Tuesday, November 15, 2022
the years are not circular
as a thunder bell, surrounded.
echoing trees of this clime
taller than i'd imagined. where was
my fear? such a storm, such a body
close near the water on the brightest
moon the eve before. but not
sober then, no, my eyes glazed like a trip
as you walked into the river.
the light, the forest, the halo,
the beach, the caves, the arc
of this story throws me over
and over into my bed unable to just
rest. sleeping in bags, sleeping with feet
of distance between limbs, sleeping
with desires all wrapped into this smallest
square of space. of space. what of
space? there were no mountains but knees
could be hills, sweat could be streams
and lightning? what could that be?
6.13.16
Monday, November 14, 2022
subway in march, 5:45 pm
i take the long way home, knowing
i am free to choose happiness
or wander off into the tunnel
on the platform two teenagers french kiss, her lips
are enormous and soft and he seems at home with them
i feel crumpled like the pastel houses lining the canal
i am transporting an adorable succulent
the size of an infant's fist, holding it close as if
it were the one thing i had to keep alive
and thinking how much easier it would be
it all i had to love were this small plant
and then i wouldn't be so hard on you
and we could like the world before distrusting it
stop performing ourselves and let the pith of us
hang out. all these permutations of esteem and ridicule
when all i want is to stay focused on everyday life
what other kind of life is there?
all the world knows it, it's a miracle
the blue womb of evening
the nimble sparrow, the smug duck in the pond
the eruption of flowering quince
o shackle us to the rock of it
we will try to love each other
though there's wind on our heads
and we cannot read minds
the train jumps above ground
and stripes the car in gold light
it's the light of early spring
Thursday, June 16, 2022
grief cocktail
i miss you in the way of the oyster knife (i've never used). with precision. stabs to the abdomen. high-pitched squeal in ears. unavoidable.
Sunday, February 13, 2022
redlining and guilt
from notes from no man's land by eula biss
"in the 1960s, many white suburban communities gained access to federal funds for 'urban aid' by incorporating themselves as municipalities. in the 1970s and 1980s, lenders refused to obey new fair housing laws, and the federal home loan bank board redlined areas with increasing minority populations. the 1975 home mortgage disclosure act and the 1977 community reinvestment act were ignored by the reagan administration. now, whites who became home owners under discriminatory circumstances are profiting from the appreciation of their homes. 'the appreciated value of owner-occupied homes,' writes george lipsitz, 'constitutes the single greatest source of wealth for white americans. it is the factor most responsible for the disparity between blacks and whites in respect to wealth -- a disparity between the two groups much greater than their differences in income. it is the basis of intergenerational transfers of wealth that enable white parents to give their children financial advantages over the children of other groups." (211)
"professor of anthropology allan young discusses ed daily, along with several vietnam veterans who confessed to atrocities they did not commit, in his 2002 article 'the self-traumatized perpetrator as a <transient mental illness.>' these men, who participated in military action they may have found deeply objectionable even if it was not technically criminal, now imagine themselves criminals who suffer because of their crimes -- self-traumatized perpetrators. 'in their own eyes,' young explains, 'their pain is real and an extension of the victims' suffering.' the self-traumatized perpetrator who 'becomes a victim as a consequence of being a perpetrator' is a phenomenon, according to young, mainly limited to the united states. he notes that certain cultural and political conditions encourage the self-traumatized perpetrator to manifest as a disorder, including a society that tends to think of victims and perpetrators as polar opposites. (in such a society, the person who believes himself to be both victim and perpetrator can find psychological release only through a disorder.) and so perhaps our tendency to imagine victims only in opposition to perpetrators is what prevents us from recognizing ourselves as an entire nation of self-traumatized perpetrators -- some of us experiencing our trauma as guilt, others as delusion.
when i think about the nature of guilt, i think, inevitably, about 'notes of a native son.' in that essay james baldwin writes about the bitterness and anger that destroyed his father, and then about the bitterness and anger he feels toward his father, feelings so closely tied to his feelings about his country that they cannot be untangled. 'i saw nothing very clearly,' he writes, 'but i did see this: that my life, my real life, was in danger, and not from anything other people might do but from the hatred i carried in my own heart.'
whenever i read this essay i am moved to wonder if guilt, badly handled, might be just as gangrenous and just as dangerous as hate. if anger is, as baldwin so often points out, the inevitable inheritance of the black american, then guilt may be the inevitable inheritance of the white american. (this is not a guilt based on individual wrongdoing but on collective responsibility, so if you find the word 'guilt' objectionable, think 'responsibility' instead. but i prefer 'guilt,' in part because of its religious associations. we tend to think of guilt as embarrassing and unnecessary now, but it was once imagined, the old testament suggests, as an impetus to redemption. the prophet amos: 'woe to them that are at ease in zion.')" (221 & 222)
Thursday, October 21, 2021
destabilization
"in both friendship and love, the expectation that one's expressive (if not best) self will flower in the presence of the beloved other is key. upon that flowering all is posited. but what if the restless, the fluid, the mercurial, within each of us is steadily undermining the very thing we think we most want? what, in fact, if the assumption of a self in need of expressiveness is an illusion? what if the urge toward stable intimacy is perpetually threatened by an equally great, if not greater, urge toward destabilization? what then?"
-vivian gornick, the odd woman and the city
Sunday, August 1, 2021
personhood, and its relationship to the body
from tomorrow sex will be good again by katherine angel (verso)
"now the individual woman whom this risk discourse addresses is an idealized and vehemently confident sexual subject, one who knows herself, speaks directly and clearly, and refuses her own vulnerability. she manages risk through her self-expression. she uses her confident self-knowledge as armour for her own protection; she asserts her invulnerability as a way of keeping her vulnerability at bay. . .
there is, of course, something satisfying about this rhetorical move; allying oneself to power, not weakness, is gratifying. but it also serves a protective function, one which comes with painful costs. . . hardening oneself is often a necessary response to violence, or a necessary strategy in the face of it. perhaps the fear - the constant spectre - of rape does this to our thoughts, our ideas, too." (36)
"most men experience the inability to sustain an erection as distressing and humiliating, which is precisely the reason viagra was such a success for pfizer. the company also cannily sensed that the failure of desire in a man is oxymoronic; it is more humiliating, and perhaps more unthinkable, for a man to fail to experience subjective sexual desire than it is for a technical glitch to occur in the mechanics of arousal. what is a man, after all, without desire? masculinity is libido, appetite, excitement.
women - so writers, pick-up-artists, and christian grey tell us - are disconnected from, or dishonest about, the truth that their bodies 'scream' out. in the framing of viagra, in contrast, there was no possibility that a man's feelings are 'disconnected from' the truth his body tells us. on the contrary, his subjective sense of interest in sex, despite his impotence, is taken as the truth. it is he, not his body, that speaks the truth - and we believe him. personhood, and its relationship to the body, is different in men and women: men are authorities on themselves, while women are not." (84)
"sex can induce anxiety and defensiveness precisely because it is a realm in which we risk intense pleasure. relinquishing control can be so destabilizing that we want to short-circuit it, and defend, as berlant and edelman write, 'our putative sovereignty'. and here's the nub of things: sex, and desire, compromise our sense of sovereignty, of knowing ourselves, and of being in control." (102)
Thursday, April 15, 2021
inadequate
from erasure by percival everett (152)
"i imagined that my mother discovered the letters just after father's death, when he'd asked her to burn and not read them. but he of course knew that she would read them. i found myself angry with him, a stupid enough feeling with a live person. then i wondered which was more confidence-killing: believing that you should not have felt inadequate when in fact you were, or discovering that, all along, you were actually smart enough to see things clearly, that you were correct in your fears."
Saturday, December 5, 2020
living it up
by max ritvo, from four reincarnations
Thursday, November 12, 2020
irresistible
from the needle's eye by fanny howe
Sunday, November 1, 2020
ha ha! you thought you got to choose
from know my name by chanel miller
Friday, October 16, 2020
dot dot dot
by ari banias, from anybody
touch your arm to mine.
see the sunset behind the courthouse, and how they are one
institution touching another. to my elbow touch your own
as the pelicans dip their otherworldly faces
in union into the night water. starched dress shirts
without bodies in them, without heads.
walk with me up the residential hill and down the other side.
as we sit across from each other at the unexceptional thai restaurant
touch your leg to my leg. the table wobbles and because i am with you
i forget it. at the streetcorner,
smell the eucalyptus reminiscent of cat piss.
glance with me into the cardboard box at the discarded khakis
and rollerboard suitcase, and touch my shoulder. this is the key
broken off inside my car door in desperation by a stranger.
climb in through the trunk with me and touch your head to my head
at the cheek, at the temple, at the eye, at the lips.
let's go to the mucky shore and watch
the gondolier in the striped shirt, a cliche and real,
stroking the water seriously.
take my body away from me
lightly by touching me, take away
my head. steer me with gentleness
from the sizeable heap of oranges molding at the curb
which i would otherwise describe further.
Thursday, October 15, 2020
song of the anti-sisyphus
by chen chen from when i grow up i want to be a list of further possibilities
Wednesday, October 14, 2020
for i will do/undo what was done/undone to me
by chen chen from when i grow up i want to be a list of further possibilities
Tuesday, October 13, 2020
kafka's axe & michael's vest
by chen chen, from when i grow up i want to be a list of further possibilities
Monday, October 12, 2020
sorry
excerpts from on earth we're briefly gorgeous by ocean vuong
Friday, October 9, 2020
moonbeam
Thursday, October 8, 2020
~nobel prize winner~
💙