I don’t know if a perfect album exists.
It’s quite possible I’m being picky. After all, I’ve basically been reading since I emerged from the womb, and it took me 17 years to pick a favorite book—I Am the Messenger by Markus Zusak. Even then, it took another 8 or 9 years to realize I thought it was a perfect book. (For me, anyway. I’m not going to make any promises to you.)
Be honest now—
just for a minute; I cried.
I had him locked out—
a perfectly good wish.
Privately, for over a year now you drove off and left me.
The place cooled down beaming and bright—
put my name on a silencer (it’s not the end of the world).
His elbow hurts my ribs and something clashes against my forehead. The scarf gets knocked off me and I squint into the sunlight of a Dromore market day.
There’s a trace of what must be blood on my gloves but not enough to scare me. I hear the passing guffaws at our tumble. He stinks of whiskey and I can’t bare to look at him.
The girl is waiting on the median for the light to change and the traffic to come to a halt. When it does, she steps down onto the street and walks in between the stopped cars, slowly passing each one, a cardboard sign held chest-high. Her eyeglasses reflect the harsh glare of the headlights and look like two white squares sitting on her face. She is probably fifteen or sixteen. Her hair is clean, pulled back neatly in a ponytail; her backpack is new, as are her boots—hardly a scuff or a stain. My emotions are mixed. I feel sorry for her, life out here is hard beyond belief, but I’m also relieved, in a “big sigh” sort of way. No doubt, like the rest of us, she has some sad stories to tell. No, not sad. Fucking heartbreaking.
In the mirror, the wooden bust of Christ Nicodemus carved
and Joseph commended to the sea, stares out for reflection.
Only a true spell
of fittingly glamorous phenomena
repaired sunstruck imagination—
Too big for your body, the whale of a bed will go on sale; also the dresser, its
three-linked mirrors tall as sails.
A split decision on the latest from Irish filmmaker Martin McDonagh's latest film Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and a look at other "fight the power" films.
Our review of Harry Dean Stanton's final film, Lucky.
Two very different comedies on this episode of Drunk Monkeys Radio: Thor Ragnarok brings a Flight of the Conchords twist to an old formula, and Yorgos Lanthimos gets darker (yes darker than The Lobster) in The Killing of a Sacred Deer.
On election night, November 7, 2016, when ABC Election coverage announced that Donald Trump took Florida, I actually went into the bathroom, closed the door, lowered the toilet lid, sat down, and cried. I know quite a few of us who did the same; we knew something we could not explain, something hitherto unprecedented had just happened. When North Carolina and Ohio went red and finally, Iowa, I wretchedly watched George Stephanopoulos, clearly nonplussed, ask his co-anchoring panel of pundits, “How could this happen when a solid majority of Americans said that Donald Trump wasn’t qualified for the job?”
Mr. Butterchips breaks new ground in his fight against Donald Trump.
"What Trump does angers me but never surprises or shocks."
The Nazis are back in town.
No, I know. They never, ever left.
2016, it's not funny anymore.
The things I never said, I said them like a man.
Like a man I insist I never said those things.
And afterwards I will assert I never said the second thing,
layer on layer of vow, disavowal. And what I believe,
you shall believe; there is only one thought and it is me.
My smell wipes across the thought of him. Crying in a pin stripe business suit. There was an accident. Perfect bodies lose perfection like melting ice. Crowns of thorns are passed out, metal trinkets to place in private. Kiss the blood rolling down.
I keep having this dream where
the white man isn’t angry
the black man entered
the white house.
There is a cabin by the bouldered beaches
of Northern California,
where the pines practically toe the foam.
This is where he’ll go, and off will come
his tailored suits,
his lacquered shoes,
his streak of blood-red tie.
