Astro Boy – slow reads

[flickr id=”6804987492″ thumbnail=”large” overlay=”true” size=”large” group=”” align=”none”]
Through March 18 at D.C.’s Studio Theater. Good play.

Categories

Passages

All the recent talk about the new Marvel superhero

11 June 2021 - Luisa A. Igloria

All the recent talk about the new Marvel superhero being Filipino or FilAm or Filipinx—Specifically, Captain America, following up on the premise delivered at the conclusion of Avengers: Endgame as the shield is given to Sam Wilson. Furor, though, over the name this character is given—Ari Agbayani, private school scholarship girl, hair bobbed & uniform-skirted. Short, too, if you look closely at the sketches. She's bent on justice for her best friend, but does it really kick audiences in the face if they can associate "labia, genitalia," with "Ari?" I'd like to know more about her: like, does she know how to use a tabo? need to eat rice at nearly every meal? This ordinary girl— does she know anything about the People Power revolution that toppled Marcos, quelling the old corruptions at least for a while? Remember that other guy who draped stars & stripes over his shoulders, held a walis tambó affixed to a shield to join the January 6 uprising in the Capitol? Since Ari's described as vigilante-like, would she have swept… [Read more...]

NEBRASKA SANDHILLS (6)

10 June 2021 - Tom

God made time for the Sandhills.The cowboy in the oncoming pick-upknows it.The Middlewesterner [Read more...]

Three

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

Chodesh tov: happy new month! One of my friends said that to me last night, and I groaned. "Wait, what? It's Tamuz already?!" I've had a few things on my mind. Preparing my shul community to shift from all-digital to hybrid / multi-access. Supporting my kid through the final days of his fifth grade year, a school year unlike any other. It makes sense that I lost track of time. But it's a new lunar month. Once again, I bump into the disjunction between the secular calendar and our sacred one. On the secular calendar, summer is just beginning: jump in the pool! fire up the grill! Jewishly, later this month we'll be mourning. And once again I grapple with the tension between now and coming. I struggle every year with winter's cold and darkness. I count the days until they start lengthening again. I crave summer's greenery, the profusion of produce, the long golden light. That season is finally beginning... and my professional life calls me to think about three months from now, when summer will… [Read more...]

Anting

10 June 2021 - Luisa A. Igloria

I never knew either about such a word for such a thing as this sight captured on camera: a crow sitting quite still, letting an undisciplined parade of ants crawl up and down its feathers and all over its body. Audubon supposedly observed it in turkeys as early as the 1830s— No one knows for sure if in symbiosis, or if the birds were simply tolerating the insect picnic in order to have a ready supply of snacks on hand. In one picture there's a crow in an almost Sphinx- like pose; in another, a crow bends over like a dark tent in some desert, not knowng if the arrival of these tiny nomads is a blessing or a curse. [Read more...]

Coup season

9 June 2021 - Dave Bonta

Up, and to the office, where we sat all the morning, and at noon home to dinner with my people, but did not stay to dine out with them, but rose and straight by water to the Temple, and so to Penny’s, my tailor’s, where by and by by agreement Mercer, and she, to my great content, brings Mrs. Gayet, and I carried them to the King’s house; but, coming too soon, we out again to the Rose taverne, and there I did give them a tankard of cool drink, the weather being very hot, and then into the playhouse again, and there saw “The Country Captain,” a very dull play, that did give us no content, and besides, little company there, which made it very unpleasing. Thence to the waterside, at Strand bridge, and so up by water and to Fox-hall, where we walked a great while, and pleased mightily with the pleasure thereof, and the company there, and then in, and eat and drank, and then out again and walked, and it beginning… [Read more...]

Apocrypha

9 June 2021 - Luisa A. Igloria

History bears down again: its breath the humid reek of cities where we scuttle like crabs in the shadows. Brown and bareheaded we climb up platforms as trains clatter away to pre-set destinations—Some parts of the world act with this kind of certainty all the time, as if arrival were a given, as if the doors will always open. But so frequently now are we addressed again: with unexpected blows, with names that halve and mongrel us, that mail- order-bride and nanny us, that want to throw a pail of disinfectant in our faces. History is pages and pages of script: unclean in parts like these, the ones they'll classify apocryphal. [Read more...]

NEBRASKA SANDHILLS (5)

9 June 2021 - Tom

The sun behind you,and antelopes --morning in the Sandhills.The Middlewesterner [Read more...]

Fire Drill

9 June 2021 - Dale

I pull into the three-quarters full parking lot and find a space on the far side, so that people with trouble walking can get the nearer spaces. (One of those things you can allow yourself to do when you're semi-retired and not in a hurry any more.) A beautiful morning. Some deep breaths. Do the little juggling routine: key into my pocket, glasses off, tie on mask; glasses back on, get out of the car, fish the key back out of my pocket, lock the car. I stride toward the building, feeling bold and enterprising. But I slow as I approach. A wave of some dozen masked people comes out. A second, and a third wave. Each wave wanders deeper into the parking lot, and then stops. What the hell?Oh. I've seen this behavior before. It's a fire drill. More waves come out; they gather in little clusters, chatting: some cheerful, some resigned. Who knew how many people were in a nondescript, three-story medical building? There must be a hundred of them.I stop well away from… [Read more...]

Pulse

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

This week I am reading up on cardiac catheterization. It sounds like sometimes they go in through the wrist, and sometimes at the groin. My wrists are tiny: I can't imagine that the blood vessel there is large enough to thread anything through. Then again, it's an easy place to feel my pulse. The radial artery, according to the internet. Radial makes me think of radiant. When I had the stress test with nuclear imaging, were my arteries temporarily radiant? I wonder if I could use that image in a poem. I wonder what became of the images of the inside of my body from when I had my strokes. Did the trans-esophageal echocardiogram yield still pictures, or only a live video feed? I remember being asked to count backwards, but I don't remember the procedure itself. I know there were brain scans; I remember seeing grainy images, with white blemishes in the places where the strokes left their damage. I probably have the images on a CD-ROM somewhere, though I no longer have a… [Read more...]

Out-foxed

9 June 2021 - Dave Bonta

Up, and by water to White Hall, and so to Sir H. Cholmly’s, who not being up I made a short visit to Sir W. Coventry, and he and I through the Park to White Hall, and thence I back into the Park, and there met Sir H. Cholmly, and he and I to Sir Stephen Fox’s, where we met and considered the business of the Excise, how far it is charged in reference to the payment of the Guards and Tangier. Thence he and I walked to Westminster Hall and there took a turn, it being holyday, and so back again, and I to the mercer’s, and my tailor’s about a stuff suit that I am going to make. Thence, at noon, to Hercules Pillars, and there dined all alone, and so to White Hall, some of us attended the Duke of York as usual, and so to attend the Council about the business of Hemskirke’s project of building a ship that sails two feet for one of any other ship, which the Council… [Read more...]

NEBRASKA SANDHILLS (4)

8 June 2021 - Tom

The wind makesand remakes them --the Sandhills.The Middlewesterner [Read more...]

Vanishing Point

8 June 2021 - Luisa A. Igloria

At the end of the street before the turn, a glimpse of river: choppy with light, singed with coal dust. I forget sometimes whether the barges crossing look smaller or larger as you speed up. Perspective is what they call it: a way of looking at the world that's shaped by the length of time you can hold it in your gaze without faltering. [Read more...]

Tourism

8 June 2021 - Dave Bonta

Up, and to the office, where we sat, and sat all the morning. Here Lord Anglesey was with us, and in talk about the late difference between the two Houses, do tell us that he thinks the House of Lords may be in an error, at least, it is possible they may, in this matter of Skinner; and he doubts they may, and did declare his judgement in the House of Lords against their proceedings therein, he having hindered 100 originall causes being brought into their House, notwithstanding that he was put upon defending their proceedings: but that he is confident that the House of Commons are in the wrong, in the method they take to remedy an error of the Lords, for no vote of theirs can do it; but, in all like cases, the Commons have done it by petition to the King, sent up to the Lords, and by them agreed to, and so redressed, as they did in the Petition of Right. He says that he did tell them indeed, which… [Read more...]

NEBRASKA SANDHILLS (3)

7 June 2021 - Tom

All I have seen hereI am seeing new --June in the Sandhills.The Middlewesterner [Read more...]

At Margaret’s House

7 June 2021 - Loren

Leslie spent a lot of time this Spring helping Margaret, so I would occasionally spend the night there, too. I’ll have to admit that I would sometimes feel a little lost without my toys and with too little to do, but when I was really feeling bored I would take my camera and go out for a walk and entertain myself. Early on I would just focus on the flowering trees in the orchard, or the beautiful azaleas that lined the road. Margaret’s house is also a good place to see birds. One day I even took my 500mm lens with a doubler but, of course, the terns that Leslie kept telling me about didn’t turn up since I had that lens with me. They did show up on a day when I had my 600mm RF lens, though, and I managed to get some distant shots of them diving into the water. When the tide was out and the sea birds had disappeared, I would wander the field in front of the house looking… [Read more...]

Memory of Brownout With Aborted EEG

7 June 2021 - Luisa A. Igloria

When our oldest daughter had seizures at around seventeen months, none of the doctors in our city could explain them: afebrile, unconnected to any fall or blunt force trauma, etc. We were advised to travel six hours to the capital to visit a leading nuerologist, who ordered an electroencephalogram on the spot. In the basement of a hospital that was a garrison during the last world war, we tried to keep our crying, struggling child calm as nurses and technicians tried to attach a network of electrodes to her sweaty scalp. Dose after dose of Benadryl and still she couldn't be still. But as they put the last wire in place, the heavy drone of machines shutting down, followed by the flicker-shut of all electricals, then the choke-cough of generators trying to come to life. Perhaps this was a sign? We gathered her up and said No more. On the long car ride back to the mountains, she fell into a sleep without a tremor, without a sigh. The thing is, until today, no one… [Read more...]

Poetry Blog Digest 2021, Week 22

7 June 2021 - Dave Bonta

A personal selection of posts from the Poetry Blogging Network and beyond. Although I tend to quote my favorite bits, please do click through and read the whole posts. This week, many bloggers took an existential turn. Others aired grievances and critiques. Sometimes they converged. Enjoy. Fox barking to my right, to my left: what does it mean to be open? Risk, and patience. One bark after another, on and on they call and respond. Once home, once lost, once dead and blue at the bottom of the stair, stepped over: dream. Just a dream. The calls of foxes sound like screaming coughs, lungs gone closed and blued: I remember my dreams, even the ones I’d forget. What does it mean, “a wild patience has taken me this far,” if risk, if death? They bark and bark, echoing against June midnight, mountain. Crickets. Frogs. A whiffle of horse, a sussurus of sleep. I miss her, also gone. The new ones make sure to say my name.JJS, Almost-ghazal, vulpine and the rainfell in onelong storywe sidesteppedbetween treesi… [Read more...]

Echo location

7 June 2021 - Dave Bonta

Up, and to my office, where alone all the morning. About noon comes to me my cousin Sarah, and my aunt Livett, newly come out of Gloucestershire, good woman, and come to see me; I took them home, and made them drink, but they would not stay dinner, I being alone. But here they tell me that they hear that this day Kate Joyce was to be married to a man called Hollingshed, whom she indeed did once tell me of, and desired me to enquire after him. But, whatever she said of his being rich, I do fear, by her doing this without my advice, it is not as it ought to be; but, as she brews, let her bake. They being gone, I to dinner with Balty and his wife, who is come to town to-day from Deptford to see us, and after dinner I out and took a coach, and called Mercer, and she and I to the Duke of York’s playhouse, and there saw “The Tempest,” and between two acts, I… [Read more...]

TEN OLD MONK POEMS (18)

7 June 2021 - Tom

ROUND AND ROUNDRound and roundthe mulberry tree,the old monk says,what an awfulway to die.~IF THE SUNIf the sundoesn't come up,you don't want toget up either,the old monk said.~HOW LONGHow long can youstay still beforethey think you're dead,the old monk asked.Stay still that long.~WHAT YOU WANTWhat you want is tosilence the darkness,the old monk says.You don't want tosilence the light.~IF SOMEONE WANTS ITIf someone wants it,someone will make it,the old monk said.That's how you end upwith crap like this.~SOMETIMES YOU LEARNSometimes you learnthe most just bysitting still,the old monk said.~YOUR BODYYour body,it's just an oldpiece of meat.It's the waythe world eats you,the old monk said.~IT'S AS IFIt's as iflife's an emptybox and whenyou've filled it,that's it,the old monk said.I wish I could bemore reassuring.~WIND AND THE RAINWind and the rainare friends,the old monk said.Be friends with them.~The Middlewesterner [Read more...]

NEBRASKA SANDHILLS (2)

6 June 2021 - Tom

The windmill takesthe easy jobin the Sandhills.The Middlewesterner [Read more...]