( via / via )

It Out-Herods Herod. Pray You, Avoid It. (via @maryanncorbett.bsky.social)

"PAINTERS (Lipograms)

Vincent van Gogh
can achieve
the evening;
he cannot
negotiate night.

Paul Cézanne
can puzzle a plane:
a nuance
can peel an apple.

Salvador Dalí is viral:
a vivid iris;
a sordid oasis.

Pablo Picasso
spills classics."

--@anthonyetherin.bsky.social

A stormy start to the week.

"forest light
the swoop of owl wings
on my mind"

--@regansr.bsky.social via @evecastle.bsky.social

Nor should one blame the stars.

( me / via )

Haiku.

"Having ever regarded Government as their deadliest bane,” Lincoln said, “they make a jubilee of the suspension of its operations; and pray for nothing so much as its total annihilation." --Abraham Lincoln via

I have a lot of enemies.

"merrick 2"

the iron ruin era
argosy · bad bargain
  orange & white striped
winter's hard-won vantage

withering fizz prison
  orange & white striped
pothole pizzazz zit-hunt
deserted crow murder

  orange & white striped

"They will starve. They are used to starving. In my life, I have starved three times."

( via / via )

The Female Whig of '76

planeloads leave in shackles
ripped out of bright rooms
like rabbits
& turned away at touchdown

there stumbles the story
tilt stairway
& further outrage aimed
small rain smothering

ambit smize
with rat mirth roses

Appalling Heart.

"I've lost your voice
in this useless milieu
solitude
that seemed such a burden
I see now, was my torch"

--@evecastle.bsky.social

Tanka.

( via / via )

"It’s not that protest needs to end; it’s that we need to explore some new ways."

“No revelation is immediate, not if it’s real. I feel that more and more.”
- Helen Oyeyemi, Boy, Snow, Bird via @jacobwren.bsky.social

Andalusian Superstition.

"Pain Management

The management has gauged how much you’ll take
before you buckle or walk out. They care
about your health—at least until you break,
use up your sick leave, or require repair.

The management endorses your retiring
early. They will help you out the door,
so that they can economize by hiring
fresh blood for half of what they paid before.

The management can't monetize your gain
in knowledge or experience. They doubt
that anything you'd do if you remain
could beat their savings if you're shunted out.

They needn't lay you off, just raise your stress
through higher workloads and adverse conditions,
until exhaustion, strain, and hopelessness
force you to leave, fulfilling their ambitions."

--Susan McLean in New Verse Review

"What I want next to Colombia are lovers of fredom."

( via / via )

Nightmare Alleys.

ache-pattern on Etna
elfwrenck lured to sink
& leave ping of language
allotted foxtrot
through hoarse hurried carols
the hap trickles thick
vacant lots of victim
averted gaze days

Lake Michigan in the cold.

"It was hard to believe the place was really in use; that anything really functioned. I was aware of an uncertainty of the real, in my surroundings and in myself. What I saw had no solidity, it was all made of mist and nylon, with nothing behind." --Ice

Novelty and Curio Catalogues.

( via / via )

A quick scroll to show you our current range of Zines! (via @minxmarple.bsky.social)

   "Fierce was the burning,
woven with weeping, · and wood-smoke rose
black over the blaze, · blown with a roar."

--Sullivan & Murphy's Beowulf

"There are four double-height basement levels. The Maps basement is in the deepest level." (via @terriwindling.bsky.social)

"SPEECH OF BARRICADING DRUMS, song of drums barricading.
The steamroller rumbles
a second
Iliad
into the torn
pavement,

sand-bordered
the old images
startle themselves in the gutter,

the dying warriors shed blood like oil
in silver puddles, on the road-
side, death-rattle,

Troy, the dust-crowned,
understands."

--Washburn & Guillemin's Celan

Arguably the first text of the Pagan revival.

( via / via )

"Where the slag of world crumbles cooling/ In thunders and rainy portents."

Delmira Agustini: Ofrendando El Libro

(to Eros)

Because you make the lioness your dog,
O stronger than Life, and bind her fast within
the rose-chain of your arm.

Because your body is the root, the knot
uniting the discordant stems of those
caladiums--pleasure and pain.

Because there blossoms in your beautiful firm
hands, as on a brooch of mystic diamonds,
the so intoxicating lily of Death.

Because higher than Space I can see you,
O bridge of fragrance, melody and light
connecting hell and heaven.

--With resplendent spirit and somber flesh...

(my translation: 1990)

Old Paris, Eugène Atget, 1890's.

"Oligarch writing a NYT op ed indistinguishable from the thoughts of a Philip K Dick character based on the stupidest guy he worked with at a TV repair shop in Berkeley in the early 50s" --via

The art of the prescription drug commercial, detailed oil painting, egon schiele.

( via / via )

"My impression was that they had lost their heads, did not know how to deal with the approaching danger, and hoped to keep the public in ignorance..."

"Word of the day is ‘matutolypea’: extreme grumpiness in the morning.

From the Latin ‘Matuta’, Roman goddess of the dawn, and the Greek ‘lype’, ‘grief’. Put them together and you get ‘morning grief’." --@susiedent.bsky.social

The Triumph of Hate.

"THE SHIRE (Bivocalism*)

In the shire,
in the winter nights,
we drink red wine,
in frenzied inns.

We sip the finest bitter gins
behind the gilded fire.

In the shire,
in the spring,
we sing the hills,
we drink the silver spires.

(*Only two vowels, which alternate throughout)"

--@anthonyetherin.bsky.social

The Dank Weather of Nazism.