Marginal

On American unexceptionalism. Here’s a Washington Post article this week making the similar-but-different comparison I make about Obama’s and Romney’s views on American exceptionalism. Both men sound more like Douglas than Lincoln. I hope we get past this self-congratulatory rhetoric one day soon.

By Peter

After stints as a trial lawyer and a church worker, Peter Stephens has settled in as a Virginia high school English teacher. Peter has read several books and poems. He wrote none of the posts below filed under "Passages." Click the link at the end of each post to see it in the context of the author's original post.

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Passages

The Kodomoroid reads the news

4 March 2021 - Luisa A. Igloria

to museum-goers; she sports a cute bob and wears a clean white cotton smock. Her older sister Otomoroid has her hair in a neat ponytail; she talks, acts, even breathes, if that's what we can call the light puffs of air escaping from her mouth. They each take up about the same amount of space as one human would and look almost lifelike, except for those small inconsistencies that make us second-guess our own sense of reality: a rubbery fold at the corners of the eyes, the not-quite-fluid motion of a body copying the way the body moves. And I know a sepia-tinted photograph of my father from the '80s that I feed into an app called Deep Nostalgia will not bring him back— Still, when I press play and his animated head turns gently toward me, the part of my brain that startles at the uncanny is overcome by wonder. How those clear blue-gray eyes look as if they're looking right at me, even as the smallest half-smile seems to hold something back. [Read more...]

Poor in spirit

4 March 2021 - Dave Bonta

Up, and I to Captain Cocke’s, where he and I did discourse of our business that we are to go about to the Commissioners of Accounts about our prizes, and having resolved to conceal nothing but to confess the truth, the truth being likely to do us most good, we parted, and I to White Hall, where missing of the Commissioners of the Treasury, I to the Commissioners of Accounts, where I was forced to stay two hours before I was called in, and when come in did take an oath to declare the truth to what they should ask me, which is a great power; I doubt more than the Act do, or as some say can, give them, to force a man to swear against himself; and so they fell to enquire about the business of prize-goods, wherein I did answer them as well as I could, answer them in everything the just truth, keeping myself to that. I do perceive at last, that, that they did lay most like a fault to… [Read more...]

WHAT CAME

3 March 2021 - Tom

What camebeforethe sameas whatcomesafter.Loss isnot losswhen itreturns.The Middlewesterner [Read more...]

HAWK IS NOT

3 March 2021 - Tom

Hawk is notlast year's leavesin the winterbranches, thoughhe could be,he always could.The Middlewesterner [Read more...]

Spring Approacheth Slowly

3 March 2021 - Loren

There are signs that Spring might actually be on the way and we can soon expect migration sightings, but for now our world (with the exception of Evergreen trees) remains largely browns and grays. So, it seemed appropriate that my first sighting on our latest trip to Theler Wetlands was of a Song Sparrow foraging on a pile of snow leftover from a recent snowstorm. The sound of male Red-Wing Blackbirds trying to attract mates echoed across the refuge, but all I actually saw was a single, female Red-Wing Blackbird. Didn’t see any Bald Eagles, like we often do, but we did catch sight of a Red-Tailed Hawk. The clearest sign that Spring is coming, though, was the sound of Canada Geese pairs claiming their nesting ground when another pair dared to fly over. [Read more...]

3 March 2021 - Dave Bonta

Watch on Vimeo I turned 55 on the first spring-like day in late February, which felt like a cosmic mixed message. For weeks I’ve been fighting low-level depression about getting older and being a failure as a husband — and by fighting I mean going for long walks, mostly on snowshoes. bone-tired ogling the snow-free strips of field My birthday was shopping day, though, and when I got back to my parents’ house with their groceries, just past noon, Mom surprised me with a cake. And it was warm enough to sit out on their veranda and talk. It took me back. When I think about my childhood now, it seems to me that I spent an inordinate amount of time just kind of poking at things with a stick. I suppose that must sound absurd to anyone who grew up with video games and the internet. decades after the last train tree-of-heaven I’m consoled by the thought that this sort of arm’s-length but intent preoccupation with whatever was in front of me may have… [Read more...]

Period Piece

3 March 2021 - Luisa A. Igloria

We climbed the hundred steps and rang the bell. Taking turns, we wrapped our hands around a bundle of prayer sticks and dropped them on the table. Sleepy-eyed, a monk pushed toward us a pad of paper, a pencil stub. We were to write down a question or a wish, which is also a kind of question. How far we were from the cities where we'd crossed the thresholds of all our houses. We didn't save the stone of every fruit that fell so brightly from the tree, proclaiming it was ready to become our brand- new heart. Mist was always drifting through the valley. A bridge was always cutting through it to disappear somewhere beyond. On a distant ridge, the ruins of a convent or a garrison, where ghosts walked their labyrinths and kept to themselves any counsel about the future. I wanted to keep a souvenir, to take a sheaf of creased and dog-eared photos: sunlight on a shaded porch, the roots of orchids parting the air. The man and woman seated next… [Read more...]

Comedian

3 March 2021 - Dave Bonta

Up, and to the office, where a full Board sat all the morning, busy among other things concerning a solemn letter we intend to write to the Duke of York about the state of the things of the Navy, for want of money, though I doubt it will be to little purpose. After dinner I abroad by coach to Kate Joyce’s, where the jury did sit where they did before, about her husband’s death, and their verdict put off for fourteen days longer, at the suit of somebody, under pretence of the King; but it is only to get money out of her to compound the matter. But the truth is, something they will make out of Stillingfleete’s sermon, which may trouble us, he declaring, like a fool, in his pulpit, that he did confess that his losses in the world did make him do what he did. This do vex me to see how foolish our Protestant Divines are, while the Papists do make it the duty of Confessor to be secret, or else… [Read more...]

POET

3 March 2021 - Tom

You setyourselffor this,your work,every day,this, andnothingelse.The Middlewesterner [Read more...]

On March 1st

2 March 2021 - James Brush

the grackles openedlike gates in the treesshadow birds, eyes glisteningyou could almost imaginethese noisy shadesabandoning tangible birds,parking lots and steel dumpstersin their odyssey throughsuburban woods,clacking and creakinglike machines or clocksticking away the lasthoarse seconds of winter. This is from my book Birds Nobody Loves. It seemed fitting to dig this one out today as we come around to another March. The 13th looms large here as that’s the day Texas started shutting down a year ago. I never would have imagined I’d have to be going to work in a face shield and an N95 a year later. On another note, I’ve been tinkering with this old site and made new book landing pages that include videos, interviews, collaborations and related stuff. Putting it together, it was surprising to see where these birds have flown the past 9 years. Here’s the page for Birds. Welcome, March. [Read more...]

Von Tal in the Ice

2 March 2021 - Dale

Ice Storm, February 2021Lo ’mperador del doloroso regnoda mezzo ’l petto uscia fuor de la ghiacciaThe deep forest is gone. I made the mistake, fifteen or twenty years ago, of taking a shortcut home from the beach, through what I foolishly thought was still the deep forest, along old logging roads and such analogs to country lanes as we have here. There was no forest. It was ugly slash, the remains of multiple clear cuts, stumps and scrawny miserable third- or fourth-growth Douglas firs: the scars everywhere, and the junk logs, detritus, and brush dumped into the creeks. Nothing left. There is no deep forest now. A few parks: in Joni Mitchell's phrase, tree musee-ums. And even the closest of those have been burnt over in the seasonal wildfire romps, now. Why should I care about further losses? It's all been trashed. If you didn't know what a real forest was supposed to look like, I suppose you could take these places for forest. I can't. In this mood, I am probably as close as I… [Read more...]

IN SOME LANGUAGE (14)

2 March 2021 - Tom

In some languagethe word for deathalso means long walk.The Middlewesterner [Read more...]

Hypethral

2 March 2021 - Luisa A. Igloria

Halo of stutter- light in every window Signs lettered with the names of streets that once weren't chained to any one particular destination As opposed to how at dusk my mouth is a cave in which a hundred bats will not stop careening In the park horses wait to be led through paths thick with tourists and camera clicks That sound isn't rain but dry pine needles They too are looking for openings in a field of breath [Read more...]

Water bearish

2 March 2021 - Dave Bonta

Up, and to the office, where with my clerks all the morning very busy about several things there wherein I was behindhand. At noon home to dinner, and thence after dinner to the Duke of York’s house, to the play, “The Tempest,” which we have often seen, but yet I was pleased again, and shall be again to see it, it is so full of variety, and particularly this day I took pleasure to learn the tune of the seaman’s dance, which I have much desired to be perfect in, and have made myself so. So home with my wife and Deb., and there at the office met to my trouble with a warrant from the Commissioners of Accounts for my attending them and Cocke two days hence, which I apprehend by Captain Cocke’s being to go also, to be about the prizes. But, however, there is nothing of crime can be laid to my charge, and the worst that can be is to refund my 500l. profit, and who can help it. So I… [Read more...]

DISIN-

1 March 2021 - Tom

Disin-tegra-tion, themind fails.You watchas ithappens.The Middlewesterner [Read more...]

March funeral

1 March 2021 - rbarenblat@gmail.com (Velveteen Rabbi)

The hearse got stuck in the mud-snow. I watched from graveside as they tried reverse then pushing -- finally backing down to approach from the other side. Mourners in inappropriate footwear struggled in icy mud. I thought of Mom -- her yahrzeit this week. She died before covid before masks and distancing, before half a million dead. Would she understand how everything feels uphill, our wheels spinning in muddy slush? Like the hearse all we can do is retreat, bearing grief's heavy load. [Read more...]

Woodcock Spring

1 March 2021 - Marcia Bonta

Shortly before dark last February 10, our son Dave walked up the driveway and heard the “peenting” of an American woodcock. He raced up to our house to alert our son Mark and me, and we joined Dave on our veranda to listen. A woodcock (Photo by Don on Flickr, Creative Commons license) A couple minutes passed before both sons said, “Listen.” That’s when I heard the whirr of the woodcock’s wings as he flew overhead. I also saw his distinctive, chunky silhouette. In the nearly 50 years we have lived on our west-central Pennsylvania mountaintop, we had never seen or heard a displaying American woodcock before March 15. But last February was warmer than usual. After heavy rain the previous night, most of the snow had melted, and by evening it was 45 degrees. At least one male woodcock had migrated north early from his wintering grounds in the coastal lowlands from the Carolina’s south and west as far as Texas. Or, more likely, because the winter had been unusually mild, he may have… [Read more...]

OH, YES

1 March 2021 - Tom

Oh, yes --joy bringsanother morning.Let us liftour eyes,let us seewhat sings here.The Middlewesterner [Read more...]

Haplos*

1 March 2021 - Luisa A. Igloria

The river and its hem. Magnolia trees holding in their creamy cocoons. An egret dipping one leg into the current. All around us only the things originally belonging to this world are allowed to touch. * Caress; Tagalog/Filipino [Read more...]

Poetry Blog Digest 2021, Week 8

1 March 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: signs of spring, political and philosophical reflections, loves and deaths. There’s an air of springexamining the frozenearth by touch, shyly.We’re not ready yetfor happiness, the heavycurtains are still closed.At least the winterwould not lie to us, would notsay all will be good.One doesn’t know now.Magda Kapa, February 2021 A teetering peregrine at the pinnacle of an iced tree. But chickadees. Orioles? Nuthatches. Voices changing. “I can smell the leaves under the water, under the ice,” I say. “Not spring, but evidence of it. Can you?” Amazed, he cannot. The infinite distance. Animal. He says please don’t give up on me. The time of ice shatter and mud seems never to end, is always beginning and beginning: it’s nearly March again. “The sap is up in your willow, did you see?” I mention. He hadn’t, but now that I point it out, he can.The horse is mad… [Read more...]

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By Peter