A Voice Asks: Would You Like a Wooden Gag or a Steel Gag?

• So proud of HRC when yesterday in front of AIPAC she put her arms around a five year old Palestinian girl and told the girl to let Hillary worry about the girls future.
• Apparently Bill jumped the gun with this year's Sista Souljah moment. Was supposed to wait until nomination secured.
• Eff this fraud.
• Israel: the Broken Silence.
• What is our responsibility?
• Cassandra's processional.
• Academic freedom.
• Academic confession.
• To be fair to Major League Soccer, they happily accept washed-up Americans too.
• I do not miss my United tribalism at all.
• The store has never reopened. It's in Comus. The building is still there. For years we'd buy beer here and then go to Sugarloaf. I was in the store three days before this happened.
• Beckett, for those of you who do.
• Lispector, for those of you who do. I am reading one of her short stories a day, something is unlocking the Lispector block in my head.
• SunnO))).

EAT NOTHING

Daniel Borzutsky

It was a tube and clear and plastic and they shoved it into the nose of the stomach or the bowel

Or they place it directly into the skin and there was a bright light overhead

A card read: Pretend he has an eating disorder

Another card read: Pretend she has dementia

I don't like to put things in my mouth when you talk to me this way

But if you insist on shoving things in my nostrils

Then I will have to tell you what it is like in my esophagus

Because my smooth muscles contract, things can slide nicely through my intestines

The device in my body passes through the posterior mediastinum in my thorax and enters my abdomen through a hole in my diaphragm at the level of the tenth thoracic vertabra

A voice says, Would you like a wooden gag or steel gag?

Do you prefer brandy, milk, or cabbage?

I smile because I know how important body language is in front of a TV audience

There are forty-seven women strapped to chairs that recline when a button is pushed

There are fingers in rubber gloves

The squeeze open lips and sing a song about gastric obstructions and psychiatric disorders diagnosed against a lady's consent

When your bowels open, my love, when you think too much about the pharynx: this makes me feel so along

Vomit is one option          starvation is another

My love, says the authoritative body on the screen

I have a compelling interest in the weight of your frame

How many bureaucrats do we need to affirm this?

Look, love, often people don't really know what they want

They can see an end, but it's not the right end

This is a song about what it feels like when you touch me this way

This is a song about a certain type of fiscal strategy

If they say you can stick things in his body that he doesn't want in his body then you must not say we cannot stick things in his body because there are just too many people who love him

My love, says the authoritative body, you must realize that if I slice off your hand in an act of ungovernable aggression it doesn't mean I don't love you

It all depends on what you need me to say