Friday, March 3, 2017
Thursday, March 2, 2017
POETS WHO SLEEP ~
[ imagined ancient love poems ]
MY LIPS are shy,
like a candle that will not flicker.
I WOULD twist my arms like coral
if that made them delicate enough to hold you.
COLOR IS sleeping in some birds
when the sun is too early
to make use of it.
THE SEASON is yet unlit
by the glint of the sewing needle.
The thread is stored away, the light
is an unwoven shirt.
I EMBRACED YOU by mistake
when I was only trying to caress you.
Now you love me.
WE CAME across a hunter disguised as a bird.
The towns pay these lords for protection. This is revealed
in a parable the women tell. They speak of a rose
that grew in the desert from a drop of blood.
WHO ARE you going to meet tonight
in the tall grass
where even snakes cannot find each other?
Your bare feet
will be the safest part of you.
CLAY pots, shaped from the inside
like a sun
when the sky was spinning.
_____________________
DANIEL NADLER
Lacunae
Farrar 2016
DANIEL NADLER
Wednesday, March 1, 2017
TRIVIAL FIGHTS ~
______________________________________________________________________
And Trump said the time for “trivial
fights is behind us.” He just didn’t say
which trivial fights he meant.
Protecting the rights of gay, lesbian
and transgender people?
Safeguarding voting rights?
Investigating whether members of the
Trump team had colluded with the
Russians to influence the 2016
presidential election? Or maybe
finally getting him to release his tax
returns, as every other modern
president has done?
_________________________
A N D R E W R O S E N T H A L
March 1, 2017 (New York Times, excerpt)
Donald Trump, Master of Low Expectations
GUY BIRCHARD~
Hecatomb Sixteen
Monarchs in hatbands:
Defeat deep in one's captured eyes.
Insouciance in the other's sweet.
Sitting Bull sees back forever, 1881,
downriver, liberty bad arrested,
last rifle surrendered,
earthly beauty and symbol of a
Monarch butterfly pinched from the air,
tucked for emblem, for camera, in hatband.
Old Walt, celebrated signifier at large, 'bout
same date, photographer's fool-de-rol, props
one of cardboard on forefinger, points a-
way. We don't do defeat in this culture.
We may do a cardboard
Monarch for the camera . . .
Defeat defeats us. In Sitting Bull's memory
and mind he rides all day in one direction
at liberty in open country. Without
no pain.
Hecatomb nine
Shooting Crows Again:
Time was, we lived odd
seasons on the prairie. Then
we witnessed first basque flower break
sod, and the cranes' high gyre.
Now I'm a townie, aint seen
a crocus in years, no more than hear
the cranes' weird croak way up.
Wind burns the snow and the snow
decomposes, the land so dry no melt
runs off. Shallow sloughs for waterfowl.
The crows are a good sight, back. I could
stand to be a crow, to make their play
in flight, to gang up in raucous confab, but for
the diet . . .
Cousin magpie succumbs to the new
virus in the land. Rancher
says he don't miss 'em. "Bastards
peck fresh cattle brands." I
miss them. I turn fifty-five
this spring, storm stayed. No
excuses, lots less of the map to follow
than retrace, fiddle-footed as ever,
a man of no rank come to a place without merit.
______________
Guy Birchard
H E C A T O M B
Pressed Wafer | Brooklyn
2017
Tuesday, February 28, 2017
BERTA CACERES ~
Berta Cáceres speaks to people near the Gualcarque river in 2015 where residents were fighting a dam project. Photograph: Tim Russo/AP
Berta Cáceres court papers show murder suspects' links to US-trained elite troops
Monday, February 27, 2017
Sunday, February 26, 2017
DOROTHY DAY ~
Scribner 2017
No one but no one could have written this fascinating biography but a grand-daughter and a grand-daughter has. There have been many biographies and celebrations to the wonderful Dorothy Day over the years now, including by Robert Coles ( a beautiful mind barely ever mentioned any longer ) but there is something endearing and everlasting how a grand-daughter can circulate and write not only a biography from a personal perspective, but also
No one but no one could have written this fascinating biography but a grand-daughter and a grand-daughter has. There have been many biographies and celebrations to the wonderful Dorothy Day over the years now, including by Robert Coles ( a beautiful mind barely ever mentioned any longer ) but there is something endearing and everlasting how a grand-daughter can circulate and write not only a biography from a personal perspective, but also
a universal scale, by a storyteller writing a passionate and even critical portrait of her grandmother, Dorothy Day, as well as Dorothy’s only child Tamar (the biographer’s mother) and also the author, a child then, bringing her own story
into the book. The biography becomes the story of three women’s lives, over a century long, cutting through some of the toughest ground of this country’s history: labor struggle, world wars, economic depression, civil rights, women’s rights, tattered joyous 60s, Presidential impeachment, Christian brotherhood, the Catholic Worker movement. Don’t go dummy or gummy on the word “Christian.” Here it means goodwill to all mankind. This sterling portrait will showcase how many people – often castoffs — others remarkable alongside them, and Dorothy Day, held their ground.
[ BA ]
———————————————————
"Love, motherhood, religion — how many of us on finding ourselves embraced by any one of those would have stopped, rested, and remained? But this is the mystery of those forces that led her to go one step further, and another step, and another. And in one of the most grace-filled moments of a life full of grace, Dorothy finds herself praying to the Blessed Mother. Here I am — what would you have me do? Isn’t this that in-between time, that liminal space cherished by the Irish, the mysterious time of waiting and wandering? Isn’t it about hearing the call?"
~ from DOROTHY DAY
Kate Hennessey
———————————————————
Saturday, February 25, 2017
Friday, February 24, 2017
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