Mz N and her siblings
had a dog for some time.
They went on vacation &
when they came back
no dog.
They asked the parents:
the dog?
who replied:
what dog?
And some people wonder
why others distrust the obvious.
[…]
the blackest black
is not so black
it cannot take
a blacker black
so Mz N thinks
…
From Mz N: the serial, Maureen McLane
What aren’t you willing to believe. A heart
graffitied fuchsia on the street, a missive from another life.
Remember the stem of lavender you found
in a used copy of Bishop’s poems, a verse underlined:
The world is a mist. And then the world is
minute and vast and clear. Suddenly, across the aisle
a woman with your mother’s bracelets, her left wrist
all shimmer and gold, you almost winced.
Coincidence is the great mystery of the human mind
but so is the trans-oceanic reach of Shah Rukh Khan’s
slow blink. Each of us wants a hint, a song
that dares us to look inside. True, it takes whimsy
and ego to believe the universe will tap your shoulder
in the middle of a random afternoon. That t-shirt
on a stranger’s chest, a bumper sticker on the highway upstate.
Truth isn’t going anywhere. It’s your eyes passing by.
Sign, Sahar Romani
Text. Physiologie du flâneur / par M. Louis Huart; vignettes de MM. Alophe, Daumier et Maurisset, 1841. internetactu.blog.lemonde.fr, 2012.
Acts of Self-Erasure, Anahid Nersessian. December 13, 2024. A new exhibition of the conceptual artist Christine Kozlov shows how she worked by concealing her own tracks.
Lawns and fields and hills and wide old velvet
sleeves, green things. They stretch, fold, roll away,
unfurl and calm the eye. Look lush in paintings.
Battles are fought on greens. Or you could spread
a meal and sup. How secretly they lie, floors of
distant forests. Next comes the grave, in many a
poem about green. But this is not a poem. This is a
billboard for frozen green peas. Frozen green peas
are good for pain.
Short Talk on Pain, Anne Carson
… our spatial and temporal arrangements, our hierarchies of value and distributions of wealth—our forms. (Caroline Levine)
For Cheryl Boyce-Taylor and her Malik, our Phife
& I immediately think of Cheryl, her Malik, his beloved
obsession with the team’s orange & blue, a sunset sky over
this city. The ruckus of these players’ sweet grit, the desire they
have to come in first. They rebound & strip like stickup
kids. They pound the paint as if their feet were wrapped in
Timbs, their lean torsos tattered & tapered in Coogi sweaters.
This is New York. Bodega filled with the aroma of a good
chopped cheese. Ambitions racing through our minds fast as
the 2 train during rush hour. I watch the reverie on TV, as
the Garden thrashes & quakes by the tectonic plate of our
steadfast fandom. Don’t get it twisted, capitalism is dying
& yet here I am rooting for boys bred to burn out their bodies
to make billionaires more billions. Was this what Rome felt like
toward the end? When the colosseums filled with gladiators
stirred the masses into a frenzy. How the people hungered for
food & freedom, but instead lost themselves in the carnal play
of sacrifice—reliable warriors, safer to believe in than
Caesar. No matter, I think Phife would’ve loved this team,
unflappable & carefree, anti-establishment, uncompromising.
What happens to the heart of a city when its people survive
on air; that space between the flick of the wrist & the swish
of a three-point buzzer beater? We fight for a win to fill
the ache of losing: Palestine, Congo, Sudan, Ayiti. We take
what we can, celebrate small victories until we win everything
we thought we never could—
As Capitalism Gasps for Breath I Watch the Knicks Game, Yesenia Montilla
Everything they say and write is a lie,
about law and freedom, about equality
and justice, in the rubble of the bombs
we make and sell, in the silent cries
of limbless orphans, in the night
lit by white phosphorous and the
relentless sound of buzzing drones.
My Apologies, Ammiel Alcalay
