Monthly Archives: October 2023

The Poet Spiel: “Glut”

Friend of the blog Tom W. Taylor a/k/a The Poet Spiel may be in his 80s, but his appetite for life remains strong, as the comic-horror poem below demonstrates. Have a tasty spooky season.

glut

six plate-size blueberry pancakes,
a half dozen eggs sunny side up
and a pound of bacon and sausage
serve as little more than a prompt
for a couple of fresh baked apples
drenched in cinnamon and butter
to start your day.
four fun-size baby ruth candy bars,
six butterfingers and one snickers bar
plus another baked apple
are only a prelude to
one whole bag of potato chips and
one cup of salty peanuts bathed in sugar —
not enough to pacify

your need to bite
into something that will satisfy
the rip and tear with teeth
your dentist has sharpened twice
in the past six months
because your penchant
for chewing has worn them down.

so you thaw a slab of pork loin
then slather it with honey sauce
and bake it in the same pan
you’ve used to bake the dozen apples
and turkey breasts you finished off
yesterday before the sun went down,
then topped that with your usual bedtime snack
of a bag of popcorn with catsup.

at noon you choke on soy free gluten free no wheat
angel hair noodles twisted round your uvula.
soon as your gagging fit ceases
you gulp a twelve ounce glass of milk
then shove down two large meatballs —
make that three or four, five or six
if you’ve got extras

all day every day and night
each bite of anything
persuades your saliva to bathe
the next bite of whatever
you’ve got ready-to-eat
in your pantry, fridge
and nuts and candy jars.

so look out
mister 300 pound footballer
with thighs like a side of beef,
if you wander into view,
be advised a fork and butcher knife
are in hand.

Spooktober Reading Roundup

I love horror. Not gore, so much, but the creepy stuff. Give me dark family psychology (gee I wonder why), cursed objects from dusty archives, the uncanny blankness of our modern built environment and the soulless things lurking beneath its plastic surfaces. Lately I’m especially drawn to historical atrocities with a supernatural twist, a sub-genre where a lot of writers of color are currently making their mark.

I read every horror anthology I could get my hands on in the 80s and 90s, mostly from school and public libraries because our family was broke. I knew I was “movin’ on up…,” as The Jeffersons theme song went, when I could afford to buy the annual Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror trade paperback for $25.

Nowadays I get most of my literary scares from NetGalley or thrift stores, a nice mix of old and new. Honestly sometimes the most chilling aspect of these pulp paperbacks is how much sexism and homophobia you could get away with in the 1990s.

Certain flavors of horror don’t appeal to me, but this is my personal taste rather than an aesthetic pronouncement. I don’t usually pick up zombie stories because (I assume) they will be gross and violent. Same for serial killers, whose psychology is not as interesting as they themselves think it is. I can’t picture myself as a character in a post-apocalyptic survival novel, because it’s drearily obvious that I would immediately die from falling into a hole, just like I do in Minecraft every time my son demands that I play. Or else I’d be the person killed and eaten by my starving companions in the first week for complaining too much about the lack of flush toilets.

With respect to horror fiction based on real-life historical injustices, I find these books uniquely satisfying because they have a purpose beyond momentary thrills. I learned about the Negro Travelers’ Green Book from Lovecraft Country. Victor LaValle’s cosmic horror Western Lone Women, one of the best books I read this year, taught me about the diversity of 19th-century frontier homesteaders. Often, the terror and suspense in these books arise from oppressive forces that persist in the present day. The ghosts and monsters, on the other hand, may be a powerless group’s unlikely allies. If cosmic justice isn’t forthcoming, at least coding these stories as horror is refreshing in its honesty, compared to the whitewashed narratives of progress in our “realistic” history books.

A standout in this category is Tananarive Due’s The Reformatory, coming out Oct. 31 from Gallery/Saga Press. Set in rural Florida in 1950, it’s based on a horrendous “reform school” where one of her ancestors perished as a teenager. Robbie, the 12-year-old son of a Black labor activist, is sent there on trumped-up charges to bring his father out of hiding. The sadistic warden takes a special interest in the boy because he can see the ghosts of other young inmates who were killed by beatings, rape, and hard labor. Capturing the ghosts will allow the warden to cover up his crimes. In return, maybe he’ll let Robbie go free. But the ghosts are going to make Robbie a counter-offer that he’s afraid to refuse.

This week in Jessica Dore’s Tarot newsletter, I came across a citation to Saidiya Hartman’s essay “Venus in Two Acts”, which is a meditation on the simultaneous impossibility and necessity of reconstructing the voices of sexually exploited female slaves. Hartman’s remarks about the archives’ “libidinal investment in violence” resonated with themes in The Reformatory, where the warden keeps a secret stash of photos of the boys he’s abused. Robbie and his allies hope to use this evidence against their tormentor, yet they know there’s no guarantee that the images will inspire empathy, let alone effective action from the authorities. The archive is contagious and uncontrollable as the Necronomicon, titillating the white gaze, while infecting Black viewers with further traumatic images.

Comedian and horror movie director (a combo that makes sense if you think about it) Jordan Peele is the editor of Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror, just published last week. This one was a mixed bag, for me, with some amazing stories and others that didn’t have enough of a point, but I recommend checking it out anyhow. Tananarive Due contributes another solid tale based on Jim Crow history, this time about Freedom Riders seeking supernatural aid to fend off white supremacists. Nnedi Okorafor’s elegiac story of a Nigerian-American haunted by an Old World deity contains a wry moment when two white Karens in her neighborhood see the monstrous figure in her driveway and demand that she show them her parade permit! You may see the twist coming in Terence Taylor’s virtual-reality nightmare “Your Happy Place” but it’s no less horrifying, because you know that if the technology existed, America would happily sign onto this method of extracting prison labor.

Also out this month, Raul Palma’s A Haunting in Hialeah Gardens (Dutton) is a tragicomic ghost story about an impoverished Santeria priest in Miami who promises to exorcise his debt-collection lawyer’s McMansion in exchange for loan forgiveness. The book is both a Dickensian satire of capitalism and a poignant exploration of survivor guilt, as the priest learns that some emotional debts must be lived with, not expunged.

A pulp anthology that deserves to be rediscovered is Women of Darkness (Tor/Tom Doherty Assocs., 1988), edited by Kathryn Ptacek. Intentionally feminist without being didactic, this collection of horror stories by then-contemporary women writers holds up better than its male-dominated counterparts from this era. Lisa Tuttle’s haunting yet humorous tale “The Spirit Cabinet” reminds me of Carmen Maria Machado’s “The Husband Stitch” in how even a nice husband can dismiss his wife’s perceptions, with fatal consequences. Kit Reed’s “Baby” explores the darker side of the all-consuming bond between mother and child. Elizabeth Massie’s grotesque “Hooked on Buzzer” deals karmic revenge to people who exploited a disabled young woman.

From the same period (and batch of tag-sale paperbacks), I enjoyed Shadows 6 (Berkley Books, 1983), edited by Charles L. Grant, and Supernatural Sleuths (Roc, 1996), edited by Martin H. Greenberg…but with the caveat that both include some cringey sexism and ethnic stereotypes. Some of the new-to-me authors whose work I especially liked were Leslie A. Horvitz, Jack Ritchie, and Lee Killough.

The anthology Dark Fantasies (Legend, 1989), edited by Chris Morgan, evokes the gritty and despondent vibes of Thatcherite Britain, with contributions by Ramsey Campbell, Nicholas Royle, Tanith Lee, Lisa Tuttle, Ian Watson, and others. In a lot of these tales, you’re not sure if something supernatural is happening or the characters have had a psychological breakdown, but either option is suitably unsettling.

Out of Tune, Book 2 (JournalStone, 2016), edited by Jonathan Maberry, is an anthology of horror and dark fantasy stories that each take inspiration from a spooky folk song or murder ballad. Books organized around a gimmick tend to be uneven in quality but this one, in my opinion, was consistently strong. Contributors include Cherie Priest, Delilah S. Dawson, and David J. Schow. Pretty sure I got this one at the NecronomiCon Providence vendor hall in 2017. The Young Master has graduated from “Paw Patrol” to “Wednesday Addams” (and not a moment too soon) so the stars may align for a family trip to NecronomiCon next August.

Just another Sunday afternoon in Northampton.

October Links Roundup: 78 Degrees

Happy Spooktober!

Pumpkins by Shane.

My inner 12-year-old would like to remind you that October 2 is the 571st birthday of King Richard III. Follow efforts to clear his name at The Missing Princes Project.

78 degrees is how hot it’s expected to be today in Northampton. Thanks, global warming! It’s also a reference to the godmother of the modern Tarot renaissance, Rachel Pollack, whose book 78 Degrees of Wisdom blended psychology, mysticism, and and literary iconography to inspire deeper relationships with the cards. At Xtra Magazine, Jude Doyle assesses Pollack’s legacy as a pioneer of trans-inclusive feminist spirituality:

Here, from Pollack’s self-designed deck the Shining Tribe, is her description of the Emperor: “A number of modern tarot decks have taken on the issue of patriarchal culture. They have tended to see the Emperor as a kind of villain, with gentle, childlike males as an alternative. Such images both belittle men and demonize them.” Instead, Pollack offered, women who drew the Emperor card might try to see themselves in it: “It might be a strong experience to imagine ourselves as the Emperor. What might it be like to contain and express such power and determination?”

The Hierophant is changed to the gender-neutral “Tradition,” and that is that. It seems to be as close as Pollack ever got to a direct rebuke of her peers’ transmisogyny. Yet that tiny tweak—don’t look for male power, look for your power—changes everything about how people see these cards, and therefore, how they think about gender and power when reading them…

…Her biggest contribution to women’s spirituality, The Body of the Goddess, waspublished in 1997. For a trans woman to write a book on Goddess worship in the mid-’90s was gutsy. For a trans woman to call that book The Body of the Goddessis fucking bonkers. It’s mind-blowing. It gets more so when you open the book and find that Pollack’s Goddess not only likes trans women; she is one herself.

Pollack doesn’t ignore menstruation or childbirth as aspects of female embodiment, but she doesn’t stop there either. She also locates trans and gender-fluid goddesses throughout mythology. Some—like the intersex goddess Cybele and her likely transfeminine priestesses, the Galli—are canonical. Others are creative interpretations of existing myth: Pollack notes that the Greek goddess of love, Aphrodite, is “created” when a male God named Ouranos loses his genitalia. Afterward, Ouranos essentially disappears, and a brand-new, very feminine Goddess arises to replace him.

Even trans guys get a turn. Pollack tells us that Dionysus, the Greek god of wine, madness and ecstasy, was raised as a girl and was sometimes known as “the Womanly One” for his feminine looks and unusual kindness to women. In a 1995 essay for TransSisters, she gets even more detailed: Dionysus “went mad in adolescence,” was cured by Cybele, and went on to become an androgynous he/him whose myths portrayed him liberating people of all genders from the patriarchy. At rituals, Pollack tells us, “his male followers would dress as women, [and] his female followers would strap on large phalluses,” suggesting that liberation took a highly recognizable form.

Humorist Daniel Lavery is another of my favorite theologians, capering madly along that line between farce and horror. See, for instance, his questionnaire at The Stopgap, “Do You Think the Creator God Is Doing a Good Job, or Should Be Replaced by a Big Sheep or a Demiurge?” Bring back the formless void!

Gay provocateur playwright Joe Orton (1933-67) apparently had a sideline in altering library books to add satirical and bawdy images, then sneaking them back onto the shelves. You can see samples from the collection online. Not that I’m recommending you do this…

But there’s a hole just waiting to be filled.

“It’s both mystical and humiliating how your novel can know things before you yourself know them,” says the author of the queer coming-of-age novel Idlewild in this recent article at LitHub, “James Frankie Thomas on Discovering His Trans Identity While Writing Fiction”. Yeah, I know how you feel. Thomas describes a writing workshop, pre-transition, where the teacher and classmates criticized him for being coy about a self-insert character’s gender identity:

In all seriousness, I prided myself on my well-observed portrayal of teen girlhood in the early 2000s—specifically the way teen girls back then were consumed with the desire to be gay men. That was something you just never saw in fiction about teen girls, but Idlewild was going to change that. From the very first page, on which I introduced Fay as “a gay dude trapped in a female body,” I plumbed my memories of my own adolescence for universal truths about teen girlhood…

“Why not make it explicit from the start? What’s gained by withholding such important information about the character?”

And I wasn’t allowed to speak, so I just had to sit there and take it over and over. I was so flabbergasted, I bet you could see a giant cartoon exclamation point floating over my head. How had my entire workshop read my novel so wrong? Stranger still, how had they all read it wrong in the exact same way? There was only one possible explanation, something I’d long suspected but never dared to admit out loud: Everyone was stupid except me.

For what it’s worth, I also see myself in Richard Siken’s new poem “Pornography” in DIAGRAM Issue 23.4: “I want to fuck everything but I don’t want to be touched.”

Perhaps this is related, perhaps not: In the journal Frontiers in Psychiatry, researchers Kristen Bottema-Beutel et al. question the objectivity of neurotypical researchers in their paper “Anti-ableism and scientific accuracy in autism research: a false dichotomy”.

Autism research focuses almost exclusively on autistic people’s perceived deficits relative to non-autistic people, and researchers rarely acknowledge that autistic people have strengths and abilities in addition to impairments, and exist in contexts that enable or disable functioning. Autistic people are often inaccurately described as missing core human capacities, and as incapable of social reciprocity or contributing to shared culture. Deficit construals persist even when autistic people show strengths in domains that would otherwise be considered positive, such as transparency, rationality, and morality.

The researchers argue that we can move away from these negative presumptions without sacrificing accuracy. They survey some now-debunked but still influential theories of autism’s causes, such as vaccines and insecure maternal attachment, which were considered objective but were demonstrably influenced by sociopolitical forces (e.g. backlash to mothers working outside the home). They also suggest that due to neurotypical researchers’ assumptions, common autistic behaviors like hand-flapping and echolalia have been dismissed as meaningless compulsions, when truly open-minded observation would reveal their communicative functions and nuances.

Speaking of repetition, this Missouri Review essay by Caitlin Horrocks, “Lullaby Machines”, reminded me of the hallucinatory early months of parenting the Young Master. Horrocks reminisces about trying to work, sleep, and stay sane while playing the same lullaby album 20,000 times. When Adam and I were reading up on parenting, one of the sleep-training books told us to keep a consistent routine. Baby Shane seemed to respond to this Spotify album of Celtic Harp Lullabies. Well, we played that thing on the iPad in his room every night for three or four years. We took it with us when we traveled. I used to joke that someday, as an adult, Shane would be at a harp concert with his boyfriend or girlfriend, “Woman of Ireland” would start playing, and he would have a Pavlovian urge to fall asleep and/or poop his pants.

Listen at your own risk.