Layout – slow reads

Safety

Earlier this week I got a fundraising email from my congresswoman. Here’s how it started: Peter, I didn’t get into politics to play it safe. I spoke out immediately on behalf of our federal workers when Trump needlessly caused a shutdown. I’ve taken on the NRA in my district to push for comprehensive, common sense… Continue reading Safety

Stolen voices

Victoria and I talked this morning about our fears of not being heard. For my part, I’ve been working on a book that I may or may not ever finish. I’ll let Victoria speak for herself. Hannah Arendt’s vision of the political is essentially positive: the political is a realm where people are seen and… Continue reading Stolen voices

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...]

TEN OLD MONK POEMS (4)

28 February 2021 - Tom

THE OLD MONKREBUKED THEM:You make up wordsas if you canmake up meaning.~I WOULDN'TI wouldn't say these thingsif I didn't have to,the old monk said.Help. Get me out.~DON'T ARGUEDon't argue with it,the old monk said,if it won't argue back.You'll just sound silly.~WHEN SHE TURNSWhen she turns aroundand makes that face,the old monk says,just do it.~SO YOU LIKESo you like thePOUND POUND POUNDof the line?You must play bass,the old monk said.~THE OLD MONK / LOOKEDThe old monklooked at his handsand saw his father.He looked in the mirrorand saw him there too.~IS ITIs itthe stars talking,the old monk wondered,or the cicadas.Do we evenhave cicadas?~THE OLD MONK SAIDThis is alwaysthe most peacefulmoment, now,just before I goto sleep, or die.~THE OLD MONK'SFIRST NOVELThere are more charactersthan I have timeto introduce, he said.So just imagine them.~THE TASTEThe taste of it,the last of the old wine,the old monk said.There's alwaysnext summer.~The Middlewesterner [Read more...]

Feed a fever

28 February 2021 - Dave Bonta

(Lord’s day). Wife took physick this day, I all day at home, and all the morning setting my books in order in my presses, for the following year, their number being much increased since the last, so as I am fain to lay by several books to make room for better, being resolved to keep no more than just my presses will contain. At noon to dinner, my wife coming down to me, and a very good dinner we had, of a powdered leg of pork and a loin of lamb roasted, and with much content she and I and Deb. After dinner, my head combed an hour, and then to work again, and at it, doing many things towards the setting my accounts and papers in order, and so in the evening Mr. Pelling supping with us, and to supper, and so to bed. sick all day at home my books depress so I make room for more leg of pork and a roasted head setting my paper supper Erasure poems derived from The… [Read more...]

Ambush

28 February 2021 - Dale

Von Tal says:Left out of the conversation? The fact that, for nearly all of our evolutionary and historical time, we have been surrounded or neighbored by predators, animal or human.The possibility -- probability -- of sudden death or capture, by sentient beings that desire our death, or our absorption, is not our abnormal state. It was our normal state. And we patrolled our boundaries, or helped each other to escape, and that is what made the social bonds we most trust. We saved each other's lives.And although that is not the world we live in now, you can tell it's our normal world, because all our stories immediately return to it. Countless narratives of banding together to defeat predators. Despite the fact that most of us will never meet a creature that means to kill us in our lives. In the absence of predatory enemies, we experience, paradoxically, much higher levels of anxiety, because we do not know -- push come to shove -- that anyone will come to our defense. In the absence of predators,… [Read more...]

IN SOME LANGUAGE (13)

28 February 2021 - Tom

In some languagethe word for praisealso means snake.The Middlewesterner [Read more...]

Every Line Intersects the Line at Infinity at Some Point

28 February 2021 - Luisa A. Igloria

"Out of nothing I have created a strange new universe." - János Bolyai (1802-1860) The optometrist asks you to look into the autorefractor: two dark lines form a road that stretches from where you sit to a red barn at the horizon. If your brain tells you that you're looking at a point at infinity rather than just mere inches away, it helps the eyes focus. Things have to end somewhere, don't they? In projective geometry, you're told two parallel lines will intersect, will meet at a point in the line at infinity. If you tilted the horizon up or down, it would remain what it is. If you turned around, infinity would still be there as an infinitely beckoning horizon. But what a strange idea: how in that world, another traveling along the same line as you at parallel distance will arrive with you at the edge of the world. Maybe you can't see them now or touch them. Maybe they haven't spoken to you in months, in years. Maybe you move along, uncertainly:… [Read more...]

The true people

28 February 2021 - Dave Bonta

Up, and to the office pretty betimes, and the Board not meeting as soon as I wished, I was forced to go to White Hall in expectation of a Committee for Tangier, but when I come it was put off, and so home again to the office, and sat till past two o’clock; where at the Board some high words passed between Sir W. Pen and I, begun by me, and yielded to by him, I being in the right in finding fault with him for his neglect of duty. At noon home to dinner, and after dinner out with my wife, thinking to have gone to the Duke of York’s playhouse, but was, to my great content in the saving my vow, hindered by coming a little too late; and so, it being a fine day, we out to Islington, and there to the old house and eat cheese-cakes and drank and talked, and so home in the evening, the ways being mighty bad, so as we had no pleasure in being abroad at… [Read more...]