I can scream like a cicada, gin the seed right out the boll

This thing where I missed out on most of the Western canon in school turns up in the weirdest places. After knowing the song for at least fifteen years, I just learned this morning that the Squirrel Nut Zippers' "Wash Jones" was inspired by—or at least shares a name with—a character in William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! (1936), which I have never read. I always just thought of it as a great American trickster song. I was talking to an oak tree when a cypress butted in. Out of car parts, a raven made a nest inside my skin. To understand me better, you all ought to follow me home. I make a wish, I clean the fish, Lord, that's why they call me Wash Jones. It was the first song I heard by the group, even before their legendary "Hell," and it guaranteed I would look for the rest of their music, which did seem to come from some time-slipped, hot-jazz, hallucinogenic South; I like it even in its earlier version. I suppose I should read more Faulkner one of these days.

I hate apartment-hunting, but it is once again my plan for the rest of the day. Autolycus is sacked out on my desk and Hestia has claimed the cool dark space under the bed; they blink at me sleepily as I move around the room. I tell them they have no idea what I do for their sakes. They are good cats, even if you can't trust Autolycus with a yogurt drink.

Before the world began, there were ten faces

My short story "When Can a Broken Glass Mend?" has been accepted for reprint by Heiresses of Russ 2016: The Year's Best Lesbian Speculative Fiction, edited by A.M. Dellamonica and Steve Berman (Lethe Press, Fall 2016). This is the one I refer to as my queer kinky Jewish demon love story; it was originally published in Not One of Us #53 and is almost certainly in dialogue with Isaac Bashevis Singer, because it was from him that I first learned on which side of the mirror demons can be found. It is quite short and I am delighted that it will have a wider audience. As befits something full of fragments, it is studded with bits of autobiography, though it is not otherwise about me. The title comes from a line in Frank London's A Night in the Old Marketplace (2007), which I got from rose_lemberg. It has to do with Kabbalah.