Geek on Shells

The Kenyon Review adamantly supports the widest possible inclusiveness in the writers it seeks out and publishes, as well as in the students and workshop participants it supports, teaches, and attempts to inspire. David Lynn, editor, mass email dissemination shortly after the inauguration

David, although many might take issue with me on how I ascribe the utilitarian value of literary expression and its interpretation thereof, I have something to say: my thirty three years of relentless persistence and publication in print and digital media, from my first appearance in the hybrid English Canadian Slow Dancer as an over-aged upperclassman, to my most recent throw away to the young minority doctorate, Bianca Spriggs, of one of my strongest essays, for nothing, in Pluck, has done jack shit for my welfare, other than to give me a pedigree which the millennial student editors today might find mildly intimidating, hence my cynicism in relation to publishing, perishing, and Kenyom's strident and conscientious cultural appropriation. Indeed, the essay Bianca so graciously accepted did nothing to stop me from becoming a victim, four times over, as a disabled woman, of black arrogance, cruelty and corruption which has denigrated me repeatedly. The essay is just cleverly ambiguous enough, that it can be read either way, how urbanism generates racism or universal identification, and the grand lady of commitment to creative writers, Allison Joseph, who could have paid me for my courage, suffered over the piece, while Bianca read it as "crip became scarred liberal," and took the plunge. It was commendable, but doesn't alleviate how much I've suffered in your cosmetic pretenses to be successfully matriculated in an ambulatory, exclusionary world. Appearing in nearly a hundred publications never got me a job, or did all that much to further any sort of economic security. I'm closing fifty-six, and my next major break, be it computer, power chair, even my bed, may be my last. I never see people like me, let alone my dialectical rival, Vassar Miller, whom dung bitches like Josie Byzek weren't even aware of, and my former editor calls herself an intellectual, but perhaps took too much heat on twitter, truly integrated. In the industry, we're a sidelined cameo. Aside from the Hawking exception, whose condition seems to play into the cognitive dissonance of mad genius, we aren't a major presence in academics, and despite my best efforts, I am probably going to die, pathetic, in pain, in a welfare ward. You might say this puts too much onus on creativity, that using language skills to entertain offers us a valve, but what does the valve, the novel, the poetry collection, or the literary journal, do to mitigate ruthless hardship? I logged on this early morning to ease some flatulence, cut Richard Benjamin and Ali MacGraw down to size, adapting Philip Roth's imprimatur signature on counter culture. Goodbye, Columbus angered me as little more than orgasms are paramount and loving commitments an affect. Roth knows his culture as well as I know mine, and he's rich, having eroded it. Me, I'm just black balled for challenging community integration models, for raising my voice about women and their need to bring developmental birth defects into the world so developmental birth babies can be enslaved by case management. Sorry to rock your precious, inclusionary schooner of cultural appropriation.

Hippocampus Bridge To Janus

"But the real fierceness of desire, the real heat of a passion long continued and withering up the soul of a man is the craving for identity with the woman that he loves. He desires to see with the same eyes, to touch with the same sense of touch, to hear with the same ears." -- The Good Solder, loc. 1411

Well, okay. This is the website of Bianca Spriggs, and you never know why an editor will or won't take something. Allison Joseph and her team pay 25 dollars a page for non-fiction, over at Crab Orchard, and they struggled with "Crime Fighter Feline". Whereas Bianca *saw* my thematic intent toward expendable classes. I respect the fact she gave me the space, but exposure means jack shit unless you can capitalize and lock into a career, and I'm jammed on the issue of accreditation, although I could stretch the truth enough to get my foot in to a paying editorial position. Ms. Spriggs may have thought my curious memoir essay was a disillusioned riff on the mild side of Henry Miller; perhaps it was, but in another vein it could just have easily been about the evolution of a hard liner. She decided to publish it, and I decided not to look at myself too closely in the mirror, as it represented my first byline since 08. It could also represent adversaries keeping an open dialogue, as I'm nearly positive Bianca is a champion for progressive victory, as much as I've swung my stern to port on the Rhine-- but consider this an opening salvo for me to clarify messy reactionism surrounding ethnicity. Allison Joseph is, after all, an African American studies specialist in the vein of Sonia Sanchez, who I know slightly, enough to greet her on campus with smiles like flavored icicles, and maybe Allison's detection meter was discomfited by my ambiguity. Who knows? But Crab's byline would have had better market value, so you see, I'm trying to convey something about how we look at each other across the table.

My damage cannot be underdone, sadly, but what I am dealing with here is black power within the system: Why listen to someone like me if I deliberately skirt the cliff face of American segregation with provocative overtones?

Not that it is a question I'm prepared to answer this morning, though Dr. Sanchez cemented Cosby's stellar monarchy when he gave her a segment to read on The Cosby Show.

...

I need to find a place to stay, temporarily, within 6 weeks. This is me. If I do not leave Riverside Presbyterian, there will be hell to pay, and in essence, I am fucked, since I need people to help me pack, have to find them, get a storage unit, and beg a Mormon for mercy or what. I've read they will take a chance and help the fallen, but I am rabid and agree with Hitch that Joseph Smith was the wrong kind of anarchist and deserves to be pilloried. I have to get out of this building, and have to do it now.