2012/11/07

Packing for a Transatlantic Box, or Paper for Essays on Schadenfreude, or Timber for Dollhouse Dressers, or a Twenty Baht Note for the Thai Rubber Trade




What, reaction? I am small, it still pleases me too much that 70% of motherfuckng Oklahomans are pissed this morning, I'm so small I'm still going to enjoy too much the schadenfreude over Rush Limbaugh's listeners' anguish, the anger of the asshole cracker four doors down from me who's a dick to my ferals and steals Obama signs from front lawns and is stupid and/or arrogant enough to leave them uncovered in the back of his pick-up. I'm small, it pleases me someone - either - won and won clear cut, that a concession speech was made by one of the fuckers, that this isn't going to recounts and courts. I'm small, it pleases me that loved ones are pleased even if I still maintain that for advancing oligarchy's interest Obama is the best salesman, that the country will be farther right in 2016 for Obama's election than had Romney won on matters economic and imperialistic and police state. I'm small, this was my first election cycle in which I didn't vote my tribal heritage, it gives me no joy they won except for the disappointment of the arch-rivals they beat. I like my side less than once; I still hate the other side the same as always.












HANDS ARE WOOD

Seth Abramson

Come see the woodpile behind the cannery.
Come through the wall
            to where the wood was chopped
and the difficult wood was hewed.
There is a short history of commotion here,
where a sudden bonfire spat its surprise
            at the sky—

a hundred feet or more the shavings swept
through disturbed air, and made their own
music, the music hands make, such a yellow
crackle and such a thrashing

in the morning.
Come wait for the heavy trucks to arrive,
            the men in dusters cutting the twine,
loading the long ghostly planks like ballast
            into iron barges.

This will be packing for a transatlantic box,
or paper for essays on schadenfreude, or timber
for dollhouse dressers, or a twenty baht note
for the Thai rubber trade. These matchsticks

will burn whenever you strike them, and this,
hack at it however you like, is nothing more
than deadwood for the fire. Come see—now
even the men are doing only
                        what they were made to do.