All débutantes say it's good

  And every
  star out
  in far
  Hollywood

  Seems to
  give it a
  try

  . .

                         So why be that guy?

                      

                         Orlando has remade

                         this year, and giv-

                         en resolution to an

                         uninspiring option

                         in November. We did

                         notice the names at

                         Pulse. They aren't

                         anglicised anymore.

                         

Cole Porter

Jubilee

  Why Shouldn't I

1935

Xavier Serrano

Suppose it were Friday cxv: Not really by chance

       I'm beginning to rely on
       the recurrence of Friday
       in my life, and I find I
       have never shaken the i-
       dea that it holds amuse-
       ment, not very far below
       the surface. I'm expect-
       ing always to read some-
       thing I won't be able to
       put down.

Our race

                             

            What did you think, that joy

            was some slight thing?

Mark Doty

Sweet Machine

  Visitation

  fragment

  1998

Fire to Fire

  New and 

  Selected Poems

Harper Collins, 2008©

  

Origins of Wednesday xxx: Ravings

                 In a statement dated last evening, 

                 and signed by its entire editorial 

                 board, The New York Times adopted 

                 the term, ravings, to identify re-

                 marks by Donald Trump this week in 

                 support of himself against the in-

                 terests of the nation and all man-

                 kind. Earlier in the day, the Shor-

                 enstein Center at Harvard laid sub-

                 stantial blame for his rise, to me-

                 dia stunned by his headlights. It 

                 was good, then, to see the English

                 language retrieving its accuracy.

                 The President, himself, performed

                 this same obligation, earlier in

                 the day. Time was, we'd expect it.

                 Time's always been short that way.

George Orwell

Why I Write

  Politics and the

  English Language

1946

op. cit.

Empty nester

  Beyond any comparison in
  American life, it simply
  isn't possible to identi-
  fy an instance of fusing
  the erotic with the dom-
  estic with the exuberant
  consciousness of the ad-
  ventures framed by those
  shelters, that we remark
  in gay couples, a cliché
  representing, by the way,
  all the customary victor-
  ies at double or nothing.
  It is what is wrong with
  this picture. It made me
  uneasy, too. But that is
  an indulgent reaction. A
  house of this kind isn't
  murdered, but blasphemed
  beyond recourse to pity,
  beyond idylls of lament.
  It conscripts our pride.

            As long as the wild boar loves the mountain ridges,

            As long as fish love swimming in the rivers,

            As long as bees pasture upon the thyme fields,

            Cicadas on morning dew, as long as this . .

Virgil
Eclogues
  Eclogue V
  fragment
David Ferry
  translation
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999©

Alessio Pozzi

Of pride and probability

       Take me to your trees.

       Take me to your breakfasts,

       your sunsets, your bad dreams,

       your shoes, your nouns.

       Take me to your fingers.

      

       The thing I embrace in this par-

       odox of celebrating Pride is the

       opportunity it gives to remember

       those who prepared the way, sus-

       taining it still with the daring

       one needs to be gentle. Charisma

       is a fluency in that instrument,

       and no wonder, we listen for it.

That said, the parents of the most prolific gunshot murderer in 21st Century American life have just explained, their child annihilated as many people as he possibly could, on the strength of observing a kiss between two men. Nothing distinguishes this response from the cold crucifixion of Matthew Shepard, really, except the numbers. In haste to claim credit for anticipating all this, Donald Trump has only too modestly ignored his Party's fetish for stuffing American closets with automatic weapons, and has hit upon his genius for fomenting nativist hysteria instead. This does legitimise a little pride, in exposing the desperate hooliganism now embraced by that sorry Party. This carnage marks the convergence of a fulfilled statistical probability, which gun-freak Republicans have labored tirelessly to generate, with an intolerably recurring crime against a demographic group they have oppressed, just as assiduously, since Joe McCarthy showed what fun it is. As partisan denunciations proliferate, against the President for rational forbearance, their toxic jingle of bigotry and violence steeps this coincidence in all too familiar shame. "Radical Islam," eat your heart out. 

Margaret Atwood

Good Bones

Coach House Press, 1992©

Michael Elmquist

  photography

  Simon Purchase James

  Isaac Tullis

  Loammi Goetghebeur

Franz Schubert

An die musik, D. 547

1817

Ian Bostridge, tenor

Julius Drake, piano

EMI, 2005©

Orlando

    I trust you-know-who

    to tell me, this has

    nothing to do with a

    gun.

Wiktor Sudol

Of power without force

         You need a lot

         of energy for

         love, and I'm

         a different per-

         son now. I've

         grown ordinary.

         

More often than not, it's unpleasant 

to remember the way I used to be.

Happenings of human life change so much, until re-stored by being heard. Listening offends every postulate of observa-tion. 

Svetlana Alexievich

Secondhand Time

  The Last of the Soviets

  An Oral History

Bela Shayevich

  translation

Random House, 2016©

Michael Bidner

Bodega Bay

Dimitri Arvanitis

Steven Chevrin