Home is where I take up such a tiny portion of the memory foam; home is a splintered word. His pillow is a sweat-stained map of an escape plot, also a map of love’s dear abandon. (When did he give way, at which breath?) Forgiveness may mean retroactively abandoning the pillow and abandoning the photograph of someone with curious eyes, kissing my toes, poolside. I paint my toes Big Apple Red. I don’t know what to do about the shock of red nails on clean, white tiles except get used to it. (And when he gave way, was there room for feelings or the words for feelings?) While I brush my teeth, I can see him in my periphery at the other sink. The outline of him lulls and stings. (And when he gave way, was it the end or the beginning of suffering?) I draw his profile near, I make him brush his teeth with me, he spits and makes a mess. I could love another face, but why?
Bough Down, artist Karen Green’s collection of poems and collages of her grief after her husband’s suicide (via atomize)
from Bennett Sims’ “White Dialogues” at Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading
“Of course all films—but especially old films—serve a preservative function: they exist first and foremost to freeze-dry their actors’ bodies, safeguarding them from destruction. I know this as well as anyone. Actors’ heads are shrunken in the formaldehyde jars of close-ups. They are embalmed within the film, mummified by the film. That is why it is possible to view all films—but especially old films—as mummy films. Photography began, after all, as a mummifying technology, a 19th-century advance in mankind’s age-old mummy complex. With each passing era, I know, mankind has perfected the perverse art of preserving corpses. First the mummy, then the death mask, then the photograph. After the photograph, there remained only one logical step: the moving image. From Egypt down to the Egyptian Theater, there has been a direct and unbroken lineage. Every movie is a pyramid, stuffed tight with mummies. Every movie is a mobile gallery of death masks. I have always felt this way. Whereas most viewers see actors’ faces, all I see are death masks. Whereas my colleagues are liable to say, That actor did a fine job, I always have to stop myself from saying, That death mask did a fine job. Frankly, my dear, I hear one death mask say to the other death mask, I don’t give a damn, and I watch in horror as tears stream down the second death mask’s face.”
Top Ten Reasons Why Indians Are Good at Basketball
by Natalie Diaz, at Indian Country Today Media Network
1. The same reason we are good in bed.
2. Because a long time ago, Creator gave us a choice:
You can write like an Indian god, or you can have a jump shot sweeter
than a 44-ounce can of commodity grape juice—one or the other.
Everyone but Sherman Alexie chose the jump shot.
3. We know how to block shots, how to stuff them down your throat,
because when you say, “Shoot,” we hear howitzer and Hotchkiss
and Springfield Model 1873.
4. When Indian ballers sweat, we emit a perfume of tortillas
and Pine Sol floor cleaner that works like a potion
to disorient our opponents and make them forget their plays.
5. We grew up knowing that there is no difference between a basketball court
and church. Really, the Nazarene’s hold church in the tribal gym
on Sunday afternoons—the choir belts out “In the Sweet By and By”
from the low block.
Read more at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/06/07/top-ten-reasons-why-indians-are-good-basketball-poem-natalie-diaz-149780
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MY LAST BLOG by Catherine Lacey, via HTML Giant
I’m never going to write another blog.
I don’t like writing blogs.
I don’t like typing I read I saw or saying my endless opinion of the weird book I read, the thing it was like, a metaphor a simile and I have almost grown to hate the internet after 15 years, how I know all the office workers have 35 tabs open and are watching a video and reading an article at the same time and mentally composing a tweet about it or wondering about how Roxane Gay is going to say it better and Blake Butler is going to say it weirder or if we’re supposed to like or hate Tao Lin right now or whether or not the novel is living or dead or who cares or which author we should interview or if that galley of that novel is worth reading or reviewing and how is it that those publishers still send out all those galleys to all those people who ignore all those galleys, and that’s called work and earning a living, well I’m not going to write any more blogs like that. I’m not going to blog about author news or how publishing houses are hemorrhaging money or how eBooks are stabbing people in dark alleys or about how eBooks are Jesus or how eBooks are just Books with a little ‘e’ hanging on. I’m not going to write another blog after this one. This is my last blog.
7Electric Literature's Recommended Reading: Etgar Keret Recommends Janet Frame
Vol. 7, No. 3
EDITOR’S NOTE
Where does the need to make up a story come from? I think that every time I’ve ever read a story, that question echoes in my mind. What is it that made the writer spin such a complicated plot and invest his entire being in developing characters he…
56 Clever Beast: William James’ The Varieties of Religious Experiences
In his book, The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James lays the groundwork for a science of religion, trying to classify the religious experiences as accurately as possible using the tools of philosophy and psychology combined. At first I was expecting this to be a harsh critique of…
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from scarfolk.blogspot.com
From The New York Times: “The Neighbors,” an exhibition now at the Julie Saul Gallery in Chelsea, is, as you may have read, angering many residents of a certain TriBeCa building. Arne Svenson’s photographs, which he shot using a telephoto lens from inside his own apartment across the street, capture people at home through their windows. The neighbors, who were unaware they were being photographed, are somewhat obscured — bending over, back to the window, head turned, behind a curtain — and therefore mostly unidentifiable. But the subjects are recognizable to themselves, and maybe others.
from i09: book spine poetry
Write a series of museum labels for everyday objects. Use art jargon to describe public places. Water fountains, bicycles, fire hydrants, etc. Take photographs of your new museum. Submit the writing and photographs here.
Cosmarxpolitan, Issue 3
Arise, ye workers from your slumbers! Revolutionary morning sex
