The Spiritual Barber had opened his salon a year earlier and it had been an instant success. Open Mondays to Saturdays, it attracted an ever-growing number of customers, who thought nothing of waiting several hours until it was their turn to be served. …
Channel: Features
Lucy the Nun With the Green Socks
“Lucy the nun with the green socks / saw me hugging the oak tree / that summer I / hibernated in Spartanburg.”
Anatolian Dreams
“St Barbara, a poor white gloved icy ingénue, / Has long been a dusty piece of Black Forest wood // That grew out of the ashes of Sibylline books”
MaricónMaricón (Part 3)
“Sex and God or sex and death.” I repeated his phrase, feeling a slight slur in my speech brought on by the beer on an empty stomach. “Is that all there is?”
MaricónMaricón (Part 2)
I was jealous of Pedro’s imaginary lovers and of his vaster sexual experience. Short poems, long poems, quirky poems, I read them in secret when he was out. I didn’t understand them. Poem after poem, sounding much alike, revealed the charms of some new image of his desire, even as he prayed for some kind of deliverance from his too, too solid flesh…
MaricónMaricón (Part 1)
I felt that many kinds of patterns, of ancient origins, had been stamped onto our writhing, wrestling, male flesh, and that we had entered this forbidden zone many times before…
Soul Retrieval: Poems
they call it soul retrieval | when your essence | core | beingness | the skeletal|hole|body|brain that lives in your gut|liver|kidney|body| self|shatters | breaks its own skull|heart|body in its crumpled raisin|brain as the result of small t | BIG T | sOmE TyPe of tRaUmA
A Demon’s Escape (Based on a True Story)
Whether I chose to feel my emotions fully, or experience the depth of them — that wasn’t up to me. That was up to God, or Satan, or whatever it was that controlled me.
Transparency is the Only Shield against Disaster (Parts 6–7)
Has the Shadow become more user-friendly? No. Whether now or 2,000 or 10,000 years ago, the shared identity of the Shadow and the Guide has always presented itself in the form of an ultimatum, which we must torture our minds and bodies to interpret.
Transparency is the Only Shield against Disaster (Parts 3–5)
That our world has already ended, of this we may be certain. But is it the end of “a world” or of “the world”? It is reassuring that the prophets of world destruction have proven almost 100% wrong—and yet…
Transparency is the Only Shield against Disaster (Parts 1–2)
So, what does it mean for the Apocalypse to take place in the present moment, and, somewhat paradoxically, to be always just about to occur?
Sutra of the Computer Body: Questions for Karina Bush
“I’ve found a techno relationship cuts right into the core, the soul, brings out an almost more real version of yourself, makes you see yourself differently, your own potential to be better. It can achieve a level of emotional perfection. That’s also the problem…”
Daniel’s Dream
That room is gone. Or rather, the room is still there, but what’s in it now is so different from what was in it before that the room itself seems transformed. It holds a vast model of the world we live in, built to scale and rendered in exquisite detail…
Animal Encounters
Following him into the darkest places taught me to never be afraid of the dark. / It’s full of unimaginable euphoric surprises…
Out of the Furnace: A Film Review and Analysis
The movie proves to be, rather than glitchy and fragmentary, a deliberate and careful unfolding of the more perplexing and realistic struggle ensnaring us in the contemporary world.
Harold Bloom, Heart-Reader Extraordinaire
What was Harold Bloom? I don’t know, but here is my answer for now.
Testaments of a Seed: Poems by Siben Gerard
“I must return love and life to those who offered me death / Gestating with hundreds and thousands of babies in me: / Progeny of my intercourse with the rock.”
Exploring Worlds of the Dark Feminine with Brigid Burke
An introduction to Brigid’s new podcast CHTHONIA with a discussion of the relevance of dark feminine mythology for modern times.
Seeing Through the World: Jean Gebser and Integral Consciousness (Book Review)
Jeremy Johnson, current president of the International Jean Gebser Society, long-time Gebser student, and accomplished expositor, presents a thoughtful look at a key – and difficult – idea, the nature of the integral structure of consciousness.
Tales of a Venezuelan ExpatTales of a Venezuelan Expat: Dispatch #2 (Disorder and Progress)
Note: The following takes place between October 2018 and January 2019. I’m not in control. I’m trusting the currents to guide my ship to safe ports, trusting the process, letting go. I’m learning along the way. The biggest lesson so far has been how to …
Steady Sleeper
I look for my White Lily, but it’s gone. When I look up again, the girl, too, is gone. I’m on my own again. I wonder if I imagined her. Or maybe she imagined me, and I’m the one who’s gone.
Reading “The Rain Song” by Badr Shakir al-Sayyab, with Dona Abbadi
Jordan-based author Dona Abbadi guides us through a reading of one of the most beloved poems in 20th-century Arabic literature, helping us translate between languages and across cultural, historical, and religious contexts, to better understand and appreciate the meaning of Al-Sayyab’s work.
Body/Cut: In Conversation with Stephanie Cortazzo
It is about the trials and tribulations of lovers who are set in a dismal, bleak universe—much like our current reality in NYC one could even argue. They are challenged to come to terms with each other and deal with various issues such as ego, conflicting decisions, and insecurities.
Testimony
Maybe in the future she’d embody the pure-feminine-ideal or something, but right now Suraj had to explain just who Judy was and why she killed herself…
Poems of Annie Blake (Part 2)
“Mothers should explain this to their daughters when they are too young…instead of folding church bulletins to make fans…”
Shiny Happy Lizard People
the biggest secret: REPTILIANS! United States lizard government / help. Bloodlines). people think they know
The Goddess as Active Listener (Parts 5–10)
When I remember Sue Castigliano, I think of almost naked dancers vaulting above the gold-tipped horns of Cretan bulls, to the sound of waves breaking in the distance. Wandering with the ghosts of an exploded island empire, I enter the doors of a library that I first thought was an octopus. When I think of her, I see wheat bound in sheaves…
Poems of Annie Blake (Part 1)
blackbirds rise like a word from a hot hovel / satis house and her letter / and her first wedding gown / fires blank and face clocks / my hands / their spell / swelling the mouth of a match / the stone thrown into the sea and circulatio /
The Goddess as Active Listener (Part 4)
“It is said that when the student is ready the teacher will appear. Luckily, the teacher may also choose to appear when the student is not at all ready. She drags him, if need be kicking and screaming, into a new, more direct, but also more paradoxical relationship with the self…”
The Goddess as Active Listener (Parts 1-3)
Are we meant to have certain experiences, or to connect with certain people rather than with others? The more romantic among us are used to thinking that there may be one true soul-mate for each person. It is less common to imagine that friends or teachers may also play their parts in this apparent drama of predestination.