It Was Fairly Ironic, If You Consider That It Is I Who Initiated the Petitions to Have Myself Captured and Put Down Without Delay, an Unfortunate but Necessary Measure in Light of a Clear Threat to Public Safety

Why isn't there a collected Franz Wright, dammit. Library dean relented, agreed to offer the janitor position to the horribly unambitious woefully over-qualified professional librarian but only at the very minimum salary permitted by Hilltop for this janitor grade which of course the candidate turned down as the insult was intended to provoke. I stepped into the staff elevator ten minutes ago, voila, the dean, I said nothing, me and my fucking complicity and fine metaphors abounding. I liked *Harrow* then loved *Harrow* then hated *Harrow* the first time through, I loved *Harrow* then loved *Harrow* then didn't hate but didn't like *Harrow* the second time through, I'll decide years from now if I have years from now whether there will be a third time through, every Joy Williams novel does this to me. I'm sideways angry I'm sideways angry I'm sideways angry. Wait, Yo La Tengo *OPENS?* for Death Cab for Shitty? Low *OPENS?* for Death Cab for Shitty? Where did I gain the faith that if I'm not angry I've surrendered? I thoroughly enjoyed tweeting out Death Cab for Shitty, was typed and sent without a second thought, it's love (as was my purchase on Bandcamp of the just discovered new Big Blood album an hour ago, it's love). Crackers and christers would not be winning if the ruling elite did not want them to win, I said yesterday to a bidenite colleague distraught that crackers and christers are winning but did not mention that crackers and christers are winning with the full complicity of motherfucking Democrats not to spare the feelings of my bidenite colleague but because the duh becoming a dull anger. We are being reprogrammed, I'm telling you three times, I said to the bidenite, effectively enacting a guarantee the bidenite will never attempt bidenizing me again. It felt like the sting of my glaucoma drops that slow my blindness but won't cure it. This green will be gone by weekend's end, summer's darker replacing

Trump breaking kayfabe, by shitlord design or not, the greatest gift shitlords ever received, or: one way or the other it's called disaster capitalism for a reason
The Rise of the New Normal Reich
The Rats in our Walls				Radioactive us
Capitalism and the Covid-19 Disaster
Pelosi means Control Your Motherfucking Crackers like we control our motherfucking commies
Another day in Crackerstan
The empire's new clothes
Never believe a cracker who cries about babies
Losing Roe and the new Dred Scott
Overworked and underpaid
Yinz don't like it when I give you proper shit for your helmetball consumption
Pig tells fags to be nicer to crackers
Life in the Shitlordocene
Hurtling,			me.		Outrage
outpaced			by	duh,	paraphrase
daily.		Spurtling				me
Disassembling Empire: on the MFA industry
The Unraveling of SST Records, or: Why We Lack a Meaningful Counter-Culture Today

SOME RECENT CRITICISM

Franz Wright

I'd been lying in bed reading forever in my starry yoke. I kept coming across references to my death, but I felt fine. Better than ever. It was fairly ironic, if you consider that it is I who initiated the petitions to have myself captured and put down without delay, an unfortunate but necessary measure in light of a clear threat to public safety. Do you know not a single individual was willing to sign, not even in my own neighborhood, having completely lost touch, apparently, with even the memory of having been loved.

Polyester Lips Pressed to Sandwiches of Hair

				I woke from mourning
				nap Allude prance pun cellar
				break Back to the duh
				I	nap	break
				woke	Allude	Daily
				from	prance	duh
				morning	pun	back
					cellar
				break Back to the duh
				nap Allude prance pun cellar
				I woke from mourning

Discovered myself punning ancient history last night w BFF, I feel like writing, I'm waking up from my mourning nap Elon Musk just bought twitter in the name of free speech his elevation to emperor The Maryland Department of Natural Resources tweeted (I follow (and rag on them for encouraging the torture and killing of animals but credit them generously when they build new trails, for instance)) all state-planted sunflowers (McKee-Beshers, mocos, off River Road extended past Seneca Aqueduct) are dedicated to Ukraine, I tweeted Now do Palestine and then Next do Yemen (and lost fifteen followers, laugh) Donald Trump, as I type this sentence, claims he's not interested in rejoining twitter and meantime the new asshole Republican governor of Virginia with DeSantis-sized ambition has offered to whitewash the local helmetball team of accusations of financial improprieties via the Virginia AG in exchange for the local helmetball team relocating to Loudoun County, if what a friend who would know as both a local helmetball team zealot and one who's a lawyer and understands this shit tells me is true what the shitty helmetball owner did is almost certainly illegal but his accusers don't have enough to stand up in court, the new asshole Republican governor of Virginia will turn this in a culture war wedge, see what liberals do the the Right kind of shitlord I've decided to go to Bookkeeper's good-bye function, five or ten minutes, just an appearance, be bigger than she has been, is, and will be, yes, but everyone who is there will remember if I don't show up or forget about me the minute I walk out of the room, I want to be forgot when I walk out of that room Why can't I want to be forgot here, fuck me Remember that Michigan State Senator who eloquently beat down a raving cracker and people be like, Thank You for the Path, shit that was a lifetime ago and that Big Blood song doesn't stroke my faith like once More than nap's death going on Awake to shut the fuck up impossible but not as inconceivable as once

DEMOCRACY

Tom Clark

In the motel

room mirror

a yellow

light pulses

on polyester lips
pressed to sandwiches of hair

That Dog, For Example, Whose Refusal to Leave My Side I Mistook, as a Child, for Loyalty When All Along It Was Just Blind

	Modern capitalism is weirder than you think
	I would love to be a spider fluent in Chinese under the table at Xi's inner-circle meetings
	Oil companies lament rising price of Joe Manchin
	The superpower of admitting the obvious
	Histories of people, histories of rupture
	Dynamics of the Russian political economy
	There *are* no honest brokers is shitlord wars of choice
	The fog of war and shitlord profiteering
	Nine haikus on clustcrackerfuck cause what the fuck:
	Covid seasonal flu now No money for you but Ukrainians
	YES! your child tax dumped Our crackerization on pace, women must piss
	when crossing state lines and prudes view your genitals before you can pee
	shitlord megaphones call me the intolerant fuck, would the straw man
	not have so many job applicants, *all* of us over-qualified!
	The pivot to war, post-plague that never happened, the war-frothy glee
	Dem professionals drooling, IR neo-con boneristical
	chanting, but christer cracker wants to look at my daughter's cunt your son's
	balls before they pee Shitlords know how to distract us, their enema
	First draft then edited here until abandoned

	Photo and flip by L, me, Sunday past, Glenstone
	The state in times of social and economic fragility
	In my most obscure Kids in the Hall allusion yet, Two Dipshits Agree
	Thom Gunn summarizes Henry James in two lines
	I am 1/4th through James' *Wings of the Dove, * so far so-so
	Fredric Jameson on Tokarczuk's Jacob
	I am 3/5ths through and on hiatus, I will return but it will never be love (I *did* love *Drive Your Plow* but didn't love *Flights*), I will return, I don't promise to finish it
	What if this is just the way things are now?
	The greater clustcrackerfuck's static the less this shitty blag be read the increase in what the fuck at my end, another fucking human seeking gross personal profit in disaster
	I vouch for Jake Xerxes Fussell's *Good and Green Again*

MONOMOY

Carl Phillips

Somewhere, people must still do things like fetch

water from wells in buckets, then pour it out

for those animals that, long domesticated, would

likely perish before figuring out how to get

for themselves. That dog, for example, whose

refusal to leave my side I mistook, as a child,

for loyalty — when all along it was just blind ... What

is it about vulnerability that can make the hand

draw back, sometimes, and can sometimes seem

the catalyst for rendering the hand into sheer force,

destructive? Don’t you see how you’ve burnt almost

all of it, all the tenderness, away, someone screams

to someone else, in public — and looking elsewhere,

we walk quickly past, as if even to have heard

that much might have put us at risk of whatever fate

questions like that

                                     spring from. Estrangement — 

like sacrifice — begins as a word at first, soon it’s

the stuff of drama, cue the follow-up tears that

attend drama, then it’s pretty much the difference

between waking up to a storm and waking up

inside one. Who can say how she got there — 

in the ocean, I mean — but I once watched a horse

make her way back to land mid-hurricane: having

ridden, surfer-like, the very waves that at any moment

could have overwhelmed her in their crash to shore, she

shook herself, looked back once on the water’s restlessness — 

history’s always restless — and the horse stepped free.