( via/ me )

"Meanwhile, the story’s relentless attention to loss appears calibrated to appeal to the fear and melancholy that have characterized the cultural mood in the United Kingdom and United States for much of the last decade—including anxieties about rising rates of dementia, the precarity of work, and the speed with which the present in the digital era becomes past, becomes forgotten."

“ ‘They—we—were betrayed. In our souls we have never been sure by whom. When we feel cheated we are ready to kill; and maybe we feel cheated all the time.’ ” —Gene Wolfe, “Seven American Nights,” in: Best Science Fiction Stories (1980)

Regurgitalite.

“The Passion of the Joker”

The morning’s clear despair presents no challenge
to rabbits eating orchid after orchid.

It is holiday in Bedlam;
ev'ry thought begets its future comrade.

Black expiry: not knowing is a cadence
from which to view the distant growing tumult.

I wander with the grilse.
I carry no bodkin.

Today my ailment eases here, or almost,
sitting in line at a sunny backed-up Chevron.

Vampires don the alb
albeit fanged with comfort.

Don’t come to me with questions of the wounded.

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