by Mark Bibbins, Editor

Tributary

Either everything’s a valley, a jelly donut
dimpled down the middle, or else everything’s

a collision of plates, crustal thickening on its way
toward muscled mountains. Either everything’s way,

way, beyond mid-gallop or a rundown shack haystack-
still, a dog-patch immobilizing glory, gumption, get up

and go. Either everything’s a sandy path leading
to a dune-saving fence or nothing’s guarded, out of reach.

Which is worse: too many walls or not enough,
the laciness of shams or an endless hallway of bare

jalousies, dead fly lounging on each lone pane?
Everything’s a spider, filling up on gnats, building/

breaking its web; that is, unless nothing’s a spider,
including the spider whose web is a map. Either

everything is happening or it’s quieter than a feeder
bereft of its pecking/twirling flicker. Either everyone

is needing something, a jump or a stroke, or else
it’s a mojito in the lotus position, cancer punching

its melanomic clock. Neuron for neuron, fly brains
outclass the ones loaded down with game change,

watershed moment, tipping point

. Also, haven’t yet
figured out how to navigate by the stars.

Martha Silano is the author of four books of poetry: What the Truth Tastes Like (Nightshade Press, 1999), Blue Positive (Steel Toe Books, 2006), The Little Office of the Immaculate Conception (Saturnalia Books, 2011) and Reckless Lovely (Saturnalia Books, 2014).

You will find more poems here. You may contact the editor at poems@theawl.com.

“Several photogenic felines from the five boroughs are featured in the traveling 2013 Internet Cat Video Festival, landing in Brooklyn Friday.”

Have they turned on your heat yet? I can hear mine bubbling up as we speak, which means it is almost the time where I have to experiment with various configurations of opened windows to maintain some kind of balance between completely freezing and coma-inducing heat. We are about to enter an era in which everyone’s skin is super-dry and nobody says anything about it because we are all in the same boat. You will touch that pipe with the paint peeling off by accident and not do it again all year because it burns you so badly. We are entering the cold season. I personally cannot get enough. The smell of smoke in the air that tells you winter is coming? Bring it on! The pile of dead leaves clogging up the gutter? They cover the smell of urine! Drinking outdoors in heavy coats? What autumn is all about! This is indeed my favorite season, but I know some of you like warmer, springier times. Maybe this song, from a band I’ve never heard of, is upbeat enough to lift your spirits. I mean, I think you’re crazy, this is the best time ever, but I guess it takes all kinds to make a world. [Via]

“England’s chief medical officer has said the public should feel ‘profoundly ashamed’ of a ‘very worrying picture’ of children’s health and called for the scheme of free vitamins to be extended to all under-fives to tackle the return of rickets.”

I am still not sure how I feel about Norman Rush’s Subtle Bodies but the fact that I am still thinking about it a month after I expressed similar doubts should be a pretty good indication that is it a book worth reading. Norman Rush himself is 80 today, which is a remarkable achievement in and of itself. Who cares what a bunch of idiots say about his book? He’s done 79 full years of this crap and has somehow decided to stick with it. The least you could do is get his new novel.

Would you like to have your mind blown? Let Jay Jay French, the guitarist for Twisted Sister, tell you about their 41-year plot for riches and domination:

A well-run company should be an iceberg. The product you sell is the tip. But underneath the surface lies your expertise. We’re great performers. “We’re Not Gonna Take It” and “I Wanna Rock” were so iconic they were almost equivalent to “We Will Rock You” or “We are the Champions” by Queen. So we started to license them. Now we’ve done hundreds and hundreds of commercials.

Mmm hmm. And:

In the back of our minds, we wanted to become famous. When we saw the coming of the Judas Priest, AC/DC trend, we loved it. We adapted to that and kept on firing band members for drug and alcohol abuse…. The bottom line is we kept firing members who got in the way of the goal. I managed the band, and we were turned down more times than a bedsheet in a whorehouse once we started to pursue a record deal.

(Also you should read his Wikipedia page? It’s nuts!)

Strictly from a semantic standpoint I would question the use of both “urgent” and “news” here but otherwise there is much to be enjoyed here.

“Thanks to a plan by President Obama to create a ‘unisex’ look for the Corps, officials are on the verge of swapping out the Marines’ iconic caps with a new hat that some have derided as so ‘girly’ that they would make the French blush,” reports the New York Post in an EXCLUSIVE so juicy you need to bow down in awe before the crack reporting squad that blew the lid off a story the government doesn’t want you to know about for their courage in speaking truth to power no matter what the consequences. The last time I checked it only took two comments in for a Post reader to use the word “pansies” in reference to the report, but that was a couple of minutes ago so I can only imagine the kind of elevated discourse that has subsequently emerged.

Today, one Countrywide exec was named as actively perpetrating fraud, and current owner Bank of America was mildly fined. It begins! Or… maybe it ends.

In case you missed this last night on “All In With Chris Hayes,” and you possibly did… Alexis Goldstein totally WENT OFF on JP Morgan and Wall Street and it was delightful. (Also it was set up with the best Alex Pareene clip, which is wonderful.) The poor banker dude tried to get in that like “Oh if we prosecute bankers then the banks won’t loan!” Which is hilarious, since… the banks really did give up on a lot of loaning — not just in the U.S. but all around the world.

★★ Marigolds in bloom sat in their planting beds at the feet of honey locusts gone yellow. The sun passed unevenly through a field of white clouds not quite fused together over the blue. For all the sweaters and wool and puffy coats out on the street, the chill had been blunted by late morning, and the air was mild and damp. By early afternoon the sky had grayed over, and isolated drops were falling. Then off it all went, and the chill came on. A couple struggled to bundle a baby into its stroller, among all its baby wrappings.