mgouker

Jabbed (Mar 2021, two months before I expected)

Ha ha. Charade in a graveyard mall
People
Crowds of people
Virus murdering Mercury jab.
Oh, you are so near.
I want to know you better.
I want to plumb and close your depths,
Feel your latitude,
Touch you because now I can
inhabit your skin

Let us trade lies and proximity
All that we love, all we disdain:
Giant gumdrop drinking fountains
Handfuls of rock candy mountains
Sustenance from our very marrows
Juice of our juice in a vial
Disease vector have-a-nice-day jab

     beyond this lonely desert stretch
people flower, rows and columns
burbling human bouillabaisse
surface still, sound incandescent
Desire. Delight.
soul-dragged, decadent, and oh so jabbed.

Your useless lips too cracked to open 
words too mean to say
words mean too much to say
words feed empty air
you are so hungry, so lonely, but here you are 
Jabbed.

Oh my! Did I jab a skewed pattern in lipstick
There on your forehead counter—
Sixteen skewered by a wisp of smoke?
Stiffen up.
Yes you believe in my make believe.
Love and suffer more.
And I marvel at my lips for milking your soul
Jabbing it dry.

So jabbed now
You are so broken and so jabbed

Pumping flaccid bicycle tires
That nozzle so deep I have to tease it out
What is that spatchcocked against my teeth?
Sphinx shining with sniffling vindication
Strikes a pose but that sucker can pump
Back and forth like jerking it off
And you laugh because you are jabbed too

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My impression of NK Jemisin’s World Building in The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms.

 N.K. Jemisin brings many tools to her world-building, especially a focus on how power is distributed and contested by the clans of her peoples. The manifestation of power is evident throughout The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, but one illustration in particular is the division of nobles in the Consortium. Yeine comments on the inequity of their distribution,

My impression of NK Jemisin’s World Building in The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. Read More »

The Revisioners by Margaret Wilkerson SextonMy rating: 5 of 5 stars A heartfelt intergenerational journey across two centuries of American history told from the perspective of two women, Ava & Josephine, whose families are victims of racism. The author uses the term “recycled racism” to describe their suffering, and it’s precise. There are three narratives.

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“That Bearing Boughs May Live”: What Did King Richard II Author for the World?

It is 2020, the Summer of #BlackLivesMatter, and this week, in a moment of uncommon synchronicity, the theater company who would (in another non-Covid-19 world) be performing at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park are instead presenting King Richard II to homebound Internet streamers. Today’s resonance of the Bard’s words testifies not only to word

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“Foul as Vulcan’s Stithy”: A Different Perspective on “The Mousetrap” and Its Intended Audience

William Shakespeare’s Hamlet illustrates how the dead can drive the living to fulfill their unfinished business. Armed with secrets of his murdered father’s specter, Hamlet conceives “The Mousetrap,” a play within a play, its stated purpose—”to catch the conscience of the king,” his uncle Claudius—though Hamlet himself sabotages his gambit during the performance (Shakespeare 2.2.606).

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To “Fall from Bias of Nature”: A Dissenting Opinion on Good Cordelia

There is an old German saying that an apple generally does not fall far from its tree. A pure nature versus nurture argument, it is usually reserved for decrying unpleasant traits inherited by a wicked person’s offspring, but this philosophy has uses for dramatists too; and in King Lear, Shakespeare often paints Goneril and Regan

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“By the Strength of Their Illusion”: Reflections on the Scottish Play

Macbeth by William ShakespeareMy rating: 5 of 5 stars Although the signifier “mirror” is absent from Macbeth, and “glass” only appears twice, once as a prop instruction and once in dialogue, The Scottish Play fairly bristles with reflections, though like the mirrors of its time, they are somewhat deceptive. First, of course, is the mirror

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