There will be a Glands cascade tomorrow, I said at Thursday Night Pints. Have I ever mentioned I love The Glands, I said I'd say here. I then told the story of the waitress at the restaurant we ate at before Pere Ubu who was wearing a Glands teeshirt, it'd been a while, she said, since anyone knew who the Glands were. Then I said, the irony of my love for The Glands is that they directly channel both The Kinks and The Rolling Stones, the first a band I never got, the second a band I dislike almost to the point of typing a Fucking between The and Rolling. L said, I knew you hated the Stones, have we ever talked about The Kinks? Exactly, I said.
- Can you go though the weekend not posting clusterfucktacious motherfuckery, K asked, earning a ridiculously priced thimble of Nyquil. Do next weeks drinks depend on it, I asked? Having worked both L and D to 2-1 odds I let drop that Earthgirl and me are gonna Kensington to Frederick to Hagerstown to Hancock to Cumberland to Morgantown to Washington to Wheeling to Zanesville to Planet and back his weekend. L said, I still bet against you.
- On MBA degrees in particular; on the scam of graduate degrees in general. Lordy, I wish I was face-to-face with you so I could talk about Illtophay, which was discussed face-to-face at length last night with L & K.
- The anti-intellectualism of the intellectuals.
- The dispensability of coaches.
- The Riddled Ktistec Machine.
- Happy Friday the 13th from the Scarfolk Council.
- Glenmont!
- Ten Mile Creek!
- Gregory Orr, for those of you who do.
- Philip Levine's poetry never sang to me though I don't begrudge his general renown nor his winning a lifetime achievement stipend named after Wallace Stevens, but I do need note I can't think of an American poet of Levine's renown who reminds me less of Wallace Stevens than Philip Levine.
- UPDATE! My apologies, my cut&paste crisis continues, this is the song that was supposed to be here:
ETCHING OF THE PLAGUE YEARS
Mary Karr
In the valley of your art history book,
the corpses stack in the back of a cart
drawn by an ox whose rolling shoulder muscles
show its considerable weight.
He does this often. His velvet nostrils
flare to indicate the stench.
It’s the smell you catch after class
while descending a urine-soaked
subway stair on a summer night
in a neighborhood where cabs won’t drive:
the odor of dead flowers, fear
multiplied a thousand times.
The train door’s hiss
seals you inside with a frail boy
swaying from a silver hoop.
He coughs in your direction, his eyes
are burn holes in his face.
Back in the fourteenth-century print
lying in your lap, a hand
white as an orchid has sprouted
from the pyramid of flesh.
It claws the smoky air.
Were it not for that,
the cart might carry green cordwood
(the human body knobby and unplaned).
Wrap your fingers around your neck
and feel the stony glands.
Count the holes in your belt loop
for lost weight.
In the black unfurling glass,
study the hard planes of your face.
Compare it to the prom picture
in your wallet, the orchid
pinned to your chest like a spider.
Think of the flames
at your high school bonfire
licking the black sky, ashes rising,
innumerable stars. The fingers that wove
with your fingers
have somehow turned to bone.
The subway shudders between dark and light.
The ox plods across the page.
Think of everyone
you ever loved: the boy
who gets off at your stop
is a faint ideogram for each.
Offer him your hand.
Help him climb the stair.
