Most Hustle & Desire

Only one question, one test of intelligence remains: Can a computer love? When I think of the communist poet of love, I think of Andrei Platonov, his love of people, his love of language, and his love of machines – his “aspiration to create a better, fairer world.” He wrote only one collection of verse, Blue Depths , but his fiction is more poetic in its imagery and its use of language, “[his] use of letters, archaisms, substandard vocabulary, and even handwriting. Platonov’s experiments in language and his interest in the physical fact of a text gained him an immediate audience.” Chevenger , his quixotic ramble through the heart of Civil War-torn Russia in search of the communist utopia, reminds me of the often ignored stretches of the Midwest from Wisconsin to Nebraska. The novel captures Platonov’s early ideals, embodied in the main character, Sasha Dvanov, who is trained in the operation of locomotives by Zakhar Pavlovich, a man who “so achingly and jealously loved st...

Again once more into the winter night my heart set out roaming this seaside town A pipe on an earthenware oven somewhere rapped Shall I go as cold as I am So be it dilly-dally I shall build a fire in the hearth between her thighs Translated from Seascape by Shinkichi Takahashi

“There might’ve been a few that could’ve you know because I’ve been attacked by one I know what it means to have someone come at me with their hands like this ready to get at my face because some of them had come all the way from Mexico and El Salvador and spent three months traveling and some had done that one woman from Guatemala had done that three times and brought her whole family up she had been married and the guy was a drunk so she decided to make for herself a life and she she was picked up by border agents once but uh another woman who made her way it took her months and when she came she had this child and to talk about what people will do to try to better their life but here was this woman she would hold this baby and this little girl would reach into her blouse and try to nurse because she was so you know and she had this big pot belly full of parasites and the hair streaked with brown you know right away she was suffering such malnutrition so so I wou...