Tag Archives: Inequality

Jelly in a Jar

Look at old Alabaster 
in all his power and glory
grasping his silver spoon 
in a palsied grip.

He knows the spoon holds power
and power is jelly in a jar.
If someone somehow gets a spoonful
it must have been taken from him

Luvgood Carp, Editor-in-Chief

White Noise: Always There, Just Like Death and Commercials

In White Noise Don DeLillo notes “All plots tend to move deathward.” I’m not sure if he is surprised by this, but he shouldn’t be. All life moves deathward. So how can plots do otherwise?

Let’s put that question aside and simply agree that DeLillo in White Noise is obsessed with death. But Gladiola, white noise is my favorite noise. How can it be linked to death? Sorry, my friend, white noise is always there in the background. Just like death. And Jack (the narrator) can’t stop thinking about death. Even when he’s thinking with his penis, his penis is thinking about death. He chairs the Hitler Studies Department at a small college on the hill. Why Hitler? “Some people are larger than life. Hitler is larger than death.”

Jack is married to Babette, and they have a blended family with a child from their own marriage but also children from several prior marriages. Babette is taking some kind of medication that she refuses to admit she’s taking. Like Jack, she is terrified by death. Even when she’s thinking with her vagina . . . well, you get it. “We (humans) are the highest form of life on earth and yet ineffably sad because we know what no other animal knows, that we must die.” When a train accident happens on the edge of town, a deadly toxic cloud gets released. Jack is exposed to the poison, and his fear of death becomes all-consuming. The novel explores the reckless ways Jack and Babette try and fail to manage this intense fear.

Published in 1984, the novel also skewers consumerism and our culture’s reliance on television – a precursor of the internet and social media. “When TV didn’t fill them with rage, it scared them half to death.” And it touches on inequality and inequity. During the toxic event, Jack thinks “These things happen to poor people who live in exposed areas. Society is set up in such a way that it’s the poor and uneducated who suffer the main impact of natural and man-made disasters.” The novel succeeds best when it is focused on these themes. But back to death.

The lengths Babette and Jack go to calm their fear are hard to relate to. When they wonder why no one else is overwhelmed by the fear as they are, Jack acknowledges that “Some people are better at repressing it than others.” He’s wrong. Everyone is better at repressing it. They become the poster children for repression and denial being the correct strategy. And that’s good news for me because I repress and deny everything. So I must be healthy as hell.

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor

White Porcelain

Nothing proclaims privilege like white porcelain.
Its glossy surface reflects a prestige anyone can appreciate,  
though the privilege, surprisingly, is getting harder to preserve,
even here in this milk-white marbled executive suite
populated by the pale and mostly male descendants
of white porcelain’s original beneficiaries –
all of us attired in the traditional uniform
of extremely starched ivory shirts
and aggressively angry red ties.

So privilege, nowadays, does bring problems –
though, trust me, you will get no sympathy
from the plastic port-a-john people on this.
White porcelain, even when it is safely segregated
behind a locked door, to which I, alone,
possess the code, can still get sprayed –
as happens often when I assume
a standing position of casual authority
with my hands resting gently, yet firmly, on my hips.

And, sometimes, white porcelain can get spackled,
even when I am comfortably seated, skillfully
conducting a contentious board meeting by Zoom.

Of particular relevance right now,
white porcelain can get clogged when the flusher
thingy suddenly won’t work, which,
of course, I only learn too late;
when, let’s say, a large deposit
(the only kind I make)
has been dropped at the bank.

I pride myself on solving problems - even unwieldy ones.
But how do I make peace with this unexpected imposition?

Acknowledging it makes me human,
a thought I can’t abide.
Asking for help makes me humble,
an approach I will not try.
However, ignoring it makes me privileged,
and that just feels right inside.

Plus, there’s no harm done.
Tonight it will be disposed of
by someone I do not know
and will never meet.

Luvgood Carp, Editor-in-Chief