torrin a. greathouse (she/they) is one of the most innovative and startlingly luminous poets we have writing today. I remember reading “On Confinement” the month it first appeared in Poetry and being arrested by the following lines:
The origin of the word prison
is the Latin prehendere— to take.
It follows, then,
that to take your life is to prison
the body beneath dirt.
Everything in their poem suggests a limitation, a box the world would build around the speaker. Whether the prison is literal (the men’s holding cell in solitary confinement) or metaphorical (the actions and assumptions of people with the authority to categorize and strip away the dignity of the speaker), the effect is the same, which is to police and draw lines of demarcation around the ways in which marginalized people, especially in this case people who are queer and disabled, are allowed to express their humanity and exercise agency.
“On Confinement” also brings into stark relief the Othering Trans* people undergo when they try to access basic social services. Any facility serving members of the general public ought to be devoid of the homo- and transphobia greathouse talks about. Historically, the Trans body is often a site of both state-sanctioned and private violence, and for all our high-handed talk of equality and progressiveness, this is still largely true today. Anyone able to bear witness to these acts of dehumanization and look away from them places their seal of approval on the acts themselves. And shame on them. Shame on a world that makes someone live in constant fear of violence because of who they are and calls it justice. Shame on all of us.
*Trans is an umbrella term for anyone whose gender identity and/or expression in any way deviates from what was assigned to them at birth. Trans people may identify as transgender, gender fluid, gender-expansive, bigender, agender, gender non-conforming, nonbinary, etc. These are just a few of the identifying words Trans people may or may not use to express their identity(ies), but regardless of terminology all humans deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. It is NEVER okay to deliberately misgender someone or use their dead name.
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
The pen tip jabbed in my back, I feel the mark of progress.
I will not dance alone in the municipal graveyard at midnight, blasting sad songs on my phone, for nothing.
I promise you, I was here. I felt things that made death so large it was indistinguishable from air—and I went on destroying inside it like wind in a storm.
The way Lil Peep says I’ll be back in the mornin’ when you know how it ends.
The way I kept dancing when the song was over, because it freed me.
The way the streetlight blinks once, before waking up for its night shift, like we do.
The way we look up and whisper sorry to each other, the boy and I, when there’s teeth.
When there’s always teeth, on purpose.
When I threw myself into gravity and made it work. Ha.
I made it out by the skin of my griefs.
I used to be a fag now I’m lit. Ha.
Once, at a party set on a rooftop in Brooklyn for an “artsy vibe,” a young woman said, sipping her drink, You’re so lucky. You’re gay plus you get to write about war and stuff. I’m just white. [Pause.] I got nothing. [Laughter, glasses clinking.]
Unlike feelings, blood gets realer when you feel it.
Because everyone knows yellow pain, pressed into American letters, turns to gold.
Our sorrow Midas-touched. Napalm with a rainbow afterglow.
I’m trying to be real but it costs too much.
They say the Earth spins and that’s why we fall but everyone knows it’s the music.
It’s been proven difficult to dance to machine gun fire.
Still, my people made a rhythm this way. A way.
My people, so still, in the photographs, as corpses.
My failure was that I got used to it. I looked at us, mangled under the TIME photographer’s shadow, and stopped thinking, Get up, get up.
I saw the graveyard steam in the pinkish dawn and knew the dead were still breathing. Ha.
If they come for me, take me home take me out.
What if it wasn’t the crash that made me, but the debris?
What if it was meant this way: the mother, the lexicon, the line of cocaine on the mohawked boy’s collarbone in an East Village sublet in 2007?
What’s wrong with me, Doc? There must be a pill for this.
Too late—these words already shrapnel in your brain.
Impossible in high school, I am now the ultimate linebacker. I plow through the page, making a path for you, dear reader, going nowhere.
Because the fairy tales were right. You’ll need magic to make it out of here.
Long ago, in another life, on an Amtrak through Iowa, I saw, for a few blurred seconds, a man standing in the middle of a field of winter grass, hands at his side, back to me, all of him stopped there save for his hair scraped by low wind.
When the countryside resumed its wash of gray wheat, tractors, gutted barns, black sycamores in herdless pastures, I started to cry. I put my copy of Didion’s The White Album down and folded a new dark around my head.
The woman beside me stroked my back saying, in a Midwestern accent that wobbled with tenderness, Go on son. You get that out now. No shame in breakin’ open. You get that out and I’ll fetch us some tea. Which made me lose it even more.
She came back with Lipton in paper cups, her eyes nowhere blue and there. She was silent all the way to Missoula, where she got off and said, patting my knee, God is good. God is good.
I can say it was beautiful now, my harm, because it belonged to no one else.
To be a dam for damage. My shittiness will not enter the world, I thought, and quickly became my own hero.
Do you know how many hours I’ve wasted watching straight boys play video games?
Enough.
Time is a mother.
Lest we forget, a morgue is also a community center.
In my language, the one I recall now only by closing my eyes, the word for love is Yêu.
And the word for weakness is Yếu.
How you say what you mean changes what you say.
Some call this prayer. I call it watch your mouth.
When they zipped my mother in a body bag I whispered: Rose, get out of there. Your plants are dying.
Enough is enough.
Body, doorway that you are, be more than what I’ll pass through.
Stillness. That’s what it was.
The man in the field in the red sweater, he was so still he became, somehow, more true, like a knife wound in a landscape painting.
Like him, I caved.
I caved and decided it will be joy from now on. Then everything opened. The lights blazed around me into a white weather
and I was lifted, wet and bloody, out of my mother, screaming
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
The clear orange bottle was empty. It had been empty a day. It suddenly seemed so costly and uncalled for anyway.
Two years had passed. They had passed more or less the way years should. Maybe he’d changed. Or maybe the doctors had misunderstood.
It was June. The enormous elm tree was green again, and the scent of hyacinth reached through the window and followed wherever he went.
And the sky was the firmament! His life was never better. Each small white spotless cloud that passed was like a long-wished-for letter.
But then he remembered his promise. It came like a mild cramp, and it sat there all day in the back of his mind like a gas bill awaiting a stamp.
He saw three faces that Sunday, mother, sister, niece, all with the same kind, brown, scared eyes that brought him no peace.
The sidewalk sparrows were peeping. His whole house smelled like a flower. But he remembered his promise. The drugstore said one hour.
Back home again, he was tired. The label said caution, said warning. He left the clear orange bottle on the lip of the sink till morning.
The insert said warning, said caution. The insert said constipation. It said insomnia, vivid dreams, and hypersalivation, and increased urination, and a spinning sensation.
It also said night sweats, and agranulocytosis, and strongly suggested a full glass of water be drunk with all doses.
The insert said all this, the insert he never read. But he didn’t have to read it to know what it said.
The bedroom was calm with moonlight and the breeze through the screen was cooling. Through the elm leaves the shivery light on the wall came like quicksilver pooling.
But just before five, something woke him — a close whisper — or maybe a far cry — and the bedroom was queasy with light the color of lapis lazuli.
He lay there listening hard till six, till seven, till eight ... At nine he remembered the bottle. But nine, nine was too late.
“Don’t take me!” cried the Clozapine. “Don’t take me!” cried the pill. By ten he was feeling restless, with a whole day left to kill.
“Don’t take me!” cried the Clozapine. “Yes, don’t!” cried the medication. And the bright yellow morning seemed suddenly edged with a shady fascination.
Why should he go to his workplace? Who was his supervisor? He had a sickening feeling that he was becoming wiser.
His room filled up with interest. He had begun to think! He thought of the knives in the kitchen and the bottles under the sink.
He thought as he switched the stove on or stood at his shaving mirror, or reached for his belt in the wardrobe. Thinking made things clearer.
Even the bedroom window, the open window full of sun, continually hinted at something that should be done.
But he was crooked and useless. He was a piece of shit. And so, as everyone knew he would, he failed to go through with it.
“Don’t take me!” cried the Clozapine. “Don’t take me!” cried the drug. Just then, the telephone rang. Just then, he ripped out the plug.
“Don’t take me!” cried the Clozapine. “Don’t take me!” cried the poison. And the door of the house creaked open, and the cellar door lilted and murmured, and the garden gate groaned and yawned and let a little noise in.
There, just outside his window, lurked life like a cheap cartoon. He shut the sash, locked it, and checked it, and checked it all afternoon.
He lowered the blinds on that world, no longer an agent of it, but then, with one finger, pulled down a slat and set his eye above it.
At first it was grimly amusing, at last it was grimly grim, to watch all those hunched, hurried people, who made like they weren’t watching him.
The neighbors were thinking out loud. They knew he was no fucking good. So he slumped on a stool in the corner like a bad little snaggletooth should.
They called him a dirty pig, and laughed, and said he shouldn’t exist. Sometimes they made a tsking sound, or oinked at him, or hissed.
They hissed that he was to blame for everything, and everyone knew it, and that if he weren’t such a pussy he’d know what to do, and he’d do it.
He lay on his side on the rug unable to move at all except for his big right toe, which dug and dug at the wall, which dug at the wall, which dug.
“Don’t take me!” cried the Clozapine. “Don’t take me!” cried the cure. And they begged him to sew his mouth shut just to make goddamn sure.
“Don’t take me!” cried the Clozapine. “Don’t take me!” cried the poison. And the gate to the wicked city gaped, and the gates of the temple screamed and screamed, and the gates of the garden groaned and yawned, and the gates of the ziggurat gabbled in grief, and sucked all life’s sorrows and joys in.
His thoughts were advancing like wolves. He lay still for an hour and a half, then reared up onto his rickety legs like a newborn calf.
Then rug hall stairs porch stoop street and the blacktop humanly warm on the soles of his naked feet.
His walk was stiffened by fear, but it took him where he was going, into the terrible world of children and daffodils growing, and friendly people helloing, and the Super out doing the mowing, and the two old sisters out in wool sweaters with their wrinkled cheeks pinkly glowing, and the pretty lady who would give birth by Christmas barely showing but showing, and the policeman helping to keep the lazy afternoon traffic flowing, and time itself slowing, and none of them, none of them knowing
that an odious axis was forming, that it would not be controlled, that schemes were afoot, that a foot was a thing for a jackboot to hold,
that the street was a movie set, that it was not warm and sunny, that a creditor was calling who could not be paid with money,
that the world was like a sliver of iron held in the hand, and his mind the lodestone above it that made it stir or stand,
that the air was slowly changing to a color they didn’t know, that he was a famous doctor on a television show.
But what could he do? Even friends would take these facts for lies, and he couldn’t tell who the enemies were, though he felt the hot breath of their eyes,
so he kept his big mouth shut and tried to play along, and plowed down the street toward the coffeeshop as if nothing at all were wrong.
He tried not to notice the numbers painted on garbage cans. He tried and he tried not to look at the black unmarked sedans.
The coffeeshop smelled like coffee, but it felt different inside. A new waitress went by. She winked. He kept his eyes open wide.
Everything screamed “Run away!” But he wasn’t really there! So he stood by the gumball machines and smiled and tried not to stare.
“The power is yours!” said a T-shirt. “Look for lightning!” reported the weather. And the stranger who offered the Sports section said, “It’s all there, Chief. Just put it together.”
Then wild-eyed out of the kitchen stormed a small, hard old man, shouting in a strange language and waving a frying pan,
shoving him out the door and into the chattering street, shoving him, waving, shouting, and pointing at his feet, at his bare, gray feet.
Then came the dark blue uniform, the badge glinting in the sun, and the belt jangling like a storm trooper’s as the boots broke into a run.
“Take that!” cried the patrolman. “Take that!” cried Johnny Law. Street, knee, neck — cuffs, curb, jaw.
And the flatfoot pushed him, bleeding, into the sleek cruiser, and he heard all the gawkers thinking that he was a pig and a loser,
and his chin throbbed, and the handcuffs ate at his wrist, and he would be hacked into pieces soon and would not be missed.
“Don’t take me!” cried the victim. “Don’t take me!” cried the threat. But the angry back of a head was the only response he could get.
Lying on his side like a child at the end of a big day, he gazed up through the window and watched it all slip away.
The little pen where they put him had a toilet but no stall. Here and there a message scarred the gloss-white wall.
Time passed. But you couldn’t tell it on the trapped fly ticking the ceiling, or the flickering light overhead, or the sore on his chin congealing, or on the sound of the other pigs in the other pens, squealing.
When the men came, he was ready. He talked. They took it all down. And soon they were back in the cruiser, on their way across town.
Then, into the mirrored building, over the waxed lobby floors, down miles of echoing hallways, through the heavy brown doors,
into a humming beige room with a bed and a river view, and an outside lock, and jailers who wore white instead of blue.
“Take that,” smiled the doctor. “Take that,” smiled the nurse. He pressed his lips still tighter, and things got worse and worse.
“Please!” threatened the nurse. “Please!” growled the doctor. He raised his fists to cover his mouth, but the nurse was too close, and he clocked her.
Now into the room came the big men, who did not clamor or shout, but pinned him with ease to the bed, strapped him down, and went out.
And the doctor was there again, trailing a spider web of cologne, and the doctor told what would happen next, in an expert monotone,
and the nurse took a needle and emptied it into his arm, and they both left, content that he could do no more harm,
and he fought, and the straps cut his shoulders, and he gnawed at his lip, and it bled, and he held his bladder for three long hours, then shivered and pissed the bed.
When the doctor came a fifth time, it was long past dawn. They’d found him a room, said the doctor, gently restraining a yawn.
The next two days were sleep, and words through a fine white mist. Then he woke inside a machine whose motion he couldn’t resist:
“Tick-tock,” said the clock. “Creak, creak,” said the bed. “Drip, drip,” said the sink. “Throb, throb,” went his head. “Ho-hum,” sighed the night nurse. “Heh-heh,” said the sicko. “Why? Why?” screamed the patient. “Howl, howl!” cried the psycho. “Wolf! Wolf!” cried the boy. “Gobble, gobble!” sang the freaks. “Sa, sa!” cried the king. “Tick-tock,” went the weeks. “Bang, bang,” said the tv. “Teeter-totter,” went his brain. “Click, click,” went the checkers. “Pitter-patter,” went the rain. “Bring-bring,” said the pay phone. “Snip, snip,” went Fate. “Jangle-jingle,” went the keys. “Clank-clink,” went the gate. “Bye-bye,” said the nurse. “Bye-bye,” said the guard. “Bar-bar,” said the doctor. “Baa-baa,” said the lamb. “My, my,” said his mother. “Boohoo!” cried Bo Peep. “Bow-wow,” said the wolf. “Baa-baa,” said the sheep.
In the car away from that place, the family had a pleasant chat. He seemed fine again, and humble, though his speech was oddly flat.
He said that the halfway house where he would be residing was located on a quiet block and had green vinyl siding.
There he met new people and watched the television, which did not watch him back or speak to him with derision,
and he performed certain tasks, meant to teach certain skills, and he got small checks from the government to pay his enormous bills.
Each night he fell asleep, and each morning he got up, and he washed down his medicine and squashed the paper cup,
feeling, in all, much better, more in touch with common sense, and also slightly bored by the lack of consequence.
And the church bells rang and a dinner bell tinkled and the school bell tolled and called all the good girls and boys in. And all of them brought all their toys in. And all of them swallowed their poison.
Each person acting in the subject’s welfare is cruelly indifferent towards him, wanting to make him less of a problem instead of helping him to manage his illness(es) and therefore lead a richer and happier life.
I know I don’t usually post long-form poems, but I made an exception for today because I love the way Mehigan evokes the vagaries of mental illness in “The Orange Bottle”. The subject of the poem experiences a brief burst of mania followed by a deep and relentless depression. His erratic behavior, which a compassionate person would interpret as a cry for help and indicate a need for treatment, leads instead to his arrest, imprisonment, and later hospitalization. Each person acting in the subject’s welfare is cruelly indifferent towards him, wanting to make him less of a problem instead of helping him to manage his illness(es) and therefore lead a richer and happier life.
Despite all of our gilded discourse surrounding vulnerability and destigmatization, mental illness is still something that many people don’t understand and probably don’t even want to.
Despite all of our gilded discourse surrounding vulnerability and destigmatization, mental illness is still something that many people don’t understand and probably don’t even want to. I myself come from a long line of severely mentally-ill people. Generational trauma, complex PTSD, and substance abuse disorders exacerbated by abject poverty and a lack of proper treatment have wreaked havoc on both sides of my family line. It doesn’t help that the Evangelical bootstraps rhetoric that generations of my people have been subjected to has caused many of them to see their illnesses as symptoms of a spiritual malady and not a chemical imbalance in the brain.
We deserve to live out in the open, wounds visible.
I want better for them. I want better for all of us. And that all starts by telling our stories, by refusing to be cowed by convention or silenced by stigma. We deserve to live out in the open, wounds visible. That’s the first step to getting better.
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
I came upon a child of God He was walking along the road And I asked him where are you going And this he told me I'm going on down to Yasgur's farm * I'm going to join in a rock 'n' roll band I'm going to camp out on the land I'm going to try an' get my soul free
We are stardust We are golden And we've got to get ourselves Back to the garden
Then can I walk beside you I have come here to lose the smog And I feel to be a cog in something turning Well maybe it is just the time of year Or maybe it's the time of man I don't know who I am But you know life is for learning
We are stardust We are golden And we've got to get ourselves Back to the garden
By the time we got to Woodstock We were half a million strong And everywhere there was song and celebration And I dreamed I saw the bombers Riding shotgun in the sky And they were turning into butterflies Above our nation
We are stardust Billion year old carbon We are golden Caught in the devil's bargain And we've got to get ourselves back to the garden
I also remember being entranced by the hippie woman with the guitar whose voice was at once a hymn, a hallowed thing, and a harbinger.
I can already hear the dissenting murmurs. Is “Woodstock” technically poetry? Nope. Sure isn’t. Do I care? Also no. And to be perfectly honest, if Joni Mitchell’s song lyrics don’t count as poetry, then almost nothing does. I first fell in love with Joni Mitchell in high school. The class was Introduction to Agricultural Science or something like that and Mr. Evans was our teacher. We spent a short period of time on conservation and climate science, but I distinctly remember him playing “Big Yellow Taxi” for us. I also remember being entranced by the hippie woman with the guitar whose voice was at once a hymn, a hallowed thing, and a harbinger.
I decided then and there that if the best tracks from Blue couldn’t make a believer out of her, she’d just have to remain an apostate while I belted it out in the choir.
I am not going to lie. Joni Mitchell is an acquired taste. Not everyone likes her music. My mom cringes every time I play “Urge for Going” or “Blue”. I even tried to convert her with “River” but that also proved ineffective. I decided then and there that if the best tracks from Blue couldn’t make a believer out of her, she’d just have to remain an apostate while I belted it out in the choir. The truth is, even I had to listen to her for a number of years before I really understood her particular mystique, and I owe most of that to repeat listens of “Woodstock”.
Really, if you’ve never listened to Joni Mitchell, do yourself a favor and dive right in anywhere. Now is as good a time as any because on November 12th she’s releasing Joni Mitchell Archives, Vol. 2: The Reprise Years(1968-1971), which you can preorder wherever you get your music, but preferably from your local record store, if you’re lucky enough to have one.
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I'll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you? Why are you beset with gloom? ’Cause I walk like I've got oil wells Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns, With the certainty of tides, Just like hopes springing high, Still I'll rise.
Did you want to see me broken? Bowed head and lowered eyes? Shoulders falling down like teardrops, Weakened by my soulful cries?
Does my haughtiness offend you? Don't you take it awful hard ’Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines Diggin’ in my own backyard.
You may shoot me with your words, You may cut me with your eyes, You may kill me with your hatefulness, But still, like air, I’ll rise.
Does my sexiness upset you? Does it come as a surprise That I dance like I've got diamonds At the meeting of my thighs?
Out of the huts of history’s shame I rise Up from a past that’s rooted in pain I rise I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide, Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear I rise Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear I rise Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise I rise I rise.
Her singular sonorous voice echoes with the shared promise and potential of humanity, especially those who are downtrodden, maligned, and marginalized.
I love the imagery in this poem. It gives me chills every time I read it, and I can hear Maya Angelou’s voice in my head when I do. Her singular sonorous voice echoes with the shared promise and potential of humanity, especially those who are downtrodden, maligned, and marginalized. Inside also is a reclamation, a refusal to be shaped or cowed by the words and deeds of others. After reading “Still I Rise”, the only appropriate response is amen. Amen amen amen.
Maya Angelou Reciting “Still I Rise”
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
best thought, you had taught me — a river runs through it, the foot of the soul standing stubbornly in the freeze, all the shards of ice crumpling up the banks, what survives in the ignorance. Play it away. Be ceremony. Be a lit candle to what blows you. Outside, the sun gives a favorite present, mountain nests in ironic meadows, otter takes off her shoes, the small hands of her feet reaching, reaching; still, far away people are dying. Crisp one dollar bills fold another life. You taught me to care in the moment, carve day into light, or something, moving in the west that doesn't destroy us. Look again, in the coming summer, the cruelest month alive still eats up the hours. Regret is an uneven hand, a rough palm at the cheek — tender and calloused. I drink another glass of water, turn on the tap for what grows, for you, for what lasts, for the last and the first found thought of you.
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
In the secular night you wander around alone in your house. It’s two-thirty. Everyone has deserted you, or this is your story; you remember it from being sixteen, when the others were out somewhere, having a good time, or so you suspected, and you had to baby-sit. You took a large scoop of vanilla ice-cream and filled up the glass with grapejuice and ginger ale, and put on Glenn Miller with his big-band sound, and lit a cigarette and blew the smoke up the chimney, and cried for a while because you were not dancing, and then danced, by yourself, your mouth circled with purple.
Now, forty years later, things have changed, and it’s baby lima beans. It’s necessary to reserve a secret vice. This is what comes from forgetting to eat at the stated mealtimes. You simmer them carefully, drain, add cream and pepper, and amble up and down the stairs, scooping them up with your fingers right out of the bowl, talking to yourself out loud. You’d be surprised if you got an answer, but that part will come later.
There is so much silence between the words, you say. You say, The sensed absence of God and the sensed presence amount to much the same thing, only in reverse. You say, I have too much white clothing. You start to hum. Several hundred years ago this could have been mysticism or heresy. It isn’t now. Outside there are sirens. Someone’s been run over. The century grinds on.
There is also this exactitude, this precision, bound up in elegance and wit, which seems impossible to replicate. At the very least, I have never seen it outside of her work.
First and foremost, let me state here unequivocally that it is a travesty Margaret Atwood has yet to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. That’s first. Next, I’d like to say that very few writers can scare me like Atwood can. She imbues every work of hers, be it novel, poem, or otherwise, with an otherworldly terror which is simply too close to reality for comfort. There is also this exactitude, this precision, bound up in elegance and wit, which seems impossible to replicate. At the very least, I have never seen it outside of her work.
Though her oeuvre is substantial, history will remember her primarily for her dystopian novel, The Handmaid’s Tale. Published in 1985, it tells the story of Offred, a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead, which has succeeded the United States’ government via violent overthrow and which treats women with viable uteruses like cattle, meant to be silent, acquiescent, and obedient in discharging their only purpose in life, which is to bare children for their Commanders. They are deprived of all agency and ruled over with an iron fist.
With a conservative-majority SCOTUS waiting like a salivating bloodhound to overturn Roe v. Wade and states like Texas rolling back reproductive rights and severely limiting abortion access, we are just a stone’s throw away from the world Atwood envisioned.
One could say Gilead is patriarchy on steroids, and they’d be right. Gilead looks too much like America in 2021 for my liking. With a conservative-majority SCOTUS waiting like a salivating bloodhound to overturn Roe v. Wade and states like Texas rolling back reproductive rights and severely limiting abortion access, we are just a stone’s throw away from the world Atwood envisioned. Let’s hope there are enough of us left in the world who stand for a woman’s right to choose.
Wow, I started off with a poem and ended up talking about The Handmaid’s Tale. You can certainly see my ADHD at work here, but what the heck? This is my blog and I’ll go off on whatever tangent I darn well please. Mazel tov, my friends.
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
Poem [“Lana Turner has collapsed!”] by Frank O’Hara
Lana Turner has collapsed! I was trotting along and suddenly it started raining and snowing and you said it was hailing but hailing hits you on the head hard so it was really snowing and raining and I was in such a hurry to meet you but the traffic was acting exactly like the sky and suddenly I see a headline lana turner has collapsed! there is no snow in Hollywood there is no rain in California I have been to lots of parties and acted perfectly disgraceful but I never actually collapsed oh Lana Turner we love you get up
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
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