If you know me (hi, all five of you), you know I’m obsessed with how water became privatized in the seventeenth and eighteen centuries. How did the source of life–abundant, common, spirit-matter—get transformed into a source of private profit? How did something people across cultures… Read More
Just Buffalo made live a recording of my poem “The Wound,” read in front of Rust Belt Books. Flatsitter recorded it on a day the wind was blowing hard across Lake Erie (and edited the video). Buffalo’s Noah Falck had much to do with making… Read More
Parable/Casa Del Popolo: in the early 1900s socialism was slowly gaining traction in Italy. In 1914 the people in Abbadia di Montepulciano elected its first socialist municipal councilor. Elites reacted against this minor socialist inroad. One form of this was their refusal to rent spaces… Read More
Dear child that I was, that has split from my anxiety wracked, grey-shot self and is wondering the hallways of my memories as they slowly distend, split, and crumble into the void between synapses–so dramatic! lockdown!–tell me a story about 2018. Sir, in 2018 you… Read More
In Pittsburgh, garbage workers walked-off the job, blocking city buildings with their trucks. They’re saving lives by taking away that vivid matter in which mingles what our bodies touch. They’re dumping that matter into a sort of shadow-polity–the dump, where we come together less than… Read More
[I’m wrecked in sadness. But I wrote this and figured I’d push it out–this mix of the past and present, the odds and ends of my scholarship that resonate with this moment. Nothing feels right right now but writing this is part of what I’ve… Read More
It’s a new day, the first on lockdown in New York State–Sunday, March 22. At 8 PM the Governor’s order to suspend almost everything and stay inside begins. In the morning, Buffalo’s skies are cloudless, eggshell blue, and cold. I’ve been thinking about hoarders and… Read More
