Author: cbcrenshaw

C.B. Crenshaw is a musician, artist, writer, coder, gardener, and maker in Alabama.

Town Center: A Draft

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Raincast mosaic on my hotel window
streaks Fogo de Chao and
blurs too-small memories

where here (for example) I shook the man’s hand
too small to see past
the shadow of work

or there (I presume) the slash pines stood
too small to stand against
Cheesecake Factory.

In silence unaware
they were taken down,
down across the river flowing.

Drop a quarter in the coffee machine
and play cup poker with the
boys at the side door you

draw a pair of aces blushing
and the boys fete you
on the good Hyster riding

high until lunch we
punch out and go down,
down across the river flowing.

Raincast mosaic washing down to the river, too.

Sylva

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I asked the wind-beaten mountain
what she would become
Everything and nothing, she whispered
like song
Is all we’ll ever be
all and not at all

That night there was no mountain
where the wind-beaten mother stood
only darkness all
all and not at all

By her whisper-song unsettled
I turned to grandfather in morning sun
to ask who I would become
I was you once, he rang like a winter bell
like a river stone
And you will be me

That night there was darkness only
where grandfather stood
Darkness only in me
But I am no mountain

Fan Lewis at the Royal

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Fan Lewis says he’ll take out the knees
of any old boy who comes at him, why,
he’d hit ‘em with that
million-candle flashlight
and down they’d go.

Ain’t nobody
got the better of him yet,
shit.

Six beers at a time Fan drinks
while the Saturday sun climbs
Set ‘em up six in the Koozie cups
six cans down and a trip to the Royal

Three cans in, Fan Lewis wants to tell you how,
blonde hairs loose on his tee shirt shoulder,
there must be a way (four cans now)
to solve the problem of perpetual motion

We just ain’t
thought of it yet

Six beers at once Fan Lewis drinks
when the Sunday blues ring
Set ‘em up five, and four to go
there’s Monday coming with nothing to show

MadLibs: Overly-Specific H-Net CFPs Edition!

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Do you ever find yourself mystified by the simultaneously vague but overly-specific calls for papers on H-Net? If so, this game’s for you! Here’s how to play. First, go have a look at H-Announce for inspiration. Perhaps you’d like to fly or take a train to the Netherlands and read a paper for a 20-minute talk on the topic of “style as assemblage” for the “Sensing Style: Subcultural Movements in the 21st century” symposium. Maybe you have a paper to contribute on the topic of “Provocative Parables at the Intersection of the Secular and the Supernatural.” If so, great! If not, that’s also OK. Either way, you can still play along as we make up our own vague-but-specific humanities CFPs!

Use entries from the table below to fill in the blanks. Once you get the hang of it, it’s easy to make up your own 🙂

 Category A  Category B: Category B in the Category C of Category D

Category ACategory BCategory CCategory D
Interrogating 
Unsettling
Rethinking 
Rewriting 
Greening
Intersecting
Revising
Reading
Re-Reading
Undermining		Social Justice
Marginalization
Alterity
Gender 
(Post)modernity 
Futurity
the Dialectic
Sovereignty
Discourse
Pedagogy
Resistance 		Urban space 
Film
Cyberpunk 
Landscape Architecture
Mockumentaries
Knitting Circles
Antarctica
Russia
Malaysia
Wyoming (or pick another U.S. State)
Second Life
Extremadura 

“disfruta la magia”

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Notes toward a personal essay about the murder of trade unionists in Colombia by soft drink bottlers and about how the political is the personal: “disfruta la magia”

To believe a thing is made from people is to forgive.  It’s the things that make the people here: the things made of people there.

I was born in the russet flush of autumn, 1985, in an evergreen place. My growth in the intervening years has been a gut-wrenching display of limbs beating upon membranes of things. That’s not how it feels, of course,
Being alive.

To be in the Round is to Be. Each of us a Rebel. Each of us a Gifted Student. Each of us a Birth of the Cool. Each of us a King of the Lizards.

I became a data point in the carbon rush of 1996, in a climate-controlled room. My reduction in the exaflops since that shining moment has been a substantial work of engineering prowess. That’s not how it feels, of course,
Being golden.

Ink beneath the gloss.
Acceptable loss.
Consummation to Consumption.