She is holding an orange. Warszawa, Poland, 1956. Wolfgang Schröter

In an ancient forest, shallow pools reflect not the trees above, but a luminous city of elsewhere.

Nine Inch Nails Tour Pick (1990s) ⌁ “There’s No Such Thing As Fake Tits”

Maker: Herter Brothers (German, active New York, 1864–1906)                Date:1879–82                                                                                     Geography: Made in New York, New York, United States 

YEAH!!!!!!

Watching someone on TV Means all they have to do Is press ‘pause’ If they want to boil a kettle, While my mother holds her breath on screen To finish dying after tea. The filmmakers have collected The body parts, They want me to see. They require dressings to cover the joins And disguise the prosthetics In their remake of my mother. They want to use her poetry As stitching and sutures To give it credibility. They think I should love it – Having her back again, they think I should give them my mother’s words To fill the mouth of their monster, Their Sylvia Suicide Doll, Who will walk and talk And die at will, And die, and die And forever be dying.

Mongolia. Roger Chapman

This summer, we drank cardamom iced tea sweetened with agave — savoring an idea of sweetness lingering, not as if we actually ate honey from the lovely overflow of  liquid summer heat and soft beeswax tongued with a wedge of spanakopita and a platter of shaved lamb strewn on pita bread with yogurt cucumber dip — glistening slices of salmon topped by edamame, wakame seaweed, crushed macadamia nuts mingled with black sesame on beds of rice, and steaming cups of chai with black tea and milk, loose-leaf sencha, and chunks of sea bass with a tossed mesclun of tender greens garnished by crisp curls of chicharrónes and chopped beet salad with tart beets—the mellow gold ones soaked in wine vinegar, dressed with tendrils of microgreens — corollas of night-blooming honeysuckle and star jasmine flaming with small cups of  heady fumes wafting on trellises across the lot with a walk-in hair salon and laundromat — then avocados with eggs-over-easy in hollandaise sauce over muffins alongside triangles of toast dipped in yolks beaten with cinnamon, and flavorful black coffee with a drop of fresh cream, quiche with crimini mushrooms, feta, swiss cheese, not leeks or truffles, shot through with julienned sundried tomatoes the color of stop signs, and mocha spiced with chili, black pepper, chocolate, cardamom again by a plate of smoked salmon and capers, ricotta, buttery arugula, and baby spinach drizzled with olive oil on thin sourdough toast in glowing strokes of  late June light fringed by the noise of peninsula traffic on the harbor laced by grease and silt from the machinery of  life — the sea isn’t far away though only gulls could spy it from here — so why don’t we walk all the way to the inlet of the marina, a landing where children play in the fading light blanched on grassy edges as if already a memory of summer within summer — and you say, with the air of a prophet who ate locusts and honey, join me in the place where lives are bound together by a cord of three strands.

tomato