By D.R. James —a villanelle to commencement speakers everywhere Tonight, fatigue’s grim flower unfurls, but Gandhi, gunned down, had this to say: “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” Oh? Even when casting before swine my pearls, every action seems absurd, and all the day— and tonight—fatigue’s grim flower unfurls? Even though, [...]
Still It all recurs for the maimed, how they remain, or don’t, atop the plots of the buried. Those who could do something table the question. They relax in the rocker of their certainty, a war, any war, an abstraction that walls off the bursting specifics. A twenty-something friend found he’d deployed to sort body [...]
By D. R. James —1/22/17 Outside, still January, but 40 not 15, gauzy, black-and-white woods from The Wolf Man. Inside, a gauzy-gray (un?)consciousness from This White Man, half-reclined in buttery, dove-gray leather. It’s envisioning millions of protesting women, now back perhaps in their individual towns, their power proclaimed not awakened, or still making their way back [...]
