https://shannonherbert.com/blog daily 0.75 2023-07-06 https://shannonherbert.com/blog/a-play-for-a-thanksgiving-killjoy monthly 0.5 2020-03-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1584070316250-8TMFNLXARU41UY7EERQM/Red%2BShadow.jpg What I'm Reading - A Play for a Thanksgiving Killjoy https://shannonherbert.com/blog/metoo-in-1968 monthly 0.5 2019-11-16 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1573927205972-QKX0F039VGG44SRH5BPM/Millett.png What I'm Reading - #Metoo in 1968 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1573927492214-L80KTPP3V0YPVO5PQA4X/Allison.png What I'm Reading - #Metoo in 1968 Allison (right) with student workers and researchers in the Women’s Center before the internet was really a thing. https://shannonherbert.com/blog/idealism-without-fanaticism-octavia-butlers-bible monthly 0.5 2019-11-16 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1573541079074-WMNN14TUFLUCXCVRV4D0/Copy+of+Red+Shadow.png What I'm Reading - Idealism without Fanaticism: Octavia Butler’s Bible https://shannonherbert.com/blog/she-said-thats-it-end-stop monthly 0.5 2019-10-17 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1571274314994-E7UW3ZJW34RI3U5PB940/Red%2BShadow-2.jpg What I'm Reading - She said. That's it. End stop. https://shannonherbert.com/blog/if-youve-ever-made-a-mixtape monthly 0.5 2019-09-24 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1569307050951-Y8T8NONDWRQ9AGTD7I84/4.png What I'm Reading - If You've Ever Made a Mixtape Esther and Jill! https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1569307439640-D91P4GE2KFC9E86OW6KY/2.png What I'm Reading - If You've Ever Made a Mixtape https://shannonherbert.com/blog/72hmxk8e5333zcnybvgqxwopvxcwlm monthly 0.5 2019-09-18 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1560973617078-4VC07IMSLT3A6EDE7C7V/SHIMAGE_14.png What I'm Reading - Near to the Wild Heart, Clarice Lispector Insect Chorus, 1917. https://shannonherbert.com/blog/j-k-huysmans-against-nature monthly 0.5 2019-09-09 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1560973717566-WQ9QO2PPAMZN0IYMAIGK/SHIMAGE_10.png What I'm Reading - J. K. Huysmans, Against Nature https://shannonherbert.com/blog/zora-neale-hurston-barracoon monthly 0.5 2019-09-01 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1560973884510-QOABPVOCOL7OHHRQ6DA2/SHIMAGE_11.png What I'm Reading - Zora Neale Hurston, Barracoon https://shannonherbert.com/blog/canon-crafting-for-beginners monthly 0.5 2019-09-01 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1565076758450-ZK5JSR3GFQYZF70W85VW/We%2BHave%2BAlwyas%2BLived.jpg What I'm Reading - Canon Crafting for Beginners https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1565076344715-ERZKMTTNXDEJ6PYFH7BF/Great%2BBooks.jpg What I'm Reading - Canon Crafting for Beginners https://shannonherbert.com/blog/bridge-looks monthly 0.5 2019-08-23 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1560976734213-GL3F5HEROHUNCRIJW1NK/SHIMAGE_13.png What I'm Reading - Ministry of Utmost Happiness, Arundhati Roy https://shannonherbert.com/blog/lispector monthly 0.5 2019-08-07 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1560976806335-7PHCJ1929AUGA9C2PN6G/SHIMAGE_12.png What I'm Reading - Água Viva, Clarice Lispector Street Corner, NYC https://shannonherbert.com/blog/category/Memory monthly 0.5 https://shannonherbert.com/blog/category/Women+Writers monthly 0.5 https://shannonherbert.com/blog/category/Racism monthly 0.5 https://shannonherbert.com/blog/category/Hope monthly 0.5 https://shannonherbert.com/blog/category/World+Lit monthly 0.5 https://shannonherbert.com/learning daily 0.75 2025-01-13 https://shannonherbert.com/learning/post-misogyny monthly 0.5 2019-09-04 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1566397328289-PX0NDTUCSZ70S7K3MGX3/facebook.png What I’m Learning - Post-Misogyny is Hilarious https://shannonherbert.com/learning/atame monthly 0.5 2019-08-09 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1565376098996-UZ4FH350E0DZHD8XLNGF/Atame.jpg What I’m Learning - Why Are You Showing Me This? https://shannonherbert.com/learning/v0hrvftow3hvilwe84if1eym7slkol monthly 0.5 2019-08-21 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1557342469893-6TW6ZE08F1NBE2W5XHK1/IMG_5980+%281%29.jpg What I’m Learning - Our Camino https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1555733153852-EBONKXZBJY095WUCFHNX/20130731_Trade+100_0202.jpg What I’m Learning - Our Camino https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1555733018263-911G7EIZ1JTLUWJ7IY94/IMG_5984.jpg What I’m Learning - Our Camino https://shannonherbert.com/learning/category/Memory monthly 0.5 https://shannonherbert.com/learning/category/Racism monthly 0.5 https://shannonherbert.com/learning/category/Hope monthly 0.5 https://shannonherbert.com/flashes-occasional-pieces-1 daily 0.75 2022-07-12 https://shannonherbert.com/flashes-occasional-pieces-1/9122020 monthly 0.5 2022-07-12 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/4ded59f9-05ad-4f6a-b531-ce3c30964d94/The+Bammer.png flashes & occasional pieces - 9/12/2020 - Make it stand out It’s only when I search for “bamford” in spotlight that I realize I’ve written more than one ode to her. https://shannonherbert.com/flashes-occasional-pieces-1/7112022 monthly 0.5 2022-07-11 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/65328875-22f5-4425-bcca-77a2f210e0ea/citizenship.png flashes & occasional pieces - 7/11/2022 - Make it stand out the unpaid labor of citizenship https://shannonherbert.com/flashes-occasional-pieces-1/112021 monthly 0.5 2022-07-12 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1610593315411-PACNM4BJ15X2Q2T6X80M/Photo+by+Sagar+Soneji+from+Pexels flashes & occasional pieces - 1/1/2021 Stop using money to insulate yourself from suffering. https://shannonherbert.com/flashes-occasional-pieces-1/72319 monthly 0.5 2020-09-16 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1600280704699-JLEO2VWY8DXZQGZ7C5PR/fully+drawn+breath.png flashes & occasional pieces - 7.23.19 The opposite of apnea a fully drawn breath https://shannonherbert.com/flashes-occasional-pieces-1/undated monthly 0.5 2020-09-16 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1600280269291-QRHNK0T33LP97IPZ01Y3/Jules.png flashes & occasional pieces - Undated Last night I dreamed I was in an old, musty 99 cents store, and they were selling balloons, but the only ones they had said “Happy 48th birthday, Jules!” I couldn’t get over it. What an unsustainable business model. I spent the rest of the dream telling everyone. https://shannonherbert.com/flashes-occasional-pieces-1/9420 monthly 0.5 2020-09-16 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1600279950956-3U05U133ZXIX5ZQ8KKVK/Doors.png flashes & occasional pieces - 9.4.20 All the doors are always open https://shannonherbert.com/flashes-occasional-pieces-1/81018 monthly 0.5 2020-09-16 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1600279705688-2JEROEN9STZ0FUH88VU7/mothers+love.png flashes & occasional pieces - 8.10.18 Your mother’s chest against your back All that love All of those loves https://shannonherbert.com/poetry daily 0.75 2022-08-11 https://shannonherbert.com/poetry/heres-where-you-start-whispering-81122-draft monthly 0.5 2022-08-11 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/dc180c57-88bd-4c74-a426-c480d19cc4d5/Shannon_bad_trip_tar_shadows_girl_crouching_bbc1d54b-0400-4b57-b1e1-b97cf091f533.jpg poetry - Here's Where You Start Whispering 8.11.22 Draft - Make it stand out Image created by Midjourney, a young woman’s downcast face surrounded by a symmetrical halo of jagged black shadows (tar?) https://shannonherbert.com/poetry/heres-where-you-start-whispering monthly 0.5 2021-02-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1613245511240-XX9YAH9CRUBPVBC2CXE9/badtrip.jpg poetry - Here's Where You Start Whispering You have to have had a bad trip at least once to endure life in this godforsaken century where time moves at two speeds the very fast and the very long. Because eventually this will end, you counsel the scared girl huddled in the corner of a dimly-lit crowded room, it’s only a matter of breathing through it. Here’s where you start whispering Shh, my dear one, shh. your solid hand on her back tracing warm circles. It’s automatic the tracing and the whispering like a mother who continues to rock back and forth lulling the child in her arms long after he has fallen asleep long after he is too old to be held in her arms and rocked to sleep. Shh, my sweet one, shh. It is true that there is no respite and no reprieve and no lost eden to which you can credibly long to return not post-war plentitude not the Christian Middle Ages not pre-Christian nature. It has never been entirely safe for us, for women and there is no figure you can turn to or return to for safety or wholeness But, I’m here. You know this is the least amount of comfort you can offer and the most. You know how easily even you can turn into a swampy black figure hunched hungry in her past. You know that this thin stretch of intimacy —you know that it’s thin. There is still solid ground, you coo, but you don’t have to reach for it yet. Not here, where the periphery has become the ground where milling spectators step off the curb into suddenly empty streets a shiftless parade taking pictures with disposable cameras of two impossibly tall buildings with flames leaping delicately only from the top floors that will soon astonishingly disappear one by one leaving pipe-shaped billows of smoke and smelling of something terrible burning. Not here, where the breaches are not always spectacular plastic vortexes in the ocean, but merely arsenic in the Johnson & Johnson’s baby wash. Not here, where the predators are our familiars. You have to have lived through the blindfold coming off and staying horrifically off for minute-hours of hijacked attention microscope eyes running over histories of sadness and all of the various fads, waves, strivings for relief for respite for control Bobby Socks & Taebo How else can you recognize this manic hyper-conscious shuttle toward an inevitable end as the past by which we will all be measured, whose right side we will long to have been on. How else can you convince her that she hasn’t suddenly stepped into amber or tar. Time has always been this capacious and suffocating, and you know that this this level of heightened attention is unendurable. Or, you murmur to the huddled girl who is wondering how she’ll live through this, or how she’ll be able to stay awake with your palm tracing warm solid circles on her back, oddly endurable. https://shannonherbert.com/poetry/711pgawobyivevnl8tzpkej5okz7j5 monthly 0.5 2021-01-14 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1610594364538-LSQCWCNCEFKY8IVII87C/Permit+Patty.png poetry - Ars Memoriae, or Permit Patty Leaves a Message Ars Memoriae, or Permit Patty Leaves a Message Why do you watch all these videos shot by black men and women whose voices we hear but whose faces we never see that document the violence against them in case the people who come to protect and serve them don’t or they’re not there when it comes time to testify or there’s never any chance to? Why watch all of this nastiness? And hatred? They are pilgrimages 
temporary journeys for people privileged to not have to take the videos ourselves
that to do our age the honor of
 seeing it for what it is 
seeing it from the eyes of the woman with the camera who cannot dare to feel outraged at this outrageous behavior You can’t get out of the way you see the world 
how you’ve been raised into it by teachers myriad and diverse 
but you can try to see
 the thin translucent barrier 
between brain and skull
 that you can’t take off or entirely see Is the project of life 
to try to see what your perspective might look like? To flatline acid trip our way to
 oceanic deliverance
 categorylessness
 prelapsarian plentitude? Do we reverse the Fall
 into coercive civilization 
by an uncivilized order
 when we chart its crimes? Is this why we line up outside of Anne Frank’s house in Amsterdam 
in the cold at night
 and then funnel through 
a gradual and subtly dawning
 claustrophobia
 propelled by the waves of people behind and in front of us? Do there have to be hordes for it to work? If the space wasn’t filled would there be this
 panic 
as we recede into smaller
 and smaller
 spaces 
on vertiginous steps that creak and creak and creak, 
into their hideout
 where the audio guide goes silent 
past photos glued to the wall, 
a map of the Allies’ movement from Normandy dotted with scattered and hopeful pins 
into the attic terminus where there is space for only two or three? A small sign by the door explains 
that originally the room ended here 
the door to the street
 was added later 
for us 
because the thought of turning around and squeezing through the throngs crushing behind us sucks the air out of my chest 
which now swells with gratitude,
 because the room they were trapped in 
has a door
for us. Like the video on Facebook that ends when the police arrive.
 “I wouldn’t have stopped recording when the police arrived,”
 someone comments.
 When would you have stopped? It is not deliverance we are looking for,
 a gaze that erases itself,
 but an honest depiction of the only gaze we can know
 a map of its particular contours
 the great work of a fully-realized life
 replete with gaps and lacuna 
moments of incredible attention 
and then a door
through which
 we can pour into the street hungry, thirsty, and free to go home. https://shannonherbert.com/poetry/it-is-not-death-we-fear-but-the-leaving-of-what-weve-loved-chorus-thyestes monthly 0.5 2020-09-16 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1600283524924-BOR0EC1931B77ZGK57RX/thyestes.png poetry - “It is not death we fear but the leaving of what we’ve loved.” -Chorus, Thyestes for Toni Wilson Love is someone I want to tell everything to and then don’t Someone with whom I rehearse imaginary conversations they will only ever read. Withheld intimacy concentrates into incantation finally betraying years of formal and infrequent dispatches like an actor’s silence that only becomes revelatory when it is broken. But you died before I could finish even this tribute. Someone called me when it was too late and I couldn’t even tell you I was thankful and filled with regret that you didn’t know the magnitude of that thanks. I could only realize it here in the course of a poem to commemorate you that perhaps it didn’t have to be an epic. We could have put on Seneca together instead something truly unstageable He is meditating, either attending to Tantalus’ GHOST or else inventing him You couldn’t resist the temptation to stage the unspeakable gulf between what can be experienced and what can be expressed. How could I know there wouldn’t be time enough to unspool each thread into its own filament? How might you have received the lesser thread? There is no recompense in the warmth of the writing of it and yet, my beloved teacher, I continue to write. https://shannonherbert.com/new-home daily 1.0 2019-08-06 https://shannonherbert.com/poems daily 0.75 2024-04-08 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1560971230428-LKK04OW3OEQDJ720LMW6/SHIMAGE_23.png Poems “It is not death we fear but the leaving of what we’ve loved.” -Chorus, Thyestes for Toni Wilson Love is someone I want to tell everything to and then don’t Someone with whom I rehearse imaginary conversations they will only ever read. Withheld intimacy concentrates into incantation finally betraying years of formal and infrequent dispatches like an actor’s silence that only becomes revelatory when it is broken. But you died before I could finish even this tribute. Someone called me when it was too late and I couldn’t even tell you I was thankful and filled with regret that you didn’t know the magnitude of that thanks. I could only realize it here in the course of a poem to commemorate you that perhaps it didn’t have to be an epic. We could have put on Seneca together instead something truly unstageable He is meditating, either attending to Tantalus’ GHOST or else inventing him You couldn’t resist the temptation to stage the unspeakable gulf between what can be experienced and what can be expressed. How could I know there wouldn’t be time enough to unspool each thread into its own filament? How might you have received the lesser thread? There is no recompense in the warmth of the writing of it and yet, my beloved teacher, I continue to write. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1560971076544-TRE2BCA8L0P2DYJK9NEI/SHIMAGE_21.png Poems Ars Memoriae Why do you watch all of these videos? Shot by black men and women whose voices we hear but whose faces we never see? Videos that document the violence against them in case they are not there to testify or in case the people who come to protect and serve don’t? Why watch all of this nastiness? And hatred? They are pilgrimages temporary journeys for people privileged to not have to take the videos ourselves that do our age the honor of seeing it for what it is seeing it from the eyes of the woman with the camera who cannot dare to feel outraged at this outrageous behavior You can’t get out of the way you see the world how you’ve been raised into it by teachers myriad and diverse but you can try to see it the thin translucent barrier between brain and skull that you can’t take off Is the project of life to take it off? To flatline acid trip our way to oceanic deliverance categorylessness prelapsarian plentitude? Do we reverse the Fall into coercive civilization by an uncivilized order when we chart its crimes? Is this why we line up outside of Anne Frank’s house in Amsterdam in the cold at night and then funnel through a gradual and subtly dawning claustrophobia propelled by the waves of people behind and in front of us? Do there have to be hordes for it to work? If the space wasn’t filled would there be this panic as we recede into smaller and smaller spaces on vertiginous steps that creak and creak and creak, into their hideout where the audio guide goes silent past photos glued to the wall, a map of the Allies’ movement from Normandy dotted with scattered and hopeful pins into the attic terminus where there is space for only two or three? A small sign by the door explains that originally the room ended here the door to the street was added later for us because the thought of turning around and squeezing through the throngs crushing behind us sucks the air out of my chest which now swells with gratitude, because the room they were trapped in has a door for us. Like the video on Facebook that ends when the police arrive. “I wouldn’t have stopped recording when the police arrived,” someone comments. When would you have stopped? It is not deliverance we are looking for, a gaze that erases itself, but an honest depiction of the only gaze we can know a map of its particular contours the great work of a fully-realized life replete with gaps and lacuna moments of incredible attention and then a door through which we can pour into the street hungry, thirsty, and free to to go home. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1560970740922-99ATDXN3MQUT6JRQZW7J/SHIMAGE_4.png Poems Here’s Where You Start Whispering You have to have had a bad trip at least once to endure life in this godforsaken century because eventually this will end it’s only a matter of breathing through it and figuring out how to convince everyone else that time hasn’t suddenly stepped into amber or tar it has always been this capacious and suffocating. Here’s where you start whispering to a scared girl huddled in the corner of a dimly-lit crowded room your solid hand on her back tracing warm circles. The tracing is automatic so is the whispering like a mother who continues to rock back and forth lulling the child in her arms long after he has fallen asleep, long after the child is too old to be held in her arms and rocked to sleep. Shh, my dear, my sweet one, shh. It’s true that there is no respite and no reprieve and no lost eden to which you can credibly long to return not the Christian Middle Ages not pre-Christian nature. It has never been entirely safe for us, for women and there is no figure you can turn to or return to for safety or wholeness But, I’m here. You know this is the least amount of comfort you can offer and the most. You know how easily even you can turn into a swampy black figure hunched hungry in her past. You know that this thin stretch of intimacy —you know that it’s thin. There is still solid ground, you coo, but you don’t have to reach for it yet. Not here, where the periphery has become the ground where milling spectators stepped off the curb into suddenly empty streets a shiftless parade taking pictures with disposable cameras of two tall buildings with flames leaping delicately only from the top floors that would soon astonishingly disappear one by one leaving pipe-shaped billows of smoke and smelling of something terrible burning. Not here, where the breaches are not always spectacular plastic vortexes in the ocean, but merely arsenic in the Johnson & Johnson’s baby wash. Not here, where the predators are our familiars. You have to have lived through the blindfold coming off and staying horrifically off for minute-hours of hijacked attention microscope eyes running over histories of barbarity and chickens coming home to roost and all of the various fads, waves, strivings for relief for respite for control Bobby Socks & Taebo time moving at two speeds the very fast and the very long. How else to recognize this manic hyper-conscious shuttle toward an inevitable end as the past by which we will all be measured whose right side we will long to have been on. Like Burroughs writing in his final journal we know that some of these words will be the last and we want them to be good and prescient, so we imagine the power of their latent meaning if they do prove to be our last even as we write them. But that level of heightened attention is unendurable. Or, you murmur to the huddled girl wondering how she’ll live through this, or how she’ll be able to stay awake with your palm tracing warm solid circles on her back, oddly endurable. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/86d23e93-d522-4c28-aa0b-ab036e919a5e/Shannon_bad_trip_tar_shadows_girl_crouching_bbc1d54b-0400-4b57-b1e1-b97cf091f533.jpg Poems - Make it stand out You have to have had a bad trip at least once to endure life in this godforsaken millennium where time moves at two speeds the very fast and the very long; where the periphery has become the ground; where images of murdered children [the sound of their screams removed] kaleidoscope fractally viscerally unrelentingly taking the shape of genocide then refugees drowning at the lips of angry borders now the poisoned rain of our slow shared climate death. Because you always come into a trip with such grandiose expectations: your friend has a shroom connection someone knows a cool spot and no one has anywhere to be the next day, and then you find yourself huddled in the bathroom, sweating and crying, as you watch the Day-Glo bubbles of the city’s breath rise to the surface of the toilet water and disappear without bursting. Because you know we came into this millennium with that big Times Square energy that shared Y2K hysteria, our first chance to rehearse for a tragedy with potentially global consequences without actually preparing for it. And then one year in four planes were hijacked by pilots who trained on US soil but left class before learning how to land. And for years all anyone could see was two tall buildings with flames leaping delicately only from the top floors. Eventually they both astonishingly disappeared one by one leaving pipe-shaped billows of smoke, that smelled of something terrible burning, and cast a decades’ long shadow. This is almost the literal underbelly of our expectations. So now, when you counsel the young girl huddled over the toilet to Breathe, or, vomit if you have to, or shit there’s no point in fighting it you know of which you speak. Still trembling against the poison she feels in her bowels and blood she struggles to slow and deepen her breaths. Here’s where you start whispering Shh, my dear one, shh. There is no respite and no reprieve and no lost eden to which you can credibly long to return not post-war plentitude not the Christian Middle Ages not pre-Christian nature. It has never been entirely safe for us, for women and there is no figure you can turn to or return to for safety or wholeness But, I’m here. Your solid hand traces warm circles on her back. It’s automatic the tracing and the whispering like a mother who continues to rock back and forth lulling the child in her arms long after he has fallen asleep long after he is too old to be held in her arms and rocked to sleep. You know this is the least amount of comfort you can offer and the most. You know how easily even you can turn into a swampy black figure hunched hungry in her past. You know that this thin stretch of intimacy —you know that it’s thin. There is still solid ground, you coo, but you don’t have to reach for it yet. Not here where the breaches are sometimes spectacular plastic vortexes in the ocean, and sometimes merely arsenic in the Johnson & Johnson’s baby wash. Not here, where the predators are our familiars. You have to have lived through the blindfold coming off and staying horrifically off for minute-hours of hijacked attention microscope eyes running over histories of exploitation, extraction, and extermination and all of the manic fads, waves, strivings for relief for respite for control Bobby Socks & Taebo the poorly-sublimated grotesqueries of bad faith, what Césaire called the West’s “fetid guts.” How else can you convince this huddled girl wondering how she can possibly live through attention heightened to the point of suffocation that being pinioned like a fly in the amber or tar of capacious and unendurable seconds is oddly endurable. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1567796475693-V7OGB8CPCIPGCGU2RRC3/Red%2BShadow-1.jpg Poems Mama, what don’t you know? First, I think of languages. My college French and fledgling Spanish, all of the dialects. I don’t even know the name of every country or how many there are or who gets to decide what makes a country. I haven’t seen every movie or read every book and then there are all the things that were never in books. I don’t know the stars or the name of every bird. I wish I did, especially the birds. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1560970861751-69ICBJBY0JFJ9YN3NB09/SHIMAGE_7.png Poems the western tradition is only a puzzle whose pieces can be gathered and coerced into a deceptively olympian view by puzzle makers who fancy themselves olympians mastery is obsolete there is only curiosity piqued momentarily appeased and never sated you teach by modeling your reading modeling your mind a plume of native curiosity a camp counselor leading her charges laughing through the waves https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1557968759018-FTQYD99U2NIL85LFFHO1/394982540_a7a333ac2e_b.jpg Poems https://shannonherbert.com/flashes-occasional-pieces daily 0.75 2022-09-24 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1561853752745-XFZF2J1FPMQM4QN25GUM/Red+Shadow+%2811%29.png Flashes & Occasional Pieces Coming out of it, God I’m coming out of it again. As the panic abates, a preternatural calm. There is solace in words. There is solace, for me, in words. There is solace, only, in words. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1561851393626-VG0GTK6SWH20S0V9B7KL/Red+Shadow+%284%29.png Flashes & Occasional Pieces Don’t you think it’s funny that this whole time I thought we were playing charades? https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1561917294388-7VLJDJE8DLH0ZDP8339Z/Red+Shadow+%2812%29.png Flashes & Occasional Pieces Flashes and waves she felt only its warm radiating pinch https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1561852214669-1D82RKMS0PLLDKM8CUJ9/Red+Shadow+%287%29.png Flashes & Occasional Pieces In a dream someone asks me to write on the wall a reminder to wake up in the morning and ask God what kind of world this is. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1560970187987-BZ601VG1AJMQ5CMP6G3S/Untitled+design+%283%29.png Flashes & Occasional Pieces The surreal anti-climax of being the best https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1560970116105-24HAWXGXHUCYPY4GZ1HW/bluejay.png Flashes & Occasional Pieces what is the name of what a blue jay does when it hovers close to the ground in tight controlled circles https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1561583610425-JNA5LL4T33TZU14Z301B/SHIMAGE_28.png Flashes & Occasional Pieces Audiences were so horrified to find out it wasn’t Jennifer Beals dancing that now an actor playing a welder trains to weld, not just poke a spark at metal. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1561578878926-MAMQ4ZP8PUORAU9XR79C/SHIMAGE_26.png Flashes & Occasional Pieces sunlight reflected on a stream continuous and blinding chases us from 20,000 feet below a child on a bicycle chasing her father’s car https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/2d989356-f4d2-44cf-a9dc-35473a84b519/Copy+of+Red+Shadow.jpg Flashes & Occasional Pieces - Make it stand out We make each other’s lives possible by living ours to their fullest truth, which is hard. Can I lean on you this Summer? https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1561851321220-SK50YT4NN8IFDOW1S3T8/Red+Shadow+%283%29.png Flashes & Occasional Pieces A swarm of military helicopters materializes from the haze obscuring the Santa Monica Mountains https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1561578913182-Y0GR56KWADQANJKRSZS3/SHIMAGE_24.png Flashes & Occasional Pieces Notes from the Northrop Grumman Ethics Department All day people walk by my desk muttering, “I don’t know how much more I can take.” https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1561851067338-84O0YFTPYXCW39XZ1ZZN/Red+Shadow+%286%29.png Flashes & Occasional Pieces Flutter up a few feet song uninterrupted and hover there tailfeathers up-turned like a boat rudder in three dimensions then alight in the same place not flying but leaping and floating down. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1561850908193-C7CIOAQDMFUCYWQO8LC7/Red+Shadow+%289%29.png Flashes & Occasional Pieces Sparrows are among the only animals that don’t look like a pestilence in large numbers. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1567794173095-1BGMQBQK3GLAC3TD9PSU/Red%252BShadow.jpg Flashes & Occasional Pieces One-Sentence Album Review Andrew Bird as Marat is almost a little too much for me, but I’m impressed with what he can rhyme with Sisyphus. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1572569147244-7LDMDV5LHMSE7P1G9XDR/Red%252BShadow%2525281%252529.jpg Flashes & Occasional Pieces I’ve found the best way to get a pen you want is to find someone who has that pen and insist it’s yours. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1561917620007-HTO95VNATLTPS0OO1D40/Red+Shadow+%2825%29.png Flashes & Occasional Pieces After awhile the ghosts you invite to your dreams stop looking you in the eye. They stare pointedly in the distance keeping you in their peripheral vision. Or so you hope, even as you doggedly shadow their gaze. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1561853662781-1G4YSQIZBTISCEQJRMY4/Red+Shadow+%2820%29.png Flashes & Occasional Pieces Last night I dreamt I was in a cheap store, older and mustier than 99 cents, and they were selling balloons, but the only ones they had said “Happy 48th birthday, Jules!” What an unsustainable business model. I couldn’t get over it and spent the rest of the dream telling everyone. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1561854236103-OISNW7KC3JHU24P70SGZ/Red+Shadow+%2816%29.png Flashes & Occasional Pieces The opposite of apnea the fully drawn breath https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1561578952493-W1N04C7VTD2EJWHIZSFL/SHIMAGE_25.png Flashes & Occasional Pieces The waves rake the water-blackened stones a seastone rattle, the wake, roaring over future dust https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1599233874872-VMQ72TGPM0EY9R86RJ3D/Doors.jpg Flashes & Occasional Pieces All the doors are always open https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1561578908989-P2CVWBIKPK40IVYUD7S6/SHIMAGE_27.png Flashes & Occasional Pieces 8/7/06 Dick Cheney admits he was wrong two years ago when he claimed the insurgency was almost over. There is so little satisfaction in this that I want to cry. https://shannonherbert.com/novels daily 0.75 2019-08-31 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1567263985460-ZDWYG6UFVJ6VI6B6J5T7/SHIMAGE_6.jpg Novels - Well, 2019 Well is about two women who fall in love and start a family in a post-9/11 America whose scars are both public and painfully intimate. Diane Ascher is a playwright and director whose carefully-staged world is disrupted when she casts Nora Hazel as the lead in one of her plays. Their collaboration becomes romantic, a passionate respite interrupted by the random act of a lone wolf. In their quest for solid ground they occasion a home from what has been left standing. Photo by Carol Rosenthal. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1560971592227-M66LT29874JDEC2W2BUT/washmon2.png Novels - Things that Remind Inspired by Albert Camus’ The Fall, Things that Remind threads a conversation across a distinctly American landscape as two women, an itinerant memorial consultant and an alcoholic litigator, navigate the blindspots of memory, history, and intimacy. https://shannonherbert.com/contact daily 0.75 2019-07-31 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1560533981806-AZUQPLA9MHU2591B85A9/sm_redtape.png Contact - get in touch shans305@gmaildotcom https://shannonherbert.com/test2 daily 0.75 2020-09-16 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1560536984454-LRK1IRP9QRFJG6IEWLSR/redtape.png What I'm Writing - POEMS https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1560530834551-4QU2VLE77ITC7WLW4QP5/redtape.png What I'm Writing - FLASHES & OCCASIONAL PIECES https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1560533121676-BR4GA5MTULVU06KOW6RD/redtape.png What I'm Writing - NOVELS https://shannonherbert.com/stories-sketches daily 0.75 2019-08-01 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1561574480967-UW81SSUZE9K9C40N2MJD/vv_sm_redtape.png stories & sketches - Surprise https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1561574308266-ZTG2IWWPV6A5YGE5XZJZ/vv_sm_redtape.png stories & sketches - Malcolm White https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1561574803129-7MT4N1DFBCE3WF7AU6WH/vv_sm_redtape.jpg stories & sketches - Audi Audi https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1561574967870-503ZYGG01JHH1GHCQB7N/vv_sm_redtape.jpg stories & sketches - Tits https://shannonherbert.com/sh-about daily 0.75 2019-08-23 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1561919839716-JXUJD1I5MJI0JLOMIIWI/SHIMAGE_17.png <div><div> https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1560893586870-0W4I4ISCOVB2UP3715N1/SHANNONHERBERTall.png <div><div> https://shannonherbert.com/malcolm-white daily 0.75 2023-03-21 https://shannonherbert.com/new-page-1 daily 0.75 2019-06-26 https://shannonherbert.com/teaching daily 0.75 2019-11-17 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1560530834551-4QU2VLE77ITC7WLW4QP5/redtape.png teaching - ENGL 1: Reading & Comp https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1573929003317-0PGFV419540PEJ20BSAF/Red+Tape.png teaching - ENGLISH 300: Advanced Writing in the Disciplines https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1560536984454-LRK1IRP9QRFJG6IEWLSR/redtape.png teaching - ENGLISH 2: Critical Analysis & Intermediate Lit https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1573928804048-SMS9SM6GAT6LPIE0QJU3/Red+Tape.png teaching - ENGLISH 15: Shakespeare https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1573928960119-6LLM0YS8A69U4V0SH092/Red+Tape.png teaching - ENGLISH 59: Lesbian & Gay Literature https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9585e293a6322b5b33825f/1560533121676-BR4GA5MTULVU06KOW6RD/redtape.png teaching - ENGLISH 4: World Lit 2 https://shannonherbert.com/english-1 daily 0.75 2019-11-17