A fab Fourth – slow reads

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Passages

20 June 2021 - Luisa A. Igloria

Before the mind remembers all the notes or words, a song escapes. Is it still music if it doesn't find its way to the ears of tone- deaf gods? [Read more...]

Ruminant

20 June 2021 - Dave Bonta

(Lord’s day). I up, at between two and three in the morning, and, calling up my boy, and father’s boy, we set out by three o’clock, it being high day; and so through the water with very good success, though very deep almost all the way, and got to Brampton, where most of them in bed, and so I weary up to my wife’s chamber, whom I find in bed, and pretended a little not well, and indeed she hath those upon her, but fell to talk and mightily pleased both of us, and upgot the rest, Betty Turner and Willet and Jane, all whom I was glad to see, and very merry, and got me ready in my new stuff clothes that I send down before me, and so my wife and they got ready too, while I to my father, poor man, and walked with him up and down the house — it raining a little, and the waters all over Portholme and the meadows, so as no pleasure abroad. Here I saw… [Read more...]

Equipoise

19 June 2021 - Loren

I just finished reading the last of the poetry books I bought in Port Townsend a couple of years ago. Both of these books are by local poets, but that is about the only thing they seem to have in common, except for a word I had never encountered before: “equipoise.” In fact, I’m pretty sure that is why I bought Kathleen Halme’s Equipoise — that and the exquisite cover and eloquent fonts. The other book is Songs for a Summons by David Guterson, who is best known for his novels, particularly Snow Falling on Cedars. Strangely enough, two of my favorite poems of his use “equipoise.” I’ll have to admit it didn’t take me long to realize that I wasn’t the intended audience for Halme’s poetry, though I might have been in college since she makes a number of references to Andrew Marvel’s poetry, and his “To My Coy Mistress” was one of my favorite poems in college. At 79, I no longer see sexuality in everything around me, perhaps because at my age… [Read more...]

NEBRASKA SANDHILLS (15)

19 June 2021 - Tom

When the poetin the Sandhillsdoesn't knowwhat to say,the wind tells him.The Middlewesterner [Read more...]

A Prayer for the Last Rain

19 June 2021 - Dale

I go in the morning of the day to the high placeswhere the clouds build tower upon tower, and the lightcomes up from the moving water to fill the sky;I break the glazed bowl and scatter the offeringsas you told me to, remember? that July in the days before.My fingers remember the grit and the hard edgesand the loom of the forgoing, the endless necessaryand useless refusal of pleasure, which amounts to nothingand informs nothing; the shape of the leaves left by the windon the hilltop. Christ Jesus, walking in this bitter way,gave us three instructions: the first two I have forgotten,but the last was "do not break the bowl!" and if I wake in tears,of a Saturday, it is just this memory: of all that I have broken,and forgotten, and lost. If you make a bowl of your handsand let it fill with light, how will you keep it? It spillsand the moving air takes it. That high-strung English boythought it was seed for the west wind, but it is only the splashof a… [Read more...]

Right Time, Right Place

19 June 2021 - Luisa A. Igloria

We're told: right time, right place. As if destiny was a random passage, was simple coincidence: as if histories of bondage were mere eventuality. A thing waiting to happen, but more a guarantee to some instead of others: their color or countenance wrong for their time, wrong for the place. Capacity: an appetite for increase. People as possessions, a destiny made manifest. Annexed through maps and by insolence, histories of bondage made mere eventuality. Expeditions, missions that fed colonial fantasies by canon, intermarriage, war and other forms of violence. Wrong for their time, wrong for the place; no destiny should demote what poets call possibility. Galleries bloated with artifacts— o weakness and blind love of opulence, as if histories of bondage were mere eventuality. What face looks back from this mirrored topography? Your musk, your brown, your brilliance that you held back until you were told right time, right place. As if destiny is history and bondage a given—the inhumanity. [Read more...]

Look upon it, and be healed: vaccinations, Juneteenth, and the copper snake

19 June 2021 - rbarenblat@gmail.com (Velveteen Rabbi)

In this week's Torah portion, Chukat, the children of Israel grouse to Moses, "Why did you take us out of Egypt to die here in the desert?" And God gets angry and sends a plague of snakes, and the snakes bite the people, and people start dying. The people return to Moses and say, "We sinned by speaking out against God; help!" Moses relays this, and God instructs him to make a copper snake and mount it on a pole. When the people see the copper snake, those who were bitten by the snakes are healed. Rashi notes that the word snake, nachash, is related to copper, nachoshet. The Hebrew wordplay hints at the miracle here: when someone sees the figure of the snake cast in copper, they are healed from the venom. The reminder of what bit them helps them heal from the bite. This year, as I read this story, all I can think of is a copper coronavirus. Clearly what we need is a copper sphere covered with a corona of spiky… [Read more...]

Leaves of gas

18 June 2021 - Dave Bonta

Up by four o’clock; and, getting my things ready, and recommending the care of my house to W. Hewer, I with my boy Tom, whom I take with me, to the Bull, in Bishopsgate Street, and there, about six, took coach, he and I, and a gentleman and his man, there being another coach also, with as many more, I think, in it; and so away to Bishop’s Stafford, and there dined, and changed horses and coach, at Mrs. Aynsworth’s; but I took no knowledge of her. Here the gentleman and I to dinner, and in comes Captain Forster, an acquaintance of his, he that do belong to my Lord Anglesey, who had been at the late horse-races at Newmarket, where the King now is, and says that they had fair weather there yesterday, though we here, and at London, had nothing but rain, insomuch that the ways are mighty full of water, so as hardly to be passed. Here I hear Mrs. Aynsworth is going to live at London: but I believe will be… [Read more...]

NEBRASKA SANDHILLS (14)

18 June 2021 - Tom

Only the grasses knowwhat the wind is thinkingin the Sandhills.The Middlewesterner [Read more...]

IMPRESSIONISTIC

18 June 2021 - Unknown

Stopping for afternoon lunch at a Turkish café I sit down inside and order coffee with poached eggs on sourdough toast. While I wait I look around and, as usual, impressions flit through my head like butterflies. Across the room, sitting at a shelf-table against a wall decorated with black pipes which end up as lamps, a man is sitting, concentrating on a very small laptop. He is wearing a perfect light blue linen suit, striped blue socks and white trainers. His perfectly cut grey hair harmonises perfectly with the blue suit. I can only see part of his profile, perfectly smooth and lightly tanned. When he suddenly turns his head to look thoughtfully at the traffic passing by outside, I’m amazed that his nose is too long. I had expected it to be the perfect size for his face. He wear earphones and is deeply involved in whatever he’s hearing and seeing on the screen. I am very curious to know what it is and can just about make out rectangles of text in… [Read more...]

Decapitate

18 June 2021 - Luisa A. Igloria

Derived from the Latin decapitare— caput: the head; and de: from or down. The way the head is completely severed from a body, with invariably fatal prognosis (according to every dictionary). What Perseus did with adamantine sword to gather the Gorgon's writhing head into a sack, though guillotines, axes, chain- saws, and sometimes smaller, blunter instruments have been applied excruciatingly to the same purpose. Saints, king's wives; anarchists, captives in war, hostages turned into examples—heads on spikes, heads rolling into the executioner's basket. Cockroaches survive decapitations; swatted at, horseflies are merely stunned—a clean death: you pick them up, hold their bodies with one hand while you twist their heads and pop them off with the other. [Read more...]

Earworm

18 June 2021 - Dave Bonta

Up, and all the morning at the office busy. At noon home with my people to dinner, where good discourse and merry. After dinner comes Mr. Martin, the purser, and brings me his wife’s starling, which was formerly the King’s bird, that do speak and whistle finely, which I am mighty proud of and shall take pleasure in it. Thence to the Duke of York’s house to a play, and saw Sir Martin Marr-all, where the house is full; and though I have seen it, I think, ten times, yet the pleasure I have is yet as great as ever, and is undoubtedly the best comedy ever was wrote. Thence to my tailor’s and a mercer’s for patterns to carry my wife of cloth and silk for a bed, which I think will please her and me, and so home, and fitted myself for my journey to-morrow, which I fear will not be pleasant, because of the wet weather, it raining very hard all this day; but the less it troubles me because the King… [Read more...]

Words

17 June 2021 - Luisa A. Igloria

How quick we are with words. How sure-sounding. In the summer canopy, lengthening call of light accompanied by the vocalizations of birds. To the trained ear, perhaps it's possible to distinguish not just the nature of their calls but also what they hold, what they curate in them. They craft their language with the same care we do. I think, with more. [Read more...]

NEBRASKA SANDHILLS (13)

17 June 2021 - Tom

Where emptinessgoes for silence --the Sandhills.The Middlewesterner [Read more...]

Prehistory of Language

17 June 2021 - Luisa A. Igloria

A forest is an ink bottle. The shore, a slate that lets you make mistakes. Ceriths and cowries, keyhole limpets— all the spaces the universe fit into after it broke into pieces. [Read more...]

Flight calls

17 June 2021 - Dave Bonta

Up, and busy to send some things into the country, and then to the Office, where meets me Sir Richard Ford, who among other things congratulates me, as one or two did yesterday, [on] my great purchase; and he advises me rather to forbear, if it be not done, as a thing that the world will envy me in: and what is it but my cozen Tom Pepys’s buying of Martin Abbey, in Surry! which is a mistake I am sorry for, and yet do fear that it may spread in the world to my prejudice. All the morning at the office, and at noon my clerks dined with me, and there do hear from them how all the town is full of the talk of a meteor, or some fire, that did on Saturday last fly over the City at night, which do put me in mind that, being then walking in the dark an hour or more myself in the garden, after I had done writing, I did see a light before me… [Read more...]

NEBRASKA SANDHILLS (12)

16 June 2021 - Tom

Wisdom doesn'tfight the windin the Sandhills.The Middlewesterner [Read more...]

Now

16 June 2021 - rbarenblat@gmail.com (Velveteen Rabbi)

In my son's final days of fifth grade, his class has been doing an ELA (English Language Arts) project writing "The Covid Chronicles." I don't know what anyone else's chronicle looks like, but my kid wrote some 5000 words in five chapters about what the last year has been for him, starting with the very first time he ever heard the word "coronavirus." The first thing I noticed is what isn't in his chronicle. No one in his recounting gets sick or dies. I know how lucky that makes him (and me.) His experience of the pandemic hasn't been one of illness or death. No ventilators. No hospitals. He doesn't know about the refrigerator trucks that had to serve as mobile morgues in so many places. He wrote instead about model rockets with his dad, and glow in the dark science projects with me. About the routines of Zoom school and Chromebook lag, and the excitement of shifting to hybrid and getting to be in the school building with friends again. About computer gaming camps, some… [Read more...]

Chapeau

16 June 2021 - Dave Bonta

Up, and with Colonell Middleton, in a new coach he hath made him, very handsome, to White Hall, where the Duke of York having removed his lodgings for this year to St. James’s, we walked thither; and there find the Duke of York coming to White Hall, and so back to the Council-chamber, where the Committee of the Navy sat; and here we discoursed several things; but, Lord! like fools; so as it was a shame to see things of this importance managed by a Council that understand nothing of them: and, among other things, one was about this building of a ship with Hemskirke’s secret, to sail a third faster than any other ship; but he hath got Prince Rupert on his side, and by that means, I believe, will get his conditions made better than he would otherwise, or ought indeed. Having done there, I met with Sir Richard Browne, and he took me to dinner with him to a new tavern, above Charing Cross, where some clients of his did give him… [Read more...]

NEBRASKA SANDHILLS (11)

15 June 2021 - Tom

In the Sandhillsthe flowershold onto hope.The Middlewesterner [Read more...]