Tonight being the first night of Passover, let’s start off with Rachel Meirs’ graphic memoir “Ruth’s Kitchen,” published in Jewish Currents in 2021. It reminded me of a 1960s cookbook that my husband’s paternal grandma passed on to me, shortly before she died. (This was when I still had time to cook.) The recipes leaned
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Ev’ry eye shall now behold him Those dear tokens of his passion Still his dazzling body bears With what rapture, with what rapture, with what rapture, gaze we on those glorious scars!
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Serving 110% of that futuristic homosexual decadence, baby: I discovered the late great Nomi via Kristine Langley Mahler’s March Fadness essay on Taco’s cover of “Puttin’ on the Ritz”. Nomi was a gay German countertenor who fused electronica and opera with space-age vaudeville effects. Sadly, he was one of the first known figures from the
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This enigmatic character study by The Poet Spiel brings up some questions that are never far from my thoughts. When does ritual become neurosis? Can compulsion ever cross back into something sacred? The observers’ tenderness towards the solitary man in this poem suggests that his strange routines have summoned some blessing after all, though maybe
The Poet Spiel: “interpretive solo” Read More »
Happy February! Tomorrow is Imbolc, the midpoint between winter and summer. Of Celtic origin, the name means “in the belly of the Mother” because the seeds of spring are germinating in Mother Earth. At Reiter’s Block, every day is trans awareness day. EA Games came out with an update to The Sims 4 yesterday to
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So apparently M&Ms has retired its spokescandies after FOX News host Tucker Carlson complained they weren’t fuckable enough: Woke M&M’s have returned. The Green M&M got her boots back, but apparently is now a lesbian maybe? And there’s also a plus-sized, obese Purple M&M… M&M’s will not be satisfied until every last cartoon character is
Happy 2023, folks. My resolutions this year are to organize, downsize, and appreciate my resources. Because even when I was a woman, I didn’t need this many handbags. Caps for Sale! R.L. Maizes’ satire piece at Electric Literature, “On the Eighth Day God Attended a Writing Workshop,” imagines giving feedback on Genesis: Levi, flipping through
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A highly eventful year on the Block! Made My Bones: My third full-length poetry collection, Made Man, was published in March by Little Red Tree, with cover and interior artwork by friend-of-the-Block Tom W. Taylor a/k/a The Poet Spiel. Solstice Lit Mag calls it “a comitragic, day-glo accented, culture-hopping, snort-inducing, gender-interrogating rollercoaster of a ride.”
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Winning Writers subscriber Duane L. Herrmann emailed me with his latest poetry publications news for our newsletter, and we got to chatting about his Kansas farm and the chores he’s doing to prepare it for wintertime. When he used the phrase “enlarging the meadow,” I suggested it would be a good poem title. Now, here
Poetry by Duane L. Herrmann: “Enlarging the Meadow” Read More »
In my misspent youth, Princess Diana epitomized fairy-tale feminine perfection. I still have my Charles and Di royal wedding paper dolls. Now, watching Season 5 of “The Crown,” I see the people’s princess as a role model of a different kind, the family member who breaks the code of silence about emotional abuse and neglect.
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