- Aquarium Drunkard put Fugazi in my head last night, had been a while....
- Autism Awareness Day.
- I am blogblocked and unconcerned while catching myself thinking about going to a baseball game and reading the new Joyce Carol Oates novel. Excellent.
- But here's the thing, the never-ending argument: Can you imagine how far the Civil Rights Movement would have gotten, had it been run entirely by complainers for whom nothing was ever good enough? To hell with integrating the Montgomery public transit system when the problem was so much larger! Let me hasten to add, fuck you, then hasten to reiterate, fuck you. The oldest trope in my quiver full of self-justification is the tug-of-war trope (not that I'm claiming I climb down from my complicity to tug on any rope, yo, I'm lard), if it wasn't for fucking radicals the Rebecca Solnits would be delivering the same sermon from six counties to the right. But wait, there's more! You don’t have to participate in this system, but you do have to describe it and its complexities and contradictions accurately, and you do have to understand that when you choose not to participate, it better be for reasons more interesting than the cultivation of your own moral superiority, which is so often also the cultivation of recreational bitterness. Yeah, you fuckwit.
- The untrustworthy and the trustful.
- Today in Motherfucking Obama.
- Why we slobber over Žižek.
- Why Krugman was wrong. Actually, he likes Arcade Fucking Fire: that calls into question any and everything he says.
- When culture is the best explanation.
- On the occasion of the removal of my girlfriend's dog's balls.
- Essential design principles for felines.
- Technoscience and existentialism.
- The Painted Library.
- On (dis)location.
- New Gass reviewed. I'm about a third through the new Joyce Carol Oates, I've Anne Carson's Autobiography of Red on my desk (looks fascinating), so I'll get to Gass, though not soon.
- BTW, that review may require a subscription. If yes, let me know, if you've been blogtrusty I can get you in (and into LOTS of stuff) if you ask nice.
- It's National Poetry Month, I'm so sorry.
- Gah.
- Poet as condition, not profession.
- Bittova!
THE END OF ANOTHER CREATURE
Susan Briante
Starlings in the magnolia tree crackle, static, lightening; a helicopter floats overhead. Harvest brings dove-hunting season, a great migration. For six days I watch monarch butterflies scatter across the Metroplex, dream their carcasses onto the highway, dream black beetles biting my fingers in your clasped hands. I feel a pilot light at the back of my throat, while the helicopter groans a few blocks deeper down Ross Avenue. And the magnolia tree falls silent, and the season concludes.
The Market migrate; the Market scatters across the Metroplex.
The Market dreams my carcass onto the highway, groans
a few blocks deeper into my neighborhood.
In the liquidity of the late afternoon sun, a truck on the avenue clips branches from elms. What policy might we bring forth on a front-yard folding table? Deposit insurance? The return of Glass Steagall? Pull over. Price what you see. Privatize this rush-hour traffic. Look disappointed. The helicopter answers: pulse, pulse, pulse. The fences make a triangle, a shed of mostly shadow and quiet behind the boxwoods where someone left chemicals.
