Back from the sun’s glare—
Fog obliterates the sky—
It’s good to be home.
The birds shroud their songs in gray—
Sunshine State withers away.
What I’m Reading:
I dislike tanned people. They walk around with dead skin on their bodies.
— Agustina Bazterrica / “Dishwasher” / Nineteen Claws and a Blackbird
What I’m Reading:
Outside, even the sun-god, dressed in this life
as a lizard, abruptly rises
on stiff legs and descends blasé toward the shadows.
— Reginald Gibbons / “At Noon”
Traveling sorts her memories.
Driving to Miami sharpens
her father’s voice—like acid
catalyzing in her ears boring
a ragged chute to her amygdala—
simultaneously black-holing her backward
and shooting her into an uncertain future
full of Get to Know Jesus and Get Your Guns
& Ammo Here billboards. She fights.
She flees from all her ghosts. She barrels
south—under the heat dome.
Tobacco leaves yellow—corn browns & withers—in her wake.
What I’m Reading:
. . . my father dug a pit
for the pig roast,
and neighbors spoke prophecy
of dark invasion
beneath the growl of lawnmowers . . .
— Martin Espada / “Cada Puerco Tiene Su Sábado” / Imagine the Angels of Bread
Paranoiac-critical to channel light vessel automatic—distortion to static—yankee hotel foxtrots in 3-minute fixes.
I’m good—occasionally moderately—and now I have the unveiling change heebie-jeebies. The only thing constant is impermanence.
And sure showers are good—but all day? all night? All right this is where we get off, get out, get thee behind.
I crossed a continent for a funeral that was cancelled. Crenelations and observations of the self lead to what? How do you find it? It was really an unveiling of sorts not a funeral.
So if the funereal is delayable when you start to notice your own breathing? Death is transmissible, baby.
We will now have surgeries instead of threnodies, but you may lament anytime you wish from anywhere on this globe — including Berwick, Guernsey and somewhere near the Hebrides. Oh what pain and navel gazing this has become. Get me outta’ heah!
Due to surgeries and broken bones I am 1400 miles away from home, untethered and at the edge of the country, in a state where they let the kids get measles (unvaccinated and in unconsidered ways) . . . because . . . America!
Got me a good pile of books to burn here.
I’se so crazy now I actually read an Ayn Rand book because . . . America. Because thee internets said so.
I have weather reports in this dead lilt, and the humidity creeps in, and the spring breakers break in, and the shootings multiply, the car chases are thrice daily, and the shootings once an hour . . . because . . . America! Land of the insurrection special.
I’se got the Saint Vitus dance without knowing the steps. I’m stepping in soggy watermelons, shagging the wheaties, and suffering the waffles. I’se got the cross country Zoom blues.
Remember, every good boy deserves fudge — and emphysema hacks. Who need Big Tobacco when microplastics are gonna kill us as slow as a tabasco drip.
I hope your good intentions pay off, because La Niña is about to make an appearance and the Atlantic is the hottest it’s ever been. The Gulf Stream is slowing, and getting hotter, and I’m hot with fleas and full of unrealized funereal bedbugs.
There’s a weird cadence to all of this, and if you figure it out, please, I beg you, PLEASE, let the rest of us know.
What I’m Reading:
I’ve spent my life running from one bit of earth to another. Carrying my smashed peace of mind into the oddest gangs of peoples. Take this one for instance. I bring them music and laughter and poetry and they throw me into a pitlatrine.
— Dambudzo Marechera / Black Sunlight
got passage recount time
presage press : bunny musculature
policy sets vs set accounts
treble and clean
cleft and warble
every app has its own keyboard
this is all broke down, no chance of fixin’
What I’m Reading:
this is the year that police revolvers,
stove-hot, blister the fingers
of raging cops,
and nightsticks splinter in their palms
— Martin Espada / “Imagine the Angels of Bread”
Pleiades, seven little goats, little eyes, seven sisters, / Subaru, pearls, hen with chicks, united. / Taken there, held, or forever running from maddened machismo, / forever unchecked — forever.
— Allison Adelle Hedge Coke / Look at This Blue
My mother taught me that you can follow behind everyone and walk in the dust, or you can walk ahead through the unbroken thorny brush. You may get blood on your ankles, but you arrive first and not covered in the residue of others. This land is fertile and blessed in many regards, and the men ain’t the only one’s entitled to its bounty.
— Lynn Nottage / Ruined
Maybe it was the thing itself. Just being there, together. Two little girls who knew what nobody else in the world knew—how not to ask questions. How to believe what had to be believed. There was politeness in that reluctance and generosity as well.
— Toni Morrison / “Recitatif”
Less than 4% of the artists in the Modern Art sections are women, but 76% of the nudes are female.
— Guerrilla Girls / “Do women have to be naked to get into the Met Museum?” / 2012 update to the 1989 piece
Microplastics have also recently been discovered in human blood and breast milk, indicating widespread contamination of people’s bodies. The impact on health is as yet unknown but microplastics have been shown to cause damage to human cells in the laboratory. The particles could lodge in tissue and cause inflammation, as air pollution particles do, or chemicals in the plastics could cause harm.
— Damian Carrington / “Microplastics found in every human placenta tested in study” / The Guardian
When he busted my face, oftentimes, my diligence went unnoticed / When he claimed I was in car wrecks / his mom believed. / Nearly killed me in one, so must be / must be a car wreck every other week, each time / purple faded, teeth repaired, gauze removed / bruised from brow to jaw, pummeled / what a mess
— Allison Adelle Hedge Coke / Look at This Blue
Ascetic or carnivore. Men will crack your glaze
even if you leave them before morning. Pigs
ride the sirens in packs.
— Brenda Shaughnessy / “Postfeminism”
What I’m Listening To:
I won’t take no lip from the devil
I won’t take no lip from you
— Mama Zu / “Lip”
soufflé and sachets—
the brink of a fruitful life—
which bore only pits
What I’m Reading:
He longs to see sparrows again,
those bustling, chirruping little birds
possessed of the obstinate power
of the songless
— Paul Bailey / “Missing”
Instead of changing my shirt I changed my mind and requested a reverse baptism. Get the father son and the Laszlo Moholy Ghost outta’ my body. Get ‘em all outta’ my soul. Forthwith.
Can’t look back, won’t look back. Ozymandius Motors for all your autonomic pleas. Automatism at 350 horsepower ////// Wayside shangri-las and all the disjecta ejected in your superego moods during our President’s Day Sale!
You get rid of meaning by getting rid of meaning.
Start with Rasputin and work your way out from there. The peach cream turns bitter so allow me to lie down under your steamroller. Play me “Steamroller Blues” through your tinny transistor speaker and do your worst. Go.
Docket your trash—use pincers and gloves. Keep me at arm’s distance for I’ve seen a handkerchief of clouds (tzara-cumuli).
Keep me at a distance—I’ve heard a talking •Hugo Ball• head singing:
gadji beri bimba … tuffum I zimbra.
What I’m Reading:
But one state over, bookshelves have no Black authors, cleaned
out. Our books remain under attack, Kings in a game of chess.
— A. Van Jordan / “Integrated School Books” Arpeggio
What I’m Reading:
In Key West, the living surround the dead,
who are the best neighbors
silent and agreeable as well-swept porches.
— Jacqueline Allen Trimble / “Walking Beside the Cemetery, Olivia Street, Key West”
any quintuplets?
another colloquium?
bring scissors and fluff.
gnu stiffeners and goatherds—
it’s a party, tape your fall.
What I’m Reading:
I wasn’t used to being a confused person, but that was how life was. Sometimes the events of the world were clear, and at other times they rearranged themselves in such a way that nothing made sense, and even if they did make sense to other people, they made no discernible sense to you. Either that, or I was jet-lagged, which was another possible explanation.
— Maya Binyam / Hangman
thee istsfor manity reader 