the water's warmer than it has been in weeks


sara padgett, three perfect cones

L. Paul "Jerry" Bremer Meets Earl "Little Roy" Lowe in democratic [ahem] Kuwait [ahem] to discuss the reconstruction of revisionism, the quizzical dearth of Jah in Fallujah & the creation of Islamic subtance jockeys with Christopher-Columbus in my pocket & I just can't get no love
-- by Jules Boykoff

Don't Cross the nation
where the rich man live
and the poor man die
where habeas corpus means
"Get out the corpse, Corporal"
where my hair was getting in the way
of good conversation where
ballistic batons & a rising tide
drowns all goats where he asked,
"May I borrow your notes?" The reason
is other; the other is reason but
Bechtel but the pharmacy
but the chop shop the chrome
globe the foreign policy
of carnivorous goat fiction.
o, carnivorous riproar!
o, socially acceptable Molotov!
o, old-school mushroom cloud!
o, fracturous rapture for two!
o, slow cold stiffie!
o, capitalism! [er, privatization]
& everyone knows it
I say everyone knows it
at the thrift shop
called today.

Eric "Sleepy" Floyd meets Horace "Sleepy" Hinds in the Capitol routunda the morning before the evening after Ronald Reagan was shot to discuss the servility of civility, the utility of docility, & the convergent discrepance of extreme mediocrity
-- by Jules Boykoff

Hinckley could have used
a diligent grammarian of
unproblematic libel
at the intersection of
Schlitz for Schlitz &
neo sleepy liberal sleepy
Heimlich graft or maybe
just a getaway for at-risk kids.
Oh how handy these traits
become for de-localized honcho
logic for logistical regression
analysis for statistically
significant witch doctor
predictions of history
as a communicable disease
but don't mention the tension
between the world and your room
don't mention the tension of
why oh why can't I.

One Art
-- Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

---Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.


* The District? reviews Saturday's DCAC show, sorta. Thanks! and, pictures of the foreign press, taken by dronepop can be viewed here.