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| Caroline Crumpacker To An Anonymous Friend April 2004 Friend, your thinking relies heavily on indigenous speech Indigenous to what you ask? to where you ask? indicating the limits of territory  (speech)and the limits of geography cleave to the limits of class. Friend,why are we speaking at once and as one? Meaning that the rooms of a Chain Hotel in their evisceration of placetheir evocation of"place"cause the symptoms of psychotic break and soothe these symptoms. Bad mothering is a template for the Chain Hotel. The hotel is a bad mother in our name. All medication is a bad mother in our name. Justice, commerce and language also, in our name. Meaning, each corner of endeavor shall be harnessed for the national good. Friend, What is your nation and what is its good? Is it the Chain Hotel? Is it the tourist economy? A seductress has entered your hotel room. She is free with the country at hand. She is your fantasy of your country at hand. She takes you in. She gives you drinks that taste familiar, as if you read about themin a story. Soon, you think she is your mother. Soon you think she is a virgin. Soon you want her to stay up all night. The Chain Hotel is suing the country you are in. You remember this, drinking in a foreign tongue. You say "Nada más." You say "No merci." You say "Bitte" and then you fallinto characters and hieroglyphs.This is how they like it here, wherever you are. Disoriented. They like you to think that you are at home. This country is… no, the trees, the water, the jars of amphibians all indicate that it is not… home. Friend, what is your home? Am I a function of your home? Is this a writing through of that idea from onset to destruction? Friend, walk into the next room. It’s just like the one you are in. Friend, I’m in there, drunkand full of theoriesOh, don’t be scared.In this environment, nothing that easy can touch you.So, come in. I will look like the room. I will smell like the countless transactions of this room upon the idea of this room. Outside, the dictatorship, the populace, the misery will rustle and I will protect you.I will pick up the service phone and say "Stop that rustling." and a voice in your head that has always been in your head but also outsidewill say "Yes, ma’am."Caroline Crumpacker is a poet living in Brooklyn. She is a poetry editor for FENCE Magazine and the curator of the bilingual reading series at the Bowery Poetry Club. |
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Out now: |
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The Rail invites you to a reading with Jason Flores-Williams and Brian Carreira, along with musical guest Steve Strunsky of the Lonesome Prairie Dogs. Thurs., Sept. 22, 8:30 p.m. Vox Pop--Flatbush, Brooklyn www.voxpop.net |
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OFF THE RAIL FALL 2005 at the Central Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library - Grand Army Plaza |
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The Independent Press Association-NY recently honored The Brooklyn Rail with the following awards: |