My wife always thought that someday I’d be a big success. She talked about it since we got married, enthusiastically in the beginning, particularly when she became pregnant with our first daughter, less and less later, after she got pregnant again and we decided to keep the baby. I taught Russian literature and linguistics at the local college and held seminars every other … [Read more...]
Five Past Noon: Reading Darkness at Noon in Trump’s America
“What a mess we have made of our golden age.” -- Nicholas Rubashov his August, a now-famous photograph began circulating online. In the original, Donald Trump is seated in the oval office with a phone wedged against his ear. With him in the room are five men, his closest allies and advisors: Vice President Mike Pence, Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, Chief Strategist Steve … [Read more...]
White Jesus – A reflection on summer camp and Charlottesville
Growing up in Kansas, from about 9 to 12 years old, I went to Christian summer camp down the highway in rural Missouri. I loved it there. We swam in creeks and caught crawfish. I played soccer and made friends. There was a zipline that ran through the woods and one year a counselor had access to a speedboat and took us out tubing, driving figure eights and running us over the … [Read more...]
Panic Drapes the Look of the World: Literary Treatment for Anxiety in an Uncertain Age
1. June, 2016: I was having a panic attack while I walked the dog after dinner. Children rode skateboards and scooters in that last yellowed hour before bedtime. I felt unreal to myself, and the Denver streets I’d known my whole adult life seemed false and imitative. What I felt was a numbing and a derealization that left me somewhat incapable of speaking to other people, as … [Read more...]
Dan Wilcox’s “Inauguration Raga” poem now available from A.P.D.
A.P.D. (a presidential disaster) announces the publication of Inauguration Raga, by Dan Wilcox, a 16-page chapbook of a poem improvised on January 20, 2017. The poem was written from 10:00am to 4:30pm while watching the televised broadcasts of the inauguration of Donald Trump as President of the United States, in a cheap notebook with a free motel ball-point pen. It was … [Read more...]
For Shelley on the 4th August, His Birthday – Heathcote Williams
“Poetry sees the starlight smile of children” Shelley said, seeing this as life’s truest wealth. In Shelley’s world the “natural order Has no place for tyrants” – Neutering the beauty of the earth, With all its inspirational beings: Plants, animals, humans, And elemental presences. He was an atheist Of a most particular kind For his own spirit is ever present In … [Read more...]
All the Notes of the World Symphony
I am a red Laz boat cruising on the mountains of Kurdistan where my Kurd and Turk brothers are burning by falling on the ground syllable by syllable None of the requiems is able to express the pain of the stone-throwing Kurdish children raped in the hell prisons of Fascist-Kemalism I picked up Armenian roses from my dreams against racism in Turkey Impish … [Read more...]
Review – Let’s Start a Pussy Riot
Let's Start a Pussy Riot, edited by Emely Neu and Jade French / Rough Trade / June 2013 / 978-0957626201 On February 21, 2012 members of the Russian feminist performance art group/collective Pussy Riot put on an agit-prop performance in a priests only section of Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. Accused of religious hatred, two of the members of the group, Maria … [Read more...]
One Man, One Vote
It was Election Day and the lines were as long as anyone could remember. Even longer. To be sure this was the age of advanced technology so in many places people could vote on their computers and iPhones and some pundits were predicting, surely in jest, that the age of the telepathic franchise wasn’t far away. But not in South Carolina, which has always prided itself on … [Read more...]
Looking Back
When I was 18 I was on a troop train heading for basic training when we stopped to take on water or whatever it is trains stop for and after relieving myself I came out of the men's room when an elderly black man asked me where the men's room was and when I pointed in the direction of where I had just come from he said, "No, Sir. "The Colored room." And being from … [Read more...]
Patriotism – a poem by Edwin Romond
"The Pentagon has acknowledged that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld did not sign condolence letters to the families of soldiers killed in Iraq but instead used a signature machine." --The Washington Post, December 19, 2004 D-o-n-a-l-d R-u-m-s-f-e-l-d that's 14 letters, a lot to write, takes effort especially that upper case "R" I mean it's not like writing an … [Read more...]
