[...]

Your honor, there'll be no heavenly kingdom for you!

What can one do? joked the doctor. There has to be somebody in hell.

William Brewer

via Alex Tretbar

 

Two via Victoria Spires

Victoria Chang

Linn Ullmann

Hlynur Pálmason / Lucy Ives

 

Sentiment, or Joan

Vic Brooks

 

Pynchon

Eradicate Sampson? Rad for short.

All the moneyed of Berkshire County congregated in the great ballroom of Baffy's spun-sugar manor house; the party lasted three days and the countryside was visited by the drunken wanderings of Pierrots pale in the light of the moon, hideous Borneo apes toting jugs of the local white lightning, lush and cherry-lipped actresses imported from New York, in silk capes, red corsets, long hose; wild Indians, princes of the Renaissance, characters from Dickens, paisley bulls, bears with nosegays; allegorical garlanded girls named Free Enterprise, Progress, Enlightenment; a giant Maine lobster that never got to extend its claw to the candidate.

[...] past pier glasses that gave them back their images dark and faded, as if some part were being kept as the price of admission; through doorways where old velvet hung whose pile was worn away into maplike patterns, seas and land masses taught in no geography their schools knew [...]

— The Secret Integration, Slow Learner

Brandon Sheer

 

We've Become Like Strangers

Two poems involving insects.

 

Adam Zagajewski, tr. Lillian Vallee

 

Jenny Offill

 

Novembergruppe

 

Novembergruppe

That with each successive defeat there is an approach towards the final mutation, and that man only is in that he searches to be, plans to be, thumbing through words and modes of behavior and joy sprinkled with blood and other rhetorical pieces like this one. 

The Disorder of the Dining Table - Sarah Wigglesworth

 

from Local Virgin of Impression

Ellen Boyette

via Dead Mall Press

 J'ai besoin de m'encanailler un peu

Grief - Theodor Kittelsen

 

MoJT

 We see the subtlest of all forces obeying even the most capricious behests of the human mind.

excerpt from According to the Plat Thereof

 Alex Tretbar

Mary Ann Samyn

God in the World 

Late afternoon, sleepy sky, the grief a click in the jaw,
a tremor along my eyelid. 

I’ll take my father back now. Everlasting love,
my hope and my fear. 

As he lay dying, his gaze fixed.
All he wanted was nothing we had to give. 

Minutes earlier, I had been doing some silly calculation
of my own happiness. 

Then, alone with body,
as with a piece of furniture, the cold oak that once lived. 

Poetry makes a public record, for someone’s sake.
I was dumb, before and after.

Guillaume Apollinaire / Alice Notley

L'Adieu

J'ai cueilli ce brin de bruyère
L'automne est morte souviens-t'en
Nous ne nous verrons plus sur terre
Odeur du temps Brin de bruyère
Et souviens-toi que je t'attends

Goodbye

I picked this spray of heather
Autumn is dead remember
We won't ever again see each other on earth
Fragrance of time spray of heather
Remember I'm waiting for you

Piotr Jabłoński

 

Robert Warren Harrison

 

 

Shadowplaying

Debut novel, arriving spring 2027

via High Frequency Press

Anselm Croteau wants solitude. Instead, he’s caught in the blood-soaked wake of the Moodys—murderous brothers bound by generational grudges—and the Baileys, fugitive sisters bent on revenge. Violence and vendettas collide in this noir tale of survival at the edge of the desolate Nevada desert.

 

Roman Meal

Kathleen Ryan 

Sliced Bread (Golden Hour)

Fender Bender

Inkwell, Tiffany & Co., 1910.

 

Giuseppe Pietro Bagetti - The Walnut Tree in Benevento (The Witches' Sabbath), 1822

 

Jadeite Cabbage

 Carved from a single piece of jade. Estimated to be worth upwards of $100 million.

House of Fabergé Cigarette Case, 1890

 

House of Fabergé Perfume Bottle, 1890

Nephrite jade pickled cucumber, encrusted with a 72K gold ring, set with rose-cut diamonds.

Carl Julius von Leypold

 

Jared Singer

 

Amy Gerstler

 

Fabric

 

Nicola Samorì

 

The Column (Christ’s Ruff)

crucify

 

edges.

 

Inuit Knife w/ walrus ivory. Northern Canada, 1890.

Corsican Vendetta Knife. Che la mia ferita sia mortale: May my wound be fatal.

The Waning Year — Peter Sculthorpe. Water color, 1948

 

Interior with Bay Window — Suzanne Moxhay, photography. 2021

 

Food in Cinema (that I would like to try)

Cactus Jack’s fast food, Terminator 2: Judgment Day

Clemanza’s meatballs, The Godfather

Poison mushrooms, Phantom Thread

Prison Italian dinner, Goodfellas

Ironing board grilled-cheese, Benny & Joon

Dystopian noodles, Blade Runner

Jack Rabbit Slim’s Durward Kirby burger with Martin & Lewis $5 shake, Pulp Fiction

Minnie’s Haberdashery beef stew, The H8ful Eight

Gas station barbecue, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre

Alfred’s Vichyssoise, Batman Returns

Pit-stop at Aunt Meg's, Twister