NATH0301 and RIFT03.01 are copyright (c) 1994. See below for full notice. Click here for EPC HOTLIST


<TENNEY NATHANSON>

MADAME BOVARY, THE NATIONAL INQUIRER, CAPITAL, AND THE HARDY BOYS, PUBLISHED FOR THE FIRST TIME TOGETHER IN A SINGLE VOLUME

1.
here is an equivalent stretch of sand
or an equivalent stretch of sand
to the paper of this word
fired like glass
then fired like glass and perused
wattles everywhere
with splayed mud giving it torsion in parts
here's some sand in your glass
here's some mud in your eye
as equivalence stretches the breaking point
like a list including itself as one of its minor items
all had been well with the big engine of its dream

2.
this is a definition of sand
when it's glass
when its glass is full
say water transfixed by a beach honed by sunshine, tarmacked
     by spray or osprey
in the vicinity of stone platelets
if it's full of mud then its hermetic definition is dirty
and full of pestilence and war
and the tawdry business of modern party politics
athwart the class struggle with a finger up its nose

if it's full of sand then it's full of itself
as the poem is too
till it turns and addresses its friends
yes otherwise it would be full of words
like the pasta is full of garlic
when it addresses you
you appear
what a truly fine instance
apple of eye pride of the yankees
who are legion
like an engine of glass and sand
breaking down components into components
to replenish themselves for breakfast

3.
the thing that's disgraceful is the sun on the avenue in
     broad daylight
in disgrace
yes the thing that's disgraceful is disgrace
or the sun feeling its disgrace
like a blinding light in its eyes
and sand all over the privates
near a dirt road leading to a dune where the ocean shines
     like spanking mud
dark familiar of our old familiar wind
and sand made of grains not yet spanked down
as a definition reduces everything to rubble
--shrubs belch, water farts, sand wallops--
surpassing expectation.  Yet grammar rules the streets as
     waves generate abysmal syntax
in the right hand of an immense body whose left hand
we have not yet seen nor even, truly, imagined.
But we are in bed all the same.
Hence grammar might rule /in/ the streets, they said
in the form of its own demise----Baron Haussman sandbagged
     it:
huge vistas that usher in modernism
city of dreams,  erection  (1850-1860)
with no barricades across its freely promenaded boulevards
eventually painted in day-glo with cropped arches.
What calls this into question is nothing nobody didn't say
with regard to structure
but might have
while it whooped
like geese in a bed marking the proper end of eros
as eros

4.
for this operation, the carceral apparatus has recourse to
     three great schemata: the politico-moral schema of 
     individual isolation and hierarchy; the economic 
     model of force applied to compulsory work; the 
     technico-medical model of cure and normalization.

5.
Washington's Irish Hotel
America's silent racism
how to transform an economy [copyright] The New York Times
Niece of Lenin opposes burial, calls for vote
bitter sexual communication might lead to an earlier climax
that's better
Hawaii defeats New Mexico
weights
and measures
Messner started lifting at 18
smoked cigarettes constantly
than going soaking in a bar."

Maquiladora impact

they feel so much better after just

Living isn't easy for border shantytown residents
Lorenia worked at the maquiladoras for several years before
     rashes on her skin began
erupting into ulcers, and her nervous system became
     strained.
There is no water, electricity, or sewer hookup available
     for their home.
The town now supports more than 70 industrial plants that
     employ more than 18,000 people, a significant
     proportion of the city's work force.  They make
     manufactured goods of all kinds from sunglasses 
     to  microprocessors.
Once a week an army tanker comes by and fills the three 50
     gallon drums, formerly chemical containers used by the
     maquilas, the family uses for its water supply.
In Nogales, an entry level maquila worker can expect to make
     slightly more than $40 a week, while in Agua Prieta the
     entry level salaries are about $28 a week.
Tirado blamed federal minimum wage policy for the low pay at
     the maquilas, and noted that many manufacturers provide
     experienced workers with bonuses, housing, and other
     perks to compensate for the low salaries.
By Ignacio Ibarra.


6.
Teaching Like it Matters
A modest proposal for revolutionizing the classroom
by Jane Tompkins
Last spring I taught a course in a subject I had been
     wanting to explore but knew little about: The
     subject was emotion
I find that my classes are better
The students have more to say
I learned from this class that every student in every class
     one "teaches" is a live volcano, or, as James Taylor
     puts it in his song, "a churnin' urn o' burnin' funk."
     There is no one thing that follows from this discovery
This was the most amazing course I've ever taught--or
     rather never taught--because each class was
     taught by the students.
but for me it means that I can never teach in the old way
     again.
Jane Tompkins is a professor of English at Duke University
     and the author of /Sensational Designs: The Cultural
     Work of American Fiction 1790-1860/ and the
     forthcoming West of Everything.  This article--
     Copyright 1990 by the National Council of Teacher
      of English.  Reprinted with permission.

Elvis sightings
Literature is news that /stays/ news.

7.
How did James Hegwood Jr.
--an intelligent, articulate graduate of Tucson High
     School--
become a convicted serial rapist?

8.
Under the pig factory
You gave me your diamonds (studs) like a great change of
     heart
glittering flowers in my hands, mind and pig
the tears like elves
in dirt     then stuccoed pig
in garden
--not a pig garden--
a big foot under the snow
promenading or marauding line
a snow line
and my spirit so high it was all over the pig (heavens!)
And before the end of the day we were scattered like stars,
     or rain.
Pigs dancing in transparent brocade
Pigs lifting the song, and interrupting it,
Tossing it up under the clouds.
     And all this comes to an end.
     And is not again to be met with.
Pigs painted green are a fine sight in young moonlight,
Gracefully painted--
Mr. Pig.  Well it was the latest "who done it"
in those days, /terza rima/ or blank verse
till Dante wrote that double sestina
and /that/ just about stuffed it.
See?


9.
"'See?'  I see nothing but you."
And the truth of it had with this force after a moment so
     strangely lighted her eyes that as for pity and
     dread of them

sacred and profane.
But /whose/?


10.
Moreover, they have a power of attraction that is felt by
     other copper objects

11.
the hair on your balls.
This amounts to saying that, although the penalty must be
     individualized, it is so not on the basis of the
     individual-offender, but on the basis of the individual
     punished, the object of a supervised transformation,
     the individual in detention inserted in the prison
     apparatus, modified by or reacting to it.

12.
You were cute.
Root a toot toot.

13.
Jim had been thrown then back into the slime with the rest
     of the pustular citizenry, each in its allotted beenie,
     clutching one of those Fourth of July jimcracks in a
     grimy and avid hand, whatchamacallits for wind, rutting
     in the air like stars, saw your damn ass off, like
     born-again persons
We can therefore see where this force resides.  It is one
     that is both mystical and practical, one that ties clans
     together and at the same time divides them, that
     divides their labour, and at the same time constrains
     them to carry out exchange
well yes
trying not just to talk but to actually tell the truth with
     an unspecified body part in the mouth again
just as wealth attracts wealth, or dignities bring honours
     in their train, as well as the possession of spirits and
     fruitful alliances
that's honours with a "u"
as in buttocks or "buttered" bread
All that will then remain to be done will be to show how
     these collective forces are produced
like cereal
rampant obscenity stalking its own mouth for breakfast
next to a desert sky rendered in shit
(/The Accursed Share, Volume I/):
and the object itself had the radiance of glory
Destruction the best means of negating the utilitarian
     relation between man and the animal or plant.  But it rarely
     goes to the point of holocaust
don't be too modest now
well in acrylic
a desert sky rendered in air
next to a car wash
emitting a constant stream of throats
lozenges
I have felt obliged for some obscure reason to swallow
but give to you now
on behalf of jurisprudence, teaching, and the other liberal
     professions
My tongue.

Which gland most closely resembles the gross national
     product?
Which heart most closely resembles its sleeve?

The sleeve of rain dipped down
putting an end to the glittering dream of communication
as sleep is disturbed by dreams
sliding scales
in which the entire landscape
--with its melons, tar, breasts, rats, moles, coiffure,
     nails, electric trains, derricks, erector sets,
and rubble resembling that made by dentists in mines--
are the dreamer's own body
tangled in the body of desire
with the cricket singing in the ashen hair
One evening near the statue of Etienne Marcel
Andre Breton it said pass

14.
CIBUTA, Sonora
Two young Mexican entrepreneurs are using their knowledge of
     the Mexican culture and succeeding in the maquiladora
     industry, an arena dominated by foreign investors.
The two got their start four years ago when a sports
     fisherman approached them with a problem.
     How do you weigh a fish when the boat is rising and falling
     on the waves, and the scale is doing the same?
Juan Garcin, president of MICRO-MEX/DEMSA, said he and his
     childhood schoolmate, Antonio Perez-Vargas, pay workers
     entry-level salaries of 150,000 pesos, or $51, a week,
     about $10.35 more than the entry level at Nogales
     maquilas and $23 more than those at Agua Prieta.
"We respect our workers . . . they're excited, appreciate
     the work, and they work hard for us," Garcin said at the
     company's grand opening last Monday of its plant in
     Cibuta.
Garcin, 28, and Perez-Vargas, 27, got their start by using
     their training as electrical engineers to design a
     microprocessor-equipped scale that allows fishermen to
know the weight of each fish long before they reach the dock.
By Ignacio Ibarra.

And who better to whisk you to this island of surprises than
     Singapore Airlines.

15.
a lone car drives down the Gates Pass Road, winding through
     saguaros and ocotillos
and enters the Sonoran Desert
as the credits roll
and in the audience waves slap, now blithely now in apparent
     disgust, against the rising walls of their chairs

as elsewhere the voice is rage

16.
You say he's a relative
some hope
if he's your uncle
I'm the pope

[copyright] 1988 Capitol Records for Richard Thompson
 


RIF/T: An Electronic Space for Poetry, Prose, and Poetics
Editors: Kenneth Sherwood and Loss Pequeño Glazier
ISSN#: 1070-0072
Version 3.1 Summer 1994


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