From American Scholar

A compelling article from which we could learn much about liberty, patriotism--and who can be a patriot. "You would even hear [German] in public-school classrooms, where the children of immigrants received instruction in the mother tongue. Politically, too, the newcomers were a class apart. Many had fled the aftermath of the failed liberal revolutions that had swept across Europe in 1848...Missouri’s slaveholding class represented exactly what they had detested in the old country, exactly what they had wanted to escape: a swaggering clique of landed oligarchs...[T]he Germans prided themselves on being...“filled with more intensive concepts of freedom, with more expansive notions of humanity, than most peoples of the earth”—more imbued with true democratic spirit, indeed more American than the Americans themselves." More here: http://www.theamericanscholar.org/civil-warfare-in-the-streets/

a letter from milena

I got a piece of spam from "Musselwhite Milena" at the incredibly sketchy domain amateurs.nl. The subject line was "Bruise," so I opened it. "Leave me alone, leave me alone," she wrote, "Sincerely Your, Musselwhite Milena."

This is, I said to myself, just the time for a sort of sestina noir.


her letter came like a bruise.
she wrote leave me alone leave me
alone. she wrote it twice.
i looked at the postmark: .nl
and she signed her letter
your milena

i remember when i met milena
back then she wore her face like a bruise
and the word fit her to the letter.
when i caught her eye she knew me.
even in the darkest hash bar of .nl
i didn't have to call her twice

we made love that night, twice.
my throat was hoarse with hash and milena
and my lips got raw, rauw in .nl
after, we drank a couple brews
she told me she loved me
i said, put it in a letter

this isn't that letter
milena never wrote me twice
she wrote leave me alone, leave me...
just this one time. i've left you, milena
i left you in the dark with your bruise
and what was left of my life in .nl

i had trouble there, see? i had to leave .nl
on the nightstand i left a letter
i wrote about your bruise
and how we made love, twice
and how you sang in your sleep, milena
a little do-re-mi...

it was the only way out for me
to say goodbye to you and .nl
i'm sorry you found me, milena
i'm sorry you wrote that letter
because now they'll find me twice
and it'll be two bullets, not just a bruise

milena, you have to stop writing me
bruise is blauwe plek in .nl....
goodbye milena, (burn this letter, twice)

Book Review: The Other City by Michal Ajvaz; trans. by Gerald Turner

I wrote about this, too. I still don't have a copy. Even though I have a subscription. Others have it. Not me.

Book Review: The Rest is Jungle by Mario Benedetti; trans. by Harry Morales

I wrote it.