TORTOISE TONIGHT ~

 

       International Artisan

       2025

DEAD AND ALIVE, ESSAYS ~

 

R E A D  M E

Penguin Press

2025

TYRONE DAVIS TONIGHT ~

 

PATRICK PHILLIPS ~

Elegy with Table Saw & Cobwebs

Rummaging the wood-rack

I pull a cracked

old shingle off the stack

a scrap

on which at

some point, with his flat

knife-whittled pencil

my old friend Ollie scratched

5/32 + 1/2 —

a kind of riddle now, a workman's

artifact,

unnoticed since that

year the cancer cells attacked –

since whatever it

once meant,

whatever part it

played in some project,

went with him

into the flames

& ash.

Friends

we die like that:

thew hole starry sky goes black

while these little

nothings last —

while these spiders in the rafters

go clutching

their white sacks

whispering & yet & yet

& yet & yet

until I dust the fading rune

& put it back.

______________________

Patrick Phillips

Song of the Closing Doors

Knopf 2022

BOOKER T. & the MG's TONIGHT ~

 

       Stax 1971  

JOY LADIN ~

 

Whisper

I didn't know

I was in prison

till I looked out

the small round windows

and saw you whispering stars

______________________

How long have I been here

up to my neck in sunshine

splashing across my bed

On this street

nothing reminds me

of my children

Here I am

trying to give up

and you keep blossoming

________________

Joy Ladin

Family

Persea Books, 2024

BEGGAR'S BANGUET ~

 

     The Rolling Stones

     1968

THE THIRD REICH OF DREAMS ~

 

Nazi execution WW2 / Alex Pretti executed by US Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis 24 Jan 2026

R E A D   M E

     Quadrangle Books

     1966

TWILIGHT TIME ~

 

       Rounder Records

THE MAP OF MY DEAD PILOTS ~

 

F L Y   M E 

     Lyons Press

     2012

POPS STAPLES TONIGHT ~

 

     posthumous album

     2015

WENDY COPE ~

At 3 a.m.

the room contains no sound

except the ticking of the clock

which has begun to panic

like an insect, trapped

in an enormous box.

Books lie open on the carpet.

Somewhere else

you're sleeping

and beside you there's a woman

who is crying quietly

so you won't wake.

On a Train

The book I've been reading

rests on my knee.  You sleep.

It's beautiful out there —

fields, little lakes and winter trees

in February sunlight,

every car park a shining mosaic.

Long, radiant minutes,

your hand in my hand,

still warm, still warm.

To My Husband

If we were going to die, I might

Not hug you quite as often or as tight,

Or say goodbye to you as carefully

If I were certain you'd come back to me.

Perhaps I wouldn't value every day,

Every act of kindness, every laugh

As much, if I knew you and I could stay

For ever as each other's other half.

We may not have too many years before

One disappears to the eternal yonder

And I can't hug or touch you any more.

Yes, of course that knowledge makes us fonder.

Would I want to change things, if I could,

And make us both immortal? Love, I would.

____________________________________

Wendy Cope

Collected Poems

Faber 2024

BENJAMIN LACKNER TONIGHT ~

 

      ECM

      2025

KATHARINE WHITE ~

 

R E A D   M E 

 

The World She Edited

Mariner Books

2024

JERRY LEE LEWIS LIVE AT THE STAR CLUB TONIGHT ~

 

1964, Germany

Live at the Star Club is a badly mixed recording of Jerry Lee Lewis on his uppers in every sense: his career has flatlined and his performance sounds like a 40-minute advert for the alarmingly invigorating properties of amphetamines. Songs start at an astonishing pace and frequently speed up; his backing band, Britain’s Nashville Teens, just about cling on by the skin of their teeth. It should be a disaster. Instead, it’s almost indecently exciting, capturing the feral essence of rock’n’roll like nothing else. “It’s not an album,” gawped Rolling Stone’s review, “it’s a crime scene.” They had a point.

EXHIBITIONIST ~

 

R E A D   M E

      Catapult 2025

HARRY PARTCH ~

 

        Columbia Records, 1969

JOHNNY JOHNSON TONIGHT ~

 

Recorded at Utopia Studio, Bearsville, NY, 1999

STERLING A. BROWN ~

Old Lem

BY STERLING A. BROWN

I talked to old Lem

and old Lem said:

          “They weigh the cotton

          They store the corn

                We only good enough

                To work the rows;

          They run the commissary

          They keep the books

                We gotta be grateful

                For being cheated;

          Whippersnapper clerks

          Call us out of our name

                We got to say mister

                To spindling boys

          They make our figgers

          Turn somersets

          We buck in the middle

                Say, “Thankyuh, sah.”

                They don’t come by ones

                They don’t come by twos

                But they come by tens.

          “They got the judges

          They got the lawyers

          They got the jury-rolls

          They got the law

                They don’t come by ones

          They got the sheriffs

          They got the deputies

                       They don’t come by twos

          They got the shotguns

          They got the rope

                We git the justice

                In the end

                       And they come by tens.

          “Their fists stay closed

          Their eyes look straight

                Our hands stay open

                Our eyes must fall

                       They don’t come by ones

          They got the manhood

          They got the courage

                       They don’t come by twos

                We got to slink around

                Hangtailed hounds.

          They burn us when we dogs

          They burn us when we men

                       They come by tens . . .

          “I had a buddy

          Six foot of man

          Muscled up perfect

          Game to the heart

                       They don’t come by ones

          Outworked and outfought

          Any man or two men

                       They don’t come by twos

          He spoke out of turn

          At the commissary

          They gave him a day

          To git out the county

          He didn’t take it.

          He said ‘Come and get me.’

          They came and got him

                       And they came by tens.

          He stayed in the county—

          He lays there dead.

                       They don’t come by ones

                       They don’t come by twos

                       But they come by tens.”

Copyright Credit: “Old Lem,” from The Collected Poems of Sterling A. Brown, edited by Michael S. Harper.  Copyright © 1980 by Sterling A. Brown.  Reprinted by permission of Jacqueline M. Combs.

Source: The Collected Poems of Sterling A. Brown (Harper & Row, 1980)