The Murmuring Economies of My Rotten Carcass Tongue

• Not much time left in the season to remind you: Winter woods are prettiest.
• Moss is greening. Ferns are stirring. Briars are purpling.
• Here, the links I promised:
• Great Gearheads of Oligarchy.
• Adorno and The Clusterfuck.
• The century's greatest critic of capitalism.
• Socialist Survivalism.
• Unbrinksmanship.
• It's not about left and right.
• Attack of the extreme floods.
• Maggie's weekly links.
• { feuilleton }'s weekly links.
• New interview w William Vollmann.
• Szymborska.
• Doesn't work for me either, sophrosyne.
• Yes, brought back the old tag line up at top. 
• > deleted bleggalgaze <, or at least postponed.
• The new Borzutzky - you need read the prior Borzutzky before this. I know I've sent to some of you, if you ask nice and I like you let me turn you on.
• Found my Volcano the Bear stash.

LAKE MICHIGAN MERGES INTO THE BAY OF VALPARAISO, CHILE

Daniel Borzutzky

the reasons for which our blood is drawn in the prison camps of Lake Michigan are not communicated to us
 
the reasons for which we are imprisoned are also not communicated to us
 
it is often said on the shores of Lake Michigan, which is the bay of Valparaiso, that we will die for reasons we do not understand
 
we do not understand why we do not understand why we will die
 
we do not understand why we do not understand why we are imprisoned
 
we do not understand why we do not understand why we are paid or beaten or loved
 
we do not understand why last night the authoritative bodies loaded up four ships worth of prisoners and why those boats are half a mile away from the beach, booming dance music, baking in the summer sun
 
we do not understand why the authoritative bodies don't sweep the carcasses of the dead pets and washed up animals off the beaches on which we walk and sleep
 
we do not understand our relationship one body to another
 
at times the authoritative bodies tell us to touch each other
 
at times they tell us to feed each other
 
at times they tell us to beat each other
 
at times they tell us to pay each other
 
at times they tell us to protect each other
   
at times they tell us to kiss each other
 
at times they tell us to probe each other with forceps, needles, and wooden skewers
 
at times they force us to force each other to drink dirty purple milk and to eat rotten bread and vegetables
 
at times they tell us to stick juicy oranges into each other's mouths
 
at times they tell us to kick each other and call each other offensive names
 
at times they tell us to chew and swallow everything
 
at times they tell us to curse and laugh and hiss
 
at times they say: pretend you are an immigrant and hiss for us
 
at times they say: pretend you are not an immigrant and speak as if you are not a communist
 
or they say: your faces are organs of emotional communication: smile or frown or cry
 
or they say: pretend you are a machine and that you do not have a soul
 
or they say: you are nothing more than a piece of data to be aggregated, to be disaggregated, to be sliced and diced into the most minute units so that we can understand how the body and the city and the nation whir and wallow and tick
 
or they say: you are a human machine and you must explode
 
there is good money, they say, in emotional responsiveness
   
and at times they pay us when we laugh or snarl or cry
 
or they say: there is nothing to be gained from emotional responsiveness
   
so they beat us when we laugh or snarl or cry
 
and they say: you have shame in your eyeballs, you have love in your eyeballs, you have pain in your dimples, you have guilt in your mouth, abjection in your lips, joy in your nostrils, anger in your cheekbones, love in the bags under your eyes, passion in your eyebrows, fear in your chin, disgust in your forehead, disaster and promise and despair in the furrows of your face and in the murmuring economies on your rotten carcass tongue