NAZI "THEORISTS"

You need to know what the Nationalists read in order to understand their comic-book-like evil objectives. Their Nazi "theorists" would seem parodical, like Batman villains, if they weren't taken seriously by Bannon, Gorka, and Miller, and spoonfed to an eager president. Julius Evola, "fascist intellectual" (yes, an oxymoron), who wrote "rape is the ultimate manifestation of male desire," is a favorite of Bannon's, largely due to murky mysticism and even murkier thinking. Generally, Nazi theorists want to establish a dark age or feudal state with a few ubermensch lords. "Dark, I love dark!" Bannon rambles. This is the guy that Rebecca Mercer (Cruz and Trump funder) calls 'the Leni Riefenstahl of our movement." It's pathetic, but it plays with readers of The Daily Stormer.

Lineage

People often take me for Jewish, and that has always pleased me. My lineage is quite different (gentile, Ukrainian cossack, in fact). But, as some of you know, my parents and grandparents were interned in Nazi concentration camps during WWII, so I naturally gravitated to people with awareness about the Holocaust. There was also our shared love of borscht and horseradish and pickled fish. And - a certain tingling on the radar for Nazi catch phrases like "America First" and "I'm a nationalist." From what I've learned, we are witnessing the rise of Nazism in the United States, led by Trump, and although people of color, Muslims, Jews, and LGBTQ folk are the visible and immediate targets of the storm troopers he has incited to violence, trust me: we are ALL under attack. #neverTrump

AWP 2019 PORTLAND PANELS

Here are my two back-to-back panels for AWP 2019 in Portland!
Thrilled to be presenting with the likes of Erica Jong, Amy King, Cecilia Tan, Kwame Dawes, Michael Anania, Marc Vincenz, Thaddeus Rutkowski, and Jonathan Penton!

Thursday, March 28, 2019
12:00 pm to 1:15 pm
Portland Ballroom 256, Oregon Convention Center, Level 2

R214. The Critical Creative: The Editor-Poet. (Marc Vincenz, Larissa Shmailo, Michael Anania, Amy King, Kwame Dawes) This panel will offer an insiders' look into poetry editorship and publication from poets who edit prominent journals and presses. How do these tandem roles, poet and editor, influence one another? Do they detract from or enhance poetry publishing? Does the critical mind impede the creative mind or strengthen it? How? Are certain poetic schools favored? Where does preference end and narrowness begin? Panelists will offer real-life anecdotes and insights on poetry selection and editing.

1:30 pm to 2:45 pm
B116, Oregon Convention Center, Level 1

R223. Hybrid Sex Writing: What's Your Position?. (Larissa Shmailo, Jonathan Penton, Thaddeus Rutkowski, Cecilia Tan, Erica Jong) In The History of Sexuality, Michel Foucault argues that sex was not repressed in past centuries, but codified. How does contemporary hybrid sex writing crack these codes? Is there a relationship between gender politics and hybrid writing? How does hybrid writing give voice to marginalized gender identities? What is hybrid ecstasy? Is there a special connection between transgressive sex and hybrid writing? Panelists will discuss these questions with a focus on 21st-century writers.

RULES OF PROPAGANDA

Do not underestimate Trump. He has effectively followed Hitler's racist and rapist playbook for power and has divided our nation to the point of civil war. We are surrounded by disinformation and propaganda and the press and freedom of assembly are in grave danger. 
Remember the rules of propaganda, of which Trump is a master, and teach others to resist.
1. Make the lie big.
2. Make it simple so that your least intelligent follower can grasp it.
3. Repeat it often.
And . . .
4. Accuse your opponents of what they accuse you, to confuse and undermine. If your followers are an angry mob, call Democrats an angry mob; if you are extreme and dangerous, call Democrats extreme and dangerous. Etc.
Watch for these tactics, and educate others, and resist, resist, ,#resist.

In memoriam Irene Tara Shanahan Sargent

In memoriam Irene Tara Shanahan Sargent
my niece and godchild
March 28, 1969 - October 20, 2003

A poem I wrote on the plane to her funeral:

Aerial View of the Rockies

The gods like to trace their fingers in the world;
like leaves from a primordial tree, landforms
bare their veins. Clever of her to suicide this way
leaving no one but me to know. Impassive as
the dead face she wanted no one to see, clouds
hide rigor in the lines, purposeful or not, below.
In winter, sunrise looks like sunset in this distant
land, soon to be nearer, nearer, soon.

SCARCITY

Listen:

If you wait but don’t want
If you want but don’t take
If you take but don’t use
If you use but don’t care
If you care but not much
The petty demon comes.

The petty demon says:
Not all of you are wanted
Not everyone is needed
A few may be accepted
There’s scarcity, you see
There are no loaves and fishes─
Not for the likes of you─
A few baguettes for baby
Some caviar for me
There’s just enough to shit and sleep
But not enough for thee.

The petty demon shrieks:
Time is money
Sell short
Eat to win
Assume the position.

In the world
In the angry material world
There are men who are not men
Men
Whose imaginations never rise
Whose imaginations squat
Upon the positions of power.

If the petty demon bothers you
Here’s what you say
Tell him:
I don’t know about
Your lawyer’s fees
Your MDs
Your CEOs
Your deep freeze

I do know that
The blind man is perfect
That there’s more to life than irony
And squealing like a stuck pig
That the truth is hard but you can stand on it
That time isn’t money or a threat but a gift.

As you assume your position
In the world
Do not love
Men who are not men
Whose imaginations never rise
Walk tall; walk with good
Assume nothing; take a position.

OCCUPYTRUMP#

In memoriam Sinaida Nikolayevna Gnatchenko Shmailo, October 16, 1923 - October 20, 2000

For my mother

MEMENTO MAMA

I haven’t passed that dream of wisdom,
the borders you crossed through.

I can’t translate the language
I thought I thought I knew.

I see a meaning, watching you die,
hold it in my hands like a graying sigh,

this lock of hair which I comb and tie.
I kiss the head which hears my no,

and meet your eyes, and say: Don’t go,
and leave you to this tongue of dread:

This is me, it cries, this is me and I die.
We will all speak these words in this way
and then, and till then, what shall I say?

Khashoggi, M,B.S., and Trump's Complicity in Murder

As a member of PEN, I have a special animus against those who would harm journalists. One of ours - yes, with that foreign, Muslim name, Jamal Khashoggi - but one of ours, a Washington Post op-ed writer, a permanent resident of the US - has been tortured, brutally murdered, and (nightmarish) dismembered for criticizing Saudi strongman Mohammed bin Salman's repressive regime, a regime that flows millions every day into our president's coffers. Trump repays the Saudis by complicity in the cover-up of this crime. Don't let this stand: Demand sanctions under the Magnitsky Act from your representatives. First the journalists and dissidents, the Muslims, the people of color . . how many steps before it finally reaches you?

An Intellectual Dark Ages

My worst fear about Trump et. al. is coming true: Trump is writing the history books. In the heartland, the age of the Earth is 6,000 years per Biblical begats and the theory of evolution is censored. Climate change research is not only ignored, it is destroyed. The Holocaust didn't happen; Helen Keller and Hillary Clinton have been removed from the curriculum in Texas; neo-Nazis and Confederates are "good people"; Republican candidates for Congress praise slavery. Evidence-based disciplines such as science and journalism are attacked as "fake." Trump's constant propaganda of big lies repeated often is working- our children are numb with apathy or animated with right-wing reaction. Unless a change comes soon, I see all Trump's lies dutifully recorded for future students, starting with "More people attended his inauguration than any in history, period."

"Wrapped in myself, / trapped in myself"

A line from my poem, "Frog Prayer," is traveling across Tumblr: "I am wrapped in myself, trapped in myself." Thanks to violentwavesofemotion and others for quoting me! 

FROG PRAYER

Dark Light, stark Light, take me from the public bog
where I, frog, lurk, waiting for a divine arch
to spark the dog in me.
                   In me fight tedium, odium,
banal canals of waste; light, I squat and
slight, rape.
                   Slight rape forgiven? Dear God of Frogs:
Please goad, load me,
take my slippery smoothness, flippery foolishness away.
                   A way must be sound: I am wrapped in myself,
trapped in myself. My froggy self longs to produce, create;
but no, I seduce, berate.
                   Berate me, Tricolored Frog:
Light whose waste product is air, help me,
for as I sit and soak, I croak, I croak.

My Poem "&" Appears in Shrew

Delighted that my poem "&" appears in the current issue of SHREW, guest edited by Michael T. Young. I'm honored to be in the company of so many wonderful poets. 

https://www.shrewlitmag.com/issue8

&
My love, I see myself in a fur coat lying face down, drunk,
on the floor of the subway train, one heel lost, & I feel a
hardened man raping me, my virgin soul frost, & awards
are easy, mama says, & they may choose you, but,
they don’t know you, Ms. Boss, & my father says that I am
sexy & the time after that is lost & I know I am fat,
that I cost, & before she dies, mama says she wishes
I was never born, my death in my mother’s eyes, crossed,

but my love, see this chasm & wall here & be brave for me,
come swim the swamp around me & trust it is not within me,
or if it is, come love this swamp creature until it is drained,
and look at the dead in the moat, for here they will remain,
& sit here, still, with me & I will haltingly explain
I still love, beyond barbs, beyond wounds, beyond pain.

Excited to share cover and blurbs for SLY BANG, my new novel

Larissa Shmailo’s SLY BANG is a futuristic hallucinogen of a novel that pervades your consciousness. Our heroine Nora could be the love child of Barbarella and Hunter S. Thompson if she grew up to be a telepathic FBI agent. Her story will make you wonder if all wars are truly fought on the battlefield of the psychosexual female libido. 
Cecilia Tan, author of Slow Surrender'

SLY BANG IS ASTOUNDING! The "typhoid Mary of rape and murder," having been determined by alien pterodactyls to be "the only non-Nazi in the universe," teams up with a skinner-alive of pubescent virgins and ardent collector of Rothko daubs. Together they wage war against an ialdabaoth who intends, just for kicks, to atomize the universe by means of particle accelerators. Hyperspatial scene-shifts are conveyed by telepathy or supercomputer-assisted dialogue that bristles with snappy one-liners paced faster than a meth rant. Somehow, across these solar system-spanning pages, supercharged as they are with psycho-, neurobio- and quantum-physical erudition, the plot comes across vivid as anything Tolstoy ever evoked with his most considered panoramic prose. Larissa Shmailo's SLY BANG is like nothing that has ever been seen, or heard, anywhere.
Tom Bradley, author of Useful Despair

In this breakneck, futuristic, socio-sexual-psychological thriller, Larissa Shmailo tells the story of Nora Volkhonsky, a smart FBI agent targeted by multiple evildoers. As bad guys and worse guys close in on her, Nora’s main goal is to survive. She is helped somewhat by her “telepathic” powers, but her experience is often more dream than reality. “Who was sending these clangs and hoodoo messages? Who was receiving hers? Who wanted her insane or dead?” Fasten your seatbelt as you ride along a wicked highway with SLY BANG’s tough, spirited heroine.
—Thaddeus Rutkowski, author of Border Crossings

Available for pre-order at http://www.spuytenduyvil.net/sly-bang.html

All-Star Women Poets Democratic Fundraiser - the Youtube Video

If you missed it, here is the Democratic fundraiser with Elaine Equi, Rachel Hadas, Patricia Spears Jones, Trace Peterson, emcee Maggie Balistreri and me! We are photogenic and powerful/!

ALL-STAR WOMEN POETS READ TO BENEFIT THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY