Why is he, the one I'm thinking about, who is leaning over a writing table, why is he so motionless, why does he wait and listen for something to happen outside of himself; how could anything give him instruction in sorrow or bring an end to the endless succession of doubts moving through him? All around him are mere routines of veiled melancholy; and the opposite side of the street, in its formless silence, wears an statement so uncommonly empty and so unpleasant that in his suffering he gratefully seizes on the rattle of a carriage on the paving stones as the point of departure from this moment to the next.

Proč ten, na koho myslím, jenž sklání se nad psacím stolem, proč je tak nehybný, proč čeká a naslouchá, že se něco stane vně něho; jako by mu mohla nějaká věc dát pokyn v zármutku a závěr té nekonečné řady nejistot, jež jím prochází. Všechny věci kol něho jsou pouze zvyky zastřené melancholií; jen protější stěna ulice má v beztvarém tichu výraz neobyčejně hloupý a tak nepříjemný, že trpě s povděkem chápe se hrkotu drožky na dlažbě jako východiska z této vteřiny k příští.

At 4 am she found herself under the Broadway Bridge, Mrs. Harney said. Mama said that the woman got no right talking about who done what and where. Mrs. Harney come from a good family, Mama said, but they all gone now. Just poor old Mrs. Harney left. I wondered where families go, I been thinking about that. Mrs. Harney lives in a nice house. She got pretty lace on the windows and Mama keeps it so clean your sneakers squeak on the floor. I go to Mrs. Harney's after school on Tuesdays and Thursdays. That's when Mama cleans. But Mama only really cleans in the morning. After lunch she just usually talks with Mrs. Harney. Mama says Mrs. Harney's a lonely old woman. I ask Mama why Mrs. Harney ain't got people visiting her? Mama tells me ain't ain't a word.

WORDS I
By Venus Khoury-Ghata
Translated by Marilyn Hacker

In those days I know now words declaimed the wind
besides pebbles, there were moons, but no lamps
the stars would emerge later from a brawl between two flintstones...

LES MOTS I
By Venus Khoury-Ghata

Les mots je le sais maintenant déclamaient du vent à
l'époque
à part les cailloux il y avait des lunes mais pas de lampes
les étoiles sortirent plus tard d'une empoignade entre deux
silex...

Homer Simpson Suppressed
By Paul Krassner

Dan Castellaneta, who is the voice of Homer on The Simpsons, and I have long been fans of each other's work. I was impressed by his versatility as an actor on The Tracy Ullman Show, as well as his live appearances with an improvisational troupe and his own one-person, multi-character show. He in turn enjoys my writing and has attended several of my stand-up performances. So, when Danny Goldberg, who runs Artemis Records, invited me to do another album, I felt comfortable asking Castellaneta if he would consider introducing me in Homer's voice. He said it would be "an honor and a pleasure." I was very excited.

FUSEE
By Les Murray

A complex iron finial-head
still jazzling from the forge
smokes in its ash and sparkles
in the shadowy workshop -
but no:

The Siren's Song
By Fredric Raphael

1942. 'One cannot always like the unfortunate.' The second secretary from the British Embassy, Gareth Whitebrook, whom Iakobos has been deputed to see, makes this remark as if it established something in common between them. Neutral tone, neutral ground; nothing personal; on we go then, you and I. They are on a quayside on the Bosphorus; two men allotted the same short straw. Iakobos frowns, as if the English language, not the messenger who speaks it, were what puzzled him. 'Nothing more H.M.G. can do.' Having done what? Official sentence is passed; full stop. I. nods in disagreement.

From Here To There
FELINE ITINERARY
By Luisa Valenzuela
Translated by Jonathan Tittler

Read this in - english

I was a shipwreck on Lake Titicaca - Nicanor Parra.
Forgiving everything I shall go out and populate the world with deathcats. That's certainly required in Rome, for example, or in Chucuito: there people don't die they morph eternally like flies they morph. In Chucuito I saw an old lady turn into a stone, a stone into an old lady, old lady into stone, and so forth until all the ruins were human beings and the human beings, ruins. As it always goes. But I will be magnanimous and making the enormous sacrifice I will take the cats to Chucuito so they eat the fish in the lake, which are dead, and fulfill their destiny.

De Aca Para Alla
Itinerario Felino
Luisa Valenzuela

Lullaby at the Fight Club: The Chuck Palahniuk GobQ & A
by K. Willis Morton

Read this in - english

Chuck Palahniuk was telling me he'd just finished Lullaby, "the book for next year." It was a dreary November day & the book's release was still nine or ten months away. A big theme of the book, he said, "is what we think of as nature - isn't natural. Nature is so filled with invasive plants and animals that I begin to question if I've ever seen a natural place that wasn't in some way, if not completely, replaced by the invasive culture. It's things that people don't want to know but I find myself having to know them."