What flu shot Brooks?

A positive flash flood of flu

having crested through these

parts in recent days, I took

myself down the road for an

inoculation, for what good it

might do, taking care at the

time to request a reading of 

blood pressure - a narrative

I never have understood, but

which, like Beowulf, I've

come to respect. Besides, it

makes one feel cared for, to

be compressed in a good cause.

The shooting part did not go

well, however, and purely for

that reason. I was wearing a

recently produced shirt from

my childhood haberdasher, 

Brooks Brothers, and found it

so binding in the sleeve that

it couldn't be rolled up, and

had to be removed. It's hard

to convey a basis for bitter-

ness toward shabbiness, if it

isn't obvious; but I laughed

to myself to recall, how my

elder brother, entering those

vain years ending in the syl-

lable, "teen," complained of

an architecture in the stand-

by button-down of our lives

theretofore, resembling a

"tent." Now, compression did

not make one feel cared for,

nor did it seem to respond to

any neutral necessity in man-

ufacture. It felt, together

with more minute details of

tackiness, as if one were be-

ing taken advantage of. 

It's a pity that, whoever

owns this oft-sold brand to-

day has not been furnished a

guidebook to its lore. The

great shirt has doubled for

generations as a pajama top,

as a copious tail for the ex-

pressive drama of shirtlift-

ing, and, actually, as a sur-

passingly comfortable and vis-

ibly classic passport to a de-

cent table. It wore forever,

it held its texture and its

ratios, and it never did re-

quire the removal of a necktie,

to receive a simple flu shot. 

If their underwear now emulates

this decadence, they'll have a

boxer rebellion on their hands.

Daniel Wolmer

"I shall destroy them. What's the matter with you?"

The infallibly entertaining New American
President has mounted a little drawing
room comedy on the dazzled gaze of the
People's representatives in the Repub-
lic, on the theme of depriving stunning-
ly innocent immigrants of shelter under
Liberty's torch, for lack of permission 
to have lived here for the last several
decades. As if to sustain the suspense,
he has even equated their immaculate as-
pirations with the revolting xenophobia
of his base, as in, "Americans" dream,
by way of typifying humans as rodents
straight out of Jud Süss. Of course, how-
ever, he means well, so that's different.

While swooning in his Pontius Pilate im-
partiality, he laments how his hands are
tied, by his predecessor's evil illegal-
ity, in sustaining Liberty's welcome. And
who remains, to recall his calculated, al-
beit seemingly precipitous, promise to re-
patriate these hundreds of thousands, on
a date certain to give his media thugs e-
nough time to hammer steel to his edge?

But we stray. For now, the New American
President has wrought his ingenious hyp-
nosis of the public, to blame itself for
balking at his seizure of power, black-
mail dripping from every homily of its
chorus, No nation is a nation without
borders. And don't his sectarian lem-
mings writhe with joy on every avowal
of those cleansing, ethnic torments,
the revelatory permissions of a wedge?

Now, therefore, his taunt goes out:
What on earth is the matter with you, 
for not stopping me in my bestiality?
As ever, in democracy's enchanted ba-
zaar, the matter comes down to whether
to do the right thing, or to gain more
seats, to be more comfy with the act.
Yes, it is a dilemma too ancient for
genealogy here, but with a corollary
luminosity to which many are blind:
time after time, whether to win So-
cial Security, to win voting rights
for all, to win health care for all,
the right thing has imposed a cost,
which only one Party has been will-
ing to bear, even if hauled across
the finish line by adamant martyrs. 
What's its claim now, as we speak, 
to call itself by our name?

Connor Hill

Timothée Chalamet

  on a visa in New York

2017

Poisoner, Pusher, Crook

How unbecoming it must seem,
I grant you, to appear on the
very day of the New American
Government's generous reaching
out to the lingering skeptics
of its Crowd Size, with homil-
ies on unity in preserving a
fragile whiteness in the land,
to observe that yet another of
its stalwarts had been compel-
led to relinquish office, not
by peer review, not by intern-
al investigation, not by Con-
gressional oversight, not for
indiscipline of policy, but by
journalistic inquiry into her
staggering commitments of in-
vestment (never mind, of pol-
icy), in poisonous addiction,
pharmaceutical dependency, and
the odd market variation in
price arising from her own de-
partment's actions. Oh, dear. 

Nor can one note her departure
with any expectation of remedy,
in the odd coincidence of con-
flict of interest, by which we
know our betters in the dark.
But now a poisoner, invested in
tobacco; a pusher, invested in
wondrous pharmaceutials; an in-
sider privateer, trading on the
currents of official conduct?
Just possibly a purse too far.

The office being vacated, is
the pinnacle of the nation's
Centers for Disease Control.
Just the tiniest little bit of
noble affinity for money seemed
incongruously wagered, even in
the face of this conflagration
of raping America to greatness,
for all that is left, and loved.

Possibly we have only begun to
discover the uses of desire a-
gainst us, even in our ballot.
But what can be told, from our
dull borough of dependency on
fact, but that this is not over.