“Must there be rain in this poem / to approximate my longing? // Then let there be rain. A greater flood. / Let us grow into creatures that survive it.” – Kenzie Allen, “Convergent Evolution”
It’s poetry week, but in case you haven’t noticed, we started spooky season a touch early this year. That’s not me being a corporation, by the way. When Starbucks puts out Pumpkin Spice Lattes in August or Costco sets up their Christmas Stuff Display in September? That’s bad. That’s not living in the moment. That’s diluting meaning in society. That’s capitalist greed. When I read horror in September? Well, if we’re being honest, it’s work. I’m a horror writer. This is what work looks like.
What I’ve Been Reading This Week:
Two books! A marvelous collection of poetry and a fun novel(la?)—and one of them I read on my computer. Who said I was an old man? My Adobe subscription is lapsed, tho, and I didn’t feel like bugging Mal to use her computer for Canva, so I took the picture of these books like an old man. Don’t let me doing a bit distract you from the fact that both of these books put me in such a good reading mood that I started next week’s book as soon as I put them down. I’m talking, of course, about Cloud Missives by Kenzie Allen and Werewolf Lawyer by Shea Serrano.
Cloud Missives by Kenzie Allen: WOO, this book. Bob told me to prepare for some capital-P poems, and I’m happy to report this collection absolutely delivered. Certain poets make me feel like I should bow my head while reading them, and it’s not just because I feel religious about nature. These poems are beautiful in a way that feels unselfconscious and effortless. But I don’t want to give the impression that it’s all flowery. There’s pop culture, there’s anger at white racism, there are references to myths and some funny lines. There are love songs. There are long poems and short poems. It’s a manuscript completely full of the good things poetry does. But most of all, these are poems quietly demand you slow down and spend time with them, if for no other reason than the impeccably clean way they present themselves.
Werewolf Lawyer by Shea Serrano: I’ve talked before about my complicated feelings with crime fiction (I love crime fiction but hate cops). I’ve also talked a lot about my love for werewolves. So I was ready to love this book, and have fun with it. The perfectly short, no-nonsense prologue sets up werewolfing as a mysterious affliction that has affected 6,400 people in the world with no explanation—some living in the woods, some living amongst humans. Thomas Atwell is the man the werewolves call when they’re in legal trouble. Today, Atwell’s defending a werewolf accused of killing his wife, and we’re in the courtroom.
Reading as much Indigenous fiction as I have been lately has me thinking about the function of stories and the medium in which they’re told. What I’m about to write gets into stuff Victor LaValle put in The Changeling, too. This novel (novella? is that distinction all that meaningful?) has a tone that lends itself to a radio play (I did not listen to the audiobook, but I know Shea likes to have fun with the production of his audiobooks) or prolonged ghost story you’d tell around the fire pit/blunt circle at your AirBnb. Those types of stories are going to be short on, like, extended metaphor and recurring symbolism or whatever other Modernist technique. You can tell this story out loud to a group of the homies. You’re not writing 10-page papers doing a Post-Structuralist reading. What these types of stories are good at is incepting a question into you without you realizing it. In The Changeling, when they referenced the Maurice Sendak book or other fairy tales, the idea was “how do we take care of our children?” In Werewolf Lawyer—much like My Cousin Vinny—the question is “what is the point of a courtroom and by extension the legal system?” Without spoiling the ending, there is the kind of dramatic twist ending you’d expect from a purely fun legal thriller, but before that? There is a lot of work done to highlight how much a courtroom doesn’t care about truth, per se, a courtroom cares about the letter of the law and what can be proven. Things that factor into a conviction or release include attorney’s demeanors and jury’s feelings as much or more than actual events. I came away from this book the way I expected to after reading a werewolf crime novel: bummed I’m not a werewolf, and determined to—as Desus admonished us—avoid the bookings, beloved. To that end, let’s go to the links and get mad about cops.
LINKS!
Something to listen to while you browse? How about some LA LOM? It’s been a while and they put up a new video recently and also their tracks are a good contrast to the bummer shit I’m about to link.
Cop Cities are spreading, Victoria Valenzuela at Waging Nonviolence writes. This is an outgrowth of bullshit like Joe Biden and others saying “they just need better training.” You cannot reform cops. The cops all need to be fired. Much like AI, though, instead of getting rid of cops, we are expanding the police state. Hey, do you like living in this country? I’m ashamed most of the time.
Chicago owes millions, I mean goddamn millions of dollars, in police brutality settlement payouts. Aldergoon Gilbert Vallegas asks “what’s the plan?” Idk man. We said “defund and abolish.” Y’all called us childish. Everyone loves scolding socialists “how are you gonna pay for this how are you gonna pay for that.” Fuck you, how are you gonna pay for your militarized police state? Think all those bombs to kill Palestinians are cheap? Think all these fancy toys the cops get to terrorize people with are cheap? Fuck you, defund and abolish police and prisons. Tired of this shit. Anyway, Heather Cherone at WTTW has a more even-handed reporting of this story.
In his “Watch Grid” column last week, fellow Recovering Acquire The Fire attendee reminds us that assholes have been trying to blame all of society’s problems on the poorest among us since at least the Book of Exodus. Republicans are an entire political party built not just on racism and greed, but punching down. Jesus, of course, thought differently. As Jason says: “Every time we elevate the lowest-ranking people, we improve the future for everyone else as well, and it’s a whole lot easier to invest in elevating those people if we accept that we don’t inherently deserve anything better than what those people have, that we have never been different from anyone in any meaningful way.
As society changes its goldfish mind on whether trans children or Palestinian children or Haitian children are the bigger danger, the gospel has always been consistent. The gospel is solidarity, and solidarity is the gospel.”
How do we practice abolition daily? Tonia Hill at The Triibe talks to Jennifer Pagán of the #LetUsBreathe Collective about the work of building mutual aid networks, protesting, changing lives, and doing the daily work. I really appreciated Tonia’s focus on “…working every day to change our daily actions and our relationships with each other, the world and ourselves.” Without saying “the prison system is so bad because of people’s personal failings,” I do think the United States is a profoundly sick society, and orgs like the #LetUsBreathe Collective are vectors for us beginning to heal.
We talk a fair amount on this blog about What Happens After Reading. Wanna read someone smarter and more involved talk about it? has some missives from where she’s at in her radicalization journey. It opens with my favorite bummer of this bummer decade: that the summer of 2020 wasn’t all that revolutionary. Cops keep killing at higher and higher rates. A genocide is happening with our tax dollars. To amend the Kendrick lyric, shit don’t change until we all get up and demand/work for radical change. The struggle is long.
What’re you still doing here? Wanna watch a man play Debussy’s “Clair de Lune” to an 80-year-old elephant? Of course you do.
If you work in the service industry, may you clean up in tips this weekend. Then I hope you have fun outside of work. “Don’t send me home without a round of applause / if not a title, if not a good ride and a fast time.” Kenzie Allen says in “LOVE SONG TO THE MAN ANNOUNCING POW WOWS AND RODEOS.” That’s the sentiment I used to carry into every single Chili’s shift.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris