— Philip Ball / “Why women earn less than men: Nobel for economic historian who probed pay gap” / Nature
“I tried to become American, but America is toxic. I tried to become Mexican, but México is toxic. My work: to do more than reproduce the toxic stories I inherited and learned.”
— José Olivarez / “Ars Poetica”
“… same-sex sexual behavior evolved when mammals started living in social groups. Although the behavior does not produce offspring to carry on the animals’ genes, it could offer other evolutionary advantages, such as smoothing over conflicts, the researchers proposed.”
— Carl Zimmer / “Same-Sex Behavior Evolved in Many Mammals to Reduce Conflict, Study Suggests” / The New York Times
“It is hard, in the era of the AR-15, to fear a vampire.”
— Alexander Chee / “When Horror Is the Truth-teller”
What I’m Listening To:
“Last night I dreamt that we lasted all the way ’til spring
But now the fields are full of red and blue with nothing in between
You can lead water to the daffodils But you can’t make them drink”
— English Teacher / “Nearly Daffodils”
yet i list in the doldrums
paths unfurl about me
roads squelch innumerable
trails pulsate untrammeled
transits reticulate outward
yet i list in the doldrums
adrift in the eye
every direction untrodden
What I’m Reading:
“The 3,000-mile route, which links together paved trails, dirt and gravel paths, and sections of roadway, is the nation’s longest greenway … Only about 100 people have completed the entire route by bike, as well as three walkers and a runner. Some finish the route over many months or years—or in one fell swoop…”
— Erica Zazo / “Thru-Biking the East Coast Greenway: A Community-Centered Adventure”
i breathe the overwhelm
it activates wanderlust
it sizzles with the elsewheres
it defines other horizon lines
it seeks the novel airs
i breathe the overwhelm
i’m long for the road
What I’m Reading:
“Shadows,
beautiful shadows.
Beautiful shadows of ugly things.”
— Kuroda Saburo / “Evening Glow”
some of us know each other
some not
i am anticipating
hope
i am installing
vanity
i am resented but will
sinks
the floor is being removed
i apologize
noise smells art questions
i will house my mode
of expression
i found ghosts delusional
wishful thinking
What I’m Reading:
“But of course men, particularly the godly ones,
have little common sense.”
— Lauren Groff / The Vaster Wilds
What I’m Reading:
“… even among her own, too, there were bad men, for there had been gentlemen the girls all whispered to stay away from and soldiers with a red gleam of the devil to them and mercenaries who killed as easy as sleeping, and it would be one of these who would be sent after her…”
— Lauren Groff / The Vaster Wilds
thee istsfor manity reader 