SUPER SPECTACULAR

“The Mystery of the Seagulls”by Ana Božičević in Rise in the Fall

Please love mewhile there’s still days. I’ll never have that breakthroughlet’s face it, I’ll stay just like this, a little fish, no I mean a dreamhere and there - I’ll keep making likeI have personality, not thislittle steady flamein a darkened field. With the wheat bunched up for baling. No,I’ll never be that sexy. Never to seduce you &always cry bitterly at advice columns - I cry to think all those people are just as ugly as meand on the insidethey’re getting their big breakin front of gleaming listeningshipyardsI love how lonely it is out on this ocean. Can I tell you a story?A story:the big fish jumped and grabbedthe gull of today.She swallowed. She jumped again butthe gull of tomorrowstepped back; she kept at it and he was alwaysjust out of sync - This is not how it’s supposedto go, fish said. Anyway, what kind of tomorrowcan you have without today? Justsayin - And at that same moment millions of plastic bitssettled on your plateon the table in the middle of the ocean…What?The waving tablecloth, the waves. Where’severyone? You ate all yourdinner companions, and now -open the book in front of you. It says:the world gave itself to youbut you didn’t giveyou, grasshopper, back: ah so. This suffering. Is it always a kind of gift?After the rapture, amid the lions and the limnsyou’ll see me and know thatme being into youwas me being into the world. Are you as into the worldas the world is into you? No, I’m not being weird.What I’m saying is, there is a sustainable energy. My greataunt, for example, the way she bunchedhay at the base of that little pear treeto safeproof it from drought. She could barely walk - but it was the kind of thing you could see from the moonandas I walked away from her house Ican’t explain it, the trees were screaming,a finger pressed from the skydown on the field the whole of whichwas my sex. And earlier in her room I felt like pukingwhen she told meshe saw only a big light in front of mebut instead of the big light I walked intobig silence andthere you stood. End of story.Is this what you meantwhen you said we should watch some porn together?When the smoke clearedI could see the field upskirt all the way to the end of tomorrow. Westood a little to the side of it,cicadas next to their old driedshell. The sky there’s classic blue, the campanile goes offin the Croatian Savannah morning, and franklythis tomorrow can take care of itself - we’ll know how to be old. What I needus to be now is nudes,painted by no-one. Don’t you see the museums are just giant strip clubsand the backyard’s the gallery where you can touchevery single work - there’s no-one hereto tell us how to do this, except forthe millions of idolsglimmering fluttering turning I’m staying in this day becauseall my friends are still here.

The Trigger Warning Myth, Aaron R. Hanlon.

it frankly baffles me that I’ve almost never seen people recognizing that “hey, here’s a preview of what we’re going to discuss next week” (’trigger warning’ buzzword optional) is good pedagogy, and so many of these professors who are very Defensive about being emotionally harmful to their students have a disproportionate sense of self-importance (and a really bad idea of what education is about). the material teachers use is not a surprise to be inflicted upon their students; classrooms are not places for them to “blow their students’ minds.” 

Vera Pavlova, adding to our ongoing archive of advice on writing.

Complement with Ezra Pound’s don'ts for budding poets and how to read a poem.