When I lived in Baltimore and went to events sponsored by the anarchist bookstore, often I’d notice the presence of one or two ex-Panthers, stray corks bobbing in an ocean of youthful whiteness. They stayed to themselves, never spoke or asked questions and usually would leave quickly afterward. These men would always show up at […]
Letter from Garibaldi to Lincoln
On this date, 155 years ago (August 6, 1863): “In the midst of your titanic struggle, permit me, as another among the free children of Columbus, to send you a word of greeting and admiration for the great work you have begun. Posterity will call you the great emancipator, a more enviable title than any […]
Ardmore, Tennessee: “Don’t Like Your Rights Taken Away? Don’t Take Away Someone Else’s!!!”
Driving from Huntsville to southern Tennessee, the Huntsville exurbs soon dissolve into rolling corn fields alternated with soybean patches and then the lanes shrink into just two. This stretch of north Alabama and south Tennessee is speckled with small towns that blend into one another, each announcing “historical districts”; their only real claim to fame […]
Poems
Bedroom Window Musty gray dawn trespasses into the noon hour; And one looks like the other from this side of my bedroom window. Weather stained pawn malingers from stale to sour; And one smells like the other as I slump by my bedroom window. Curtains are drawn Like me, to endeavor or cower; And one […]
Thinking about Papa Heinz
Ketchup makes bad fake blood Because it doesn’t stir the right Kind of horror or nervousness. It’s too sweet looking and gooey. The red it all wrong and dried it Doesn’t leave that flat rust stain But springy space age growths That make cleaning the fiddley Bits of the dispenser so annoying. Except when you’re […]
On Reading Kenneth Fearing’s “The Hospital”
“I’ll never get used to this hospital smell of antiseptic, not even after all the times I visited Alice in Bellevue. It’s the smell of the grave. Think of something without that smell. Think of something that hasn’t any smell at all, think of something blue. Blue and green.” Kenneth Rexroth famously described Kenneth Fearing […]