Get me out of here if you can and I won't do anything you wouldn't

[sovay]

My poem "Punic War IV" is now online at Through the Gate. Like the majority of my poems in the last three years, its writing was politically driven. It is even aptly timed for Memorial Day, the way most of this country goes about it.

In pleasant counterweight to the previous two nights, I slept about eight hours with only a slight break around the time the sun came up, after which I burrowed back under the weighted blanket and conked out again. Have some links that aren't mine.

1. Courtesy of moon_custafer, who thoughtfully tagged it for me: the proper bracha for throwing a milkshake at a fascist.

2. Abigail Nussbaum on Israeli Eurovision vs. Netanyahu.

3. I love how much this story does with implication: Nibedita Sen's "Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnabar Island."

4. The amusing, educational text that taught Babylonian scribes and teaches us: "At the Cleaners."

5. R.I.P. Judith Kerr. I can't remember if I knew that the same person had written Mog the Forgetful Cat (1970) and When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit (1971). I certainly didn't remember her husband was Nigel Kneale.

pameladean, the first time I saw my husband in a show he didn't write himself, it was Theatre@First's The Lady's Not for Burning. Now he's in their production of The Revenger's Tragedy. I'm looking forward so much. I thought you should know.

Comments

[a_reasonable_man]

I liked the story. In theme, it reminded me of "All Our Salt Bottled Hearts."

And now, if I encounter a fascist while carrying a milkshake, I'll know what to do.

[sovay]

I liked the story. In theme, it reminded me of "All Our Salt Bottled Hearts."

Thank you! May I ask how so?

And now, if I encounter a fascist while carrying a milkshake, I'll know what to do.

If the fascist is stationary for long enough, you could always get the milkshake and come back.

[a_reasonable_man]

"Salt Bottled Hearts" evokes the experiences of emigrants and refugees, Jewish ones in particular, while this one evokes the experiences of colonized peoples (and the scholarly commentary on those experiences), and in formal structure, the stories are quite different.* Yet in both this story and yours, the "civilized" world subjects a people it sees as "monstrous" to genocidal attack; a few of them survive in diaspora; their descendants (or most of them), while remembering the old ways, can never really return to their "home."

*This story one reminds me a little of "Notes Toward the Classification of the Lesser Moly," because both narrative by implication.

[sovay]

Yet in both this story and yours, the "civilized" world subjects a people it sees as "monstrous" to genocidal attack; a few of them survive in diaspora; their descendants (or most of them), while remembering the old ways, can never really return to their "home."

Thank you for articulating that. I can't see my work from the outside, so I can't see all the patterns on my own.

[edit] I am really glad that you like the stories enough to think about them so.