You want fries with that?
This motherfucker, she thought. Really? Just frozen french fries? All of Jewel to pick from and that’s all you’re buying today. Doesn’t even justify the plastic bag that will get caught in the trees, break down, become the micro and nano plastics of our children’s children’s drinking water. Part of the flesh of the fish…
Dylan at 80
My first memory of Bob Dylan is from a cassette that I borrowed from my father in 1985, when I was 13, and never returned. This was a tape a friend of his made that included at least two tracks from The Last Waltz, Dylan and The Band performing Forever Young and Baby Let Me…
A Brief Note on Wilco’s Bright Leaves
Wilco’s Ode to Joy, released in October, 2019, is absolutely a joy to listen to if you enjoy melancholy musings. And the first track, Bright Leaves, welcomes us into this album’s darkly ironic landscape of lyrical contradictions. The lyrics are: I don’t likeThe way you’re treating meWarm winter rainI found my keysUnder the snowAn empty…
Why “Writing In The Dark”?
Because. ‘Because’ is not an answer, my daughter would say. Those happen to be the first lines of my only published poem to date. Okay, okay. Because I don’t know what I am going to write when I sit down to the blinking cursor. I don’t have any idea of where to start, except I…
Let Light Shine Out of Darkness
The title of this poem is an imperative. Whether it is directed at the reader or the author is unclear. The first line, “I live in a body that does not have enough light in it,” seems to frame the entire book. It is an attitude toward oneself that is critical and despairing, yet seeking. “Once, I…
The Performance of Becoming Human
“So for now hasta luego compadres and don’t worry too much about the bucket of murmuring shit that is the unitedstatesian night. What does it say? What does it say? What do you want it to say?” (19) I begin at the end with this poem. What do we want it to say? Certainly not to be…
James Baldwin’s Unstable “We”
It is only in his music, which Americans are able to admire because a protective sentimentality limits their understanding of it, that the Negro in America has been able to tell his story. It is a story which otherwise has yet to be told and which no American is prepared to hear. As is the…
Seeking Narrative Consciousness (contains spoilers)
HBO’s Westworld, season one, masterfully explores the nature of reality, morality, freedom, and consciousness. These themes are knit together by a larger exploration of narrative that is central to the show’s premise. Consciousness, for the writers of Westworld, is a maze of narratives. At the center of the maze is freedom, but the center is always receding…
“Sorry to Bother You”
In September, 2017 I listened to a discussion between Michelle Alexander and Naomi Klein moderated by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor. (An edited version of this talk can be seen here) The theme of the talk was that we needed to do more than just say no. That we, as progressives, need to not only resist what Trump and…
Daniel Borzutzky’s “Dream Song #17”
DREAM SONG #17 They took my body to the forest They asked me to climb a ladder I did not want to climb a ladder But they forced me to climb the ladder If you don’t climb the ladder we will bury you in the mud I had to decide should I die by hanging …
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Frank D. Hill | writer & fellow human 