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.

Saturday commute cl: Cinema calls

Weeknights of Hitchcock are won-
derful escapes from news of Dav-
os, although St Moritz is peril-
ously close in his first Man Who
Knew Too Much. Not the heaviest
burden for our Davos spokesman,
this particular week, of course,
but lamentations from gymnastics
have also weighed upon the mind.

A cinema such as Hitchcock's, so
compelling from someone else's
point of view, is just the thing
to drive a fellow down the road,
to pick up an entertainment, in
Graham Greene's term of art, for
another dive into the vortex of,
may one say, credible blondness.

Detestable as a genetically hide-
bound aesthetic must be, there's
only so much escape one can ask,
from the molestations of a pair
of living headlines. On the fair
assumption, that an evening of
self-defensive homicide with a
blonde might square that circle,
I see no reason not to Dial M
for Murder, a remedy to pull 
focus for any Saturday commute.

Lately, however, I notice a

persistence of a leading la-

dy's image at this page, for

which I would not wish her to

be held responsible, although

it would be Presidentially ne-

farious, to deny that she is.

Still, to mitigate damages to

her fame, I expect to pick up

a copy, too, of Vertigo, for

which she was not accountable,

for all the likelihood that

one might have looked for her

at Ernie's, or living at the

Brocklebank off Mason Street.

But one can't be shopping so

swell as San Francisco, for 

anything less than impeachment.

iii  William Gedney

      untitled photograph

      undated

Suppose it were Friday cxlviii: As we were looking

                     Or che in fondo un miraggio

                     di vapori vacilla e si disperde,

                     altro annunzia, tra gli alberi, la squilla

                     del picchio verde ..

There is a way of appreciating
Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window,
which sees it as a classic ex-
ercise in his telling a story
about the world from a hero's
subjective "point of view."

It is. It happens, in a way
he unravelled completely -
some years later in Vertigo -
equally to tell a story to
him about himself, that the
director unveils to us only
slightly in advance: that he
is looking for someone he can
trust. Who knew, it would be
someone who could dissolve
his point of view and redeem
its narrative of voyeurism?

Who doesn't think of Montale,
writing poems at the same
time, who could just as eas-
ily have been imagining the
entrance of Omar Sharif in
David Lean's Lawrence of A-
rabia, every time there is
Grace Kelly, coming to see
the captive Jimmy Stewart?

With his imagery Hitchcock
showed change and prepared
its renewal, so much more
volatile than a gunshot by
a distant rider in Arabia,
that it keeps pace with a
revolution in the subject
of trust, continuing today.
I don't accuse him of not
wishing to go so far. It's
the reach of his eloquence.

                  Now that in the distance a mirage

                  of vapors shifts, dispels,

                  the green woodpecker's shrilling in the trees

                  announces something else.

Eugenio Montale
Collected Poems
  1920 - 1954
    Corrispondenze
    [fragment]
Jonathan Galassi
  translator and editor
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1998©


Alfred Hitchcock
  director
John Michael Hayes
  screenplay
Robert Burks
  cinematography
Rear Window
Paramount, 1954©

Origins of Wednesday lxii: Girl, 20

  I crib a title of a wickedly funny
  novel by Kingsley Amis, to embrace a
  screen illusion of unforgotten re-
  membrance to Californians of one's
  age in the 1950s. A sudden inspira-
  tion of one's mother, to take my old-
  er brother to Philadelphia to be in-
  troduced to his grandfather via the
  Super Chief, left my father and my-
  self to borrow vacation houses of 
  friends in Palm Springs and Balboa,
  to improvise a sort of holiday in
  sitù. I can just see my brother, an-
  noyed by a fish fork for the first
  time, as I remember the falling in-
  to, in a wicker basket on the Rivi-
  era, of the most thrilling face a
  boy could ever look upon in those
  days, if not still. Even now, our
  archest critics speak of the geni-
  us of Hitchcock, in so many vernac-
  ulars, for all their tortured acad-
  emicism, it can make one car-sick.

  He raised a generation of America,
  on delight to be the ungrown child.
  Neither our director, nor our men-
  tor, he is our trust officer, ad-
  ministering remittances of an es-
  tate in endless probate. We ought
  to be able, it seems upon this ump-
  teenth announcement of Oscar nom-
  inees, to imagine one of these wor-
  thies, sixty years hence, sharing
  chicken with Grace Kelly or Cary
  Grant, from a hamper which will
  shortly frame their kiss. The one
  this canny Magwitch thieved for us,
  as if expecting some future tide
  of artistically advanced maturity,
  and allowed the heart to inherit.

Alfred Hitchcock
  director
John Michael Hayes
  screenplay
Robert Burks
  cinematography
To Catch a Thief
Paramount, 1955©

Ps-s-s-t, they're back

                 Call it, the back with two beasts,

                 if that helps. Our previous entry's

                 welcome of their flight seems only

                 to have hastened remonstrance, not

                 to enjoy release from their clutch-

                 es. Now the great factory of our

                 frenzies frames its refinancing as

                 implicit, anyway, in this union of

                 states. And what a wonderful floor-

                 show they have held over, from its

                 blame for the abandonment just end-

                 ed, in the promise of demagoguing

                 it all over again, for newer welts

                 to praise the balm of government,

                 that flogger's springboard to fame

                 and electoral advancement, for pry-

                 ing deeper fissures in our patience.

Fabienne Verdier

undated

The American government did close, by the way

One had thought not to mention it

whilst others might still be out 

for their Saturday ride, but good

news is rare enough, much less on

the occasion of that government's

initial anniversary, that a happy

medium had to be struck, between

draining the cellar of blanc de

blancs, or spending the day under

a decorous gag order, no matter

how luscious the linen. A mild an-

nouncement on the Sabbath seemed

unprecipitous enough, and so here

it is: the most injurious, yet ad-

dictive corruption of public life 

is in remission.

It had not ever been so, that

Americans should have instit-

uted such a structure of de-

bauchery, debasement, plunder

and compulsive belligerency in

the offices of Washington, DC

to which they exile the needy,

and the fee-finders of simple

services. By the time, then,

that government in their land

had achieved its present ad-

vances upon the imagination,

the sensation of wear and tear

had begun to inspire defenses.

And these are not salubrious con-

ditions for the flourishing of a

happy government. Within a day of

perceiving how this closure tant-

rum might backfire against the

values of their real estate, den-

izens of the new government were

out and about on the sermon cir-

cuit of broadcast news, to blame

the citizenry for sustaining en-

thusiasms they'd been forcefed by

these very conduits. Oh, my. How

notoriety does outstrip us all, as

fashion glides into another season.

Louis Prades  i, ii, iv

Francisco Basile  iii