Ganges River Water Were I to collect Ganges River water into a parcel, bind it then mail it, what then? Would I be able to capture the water to package and bind? If so, to whom would I send the Ganges water parcel? What would the recipient think when opening the parcel and having the […]
Harold Jaffe’s Dispatches from India – November 10, 2015
Animals Kashi I am weary of being human –Clarice Lispector Among Hindus, the cow has a long history of veneration: it provides milk, its excrement provides fuel, it is a gentle ruminant. Lord Krishna in one of his manifestations was a cowherd adored by the beautiful gopi, or cowherd maiden, Radha. The cow is officially […]
Harold Jaffe’s Dispatches from India – November 9, 2015
Smells Kashi Petrol, excrement, urine, sweat, sacred cows, vagrant goats, dogs, monkeys, betel, lime, turmeric, curry, sand, sandalwood, saffron, incapacitated WCs, miscellaneous trash, rose petals, decaying wood and stone buildings overlooking the Ganges, burning wood and burning flesh, the indescribable smell of the Ganges. Shiva followers or scammers paint their forehead: three white horizontal lines […]
Harold Jaffe’s Dispatches from India – November 7, 2015
Assi Ghat, Benares Saturday, 11/7/15 dusk I ask the tuk-tuk wallah to please wait as I climb out a few streets from Assi Ghat. I pass a dilapidated building on the left with the words Shreeman Infrareality inscribed on the frayed wooden lintel. I purchase a small bag of unshelled peanuts for 10 rupees and […]
Harold Jaffe’s Dispatches from India – November 7, 2015
Mother The girl is 18 when she leaves her village in Yugoslavia for Ireland, there to attempt to join the order of Loreto, nuns who work among the poor and dying in India. She got the idea of India from a series of letters a Yugoslav priest stationed in Calcutta wrote, excerpts of which were […]
Harold Jaffe’s Dispatches from India – November 6, 2015
Beat Hindu Rereading Allen Ginsberg’s Indian Journals. With his reticent longtime Harpo Marx lookalike lover Peter Orlovsky, Ginsberg spent nearly two years in India in the early 60s, much of it in Kashi and Bengal. He inscribed that sequence in a delirious prose-poetry filled with misspellings and awkward grammar to convey immediacy and zero editing. […]
Harold Jaffe’s Dispatches from India – November 4, 2015
Sexual Prayer If cut, the highly-endowed ascetic bleeds semen Walking near one of the burning ghats in crazily trafficked Kashi, the Hindu holy city, I see a resting cow in the middle of the tumult with a scrawny little dog, paws extended, sleeping on the cow’s back. Sacred, underfed cow / ownerless underfed mutt. That […]
Harold Jaffe’s Dispatches from India – November 2, 2015
Caste / Color I watch the dark-skinned girl brush her lustrous hair in a littered corner of the roof. Three or four minutes away from the drudgery she was birthed into. She is the “untouchable” cleaner of toilets for the wealthy Brahmin family that owns the large apartment across from my boarding house. She and […]
Harold Jaffe’s Dispatches from India – November 1, 2015
Gherao Late for breakfast, head of the long table, alone. Paratha, chutney, bananas, papaya, spiced chai. An old man in a white lungi and tattered white scarf wanders in chanting Ram-Ram-Ram while dusting the furnishings. I think of Gandhi whose last word as he was shot to death by an avenging Brahmin was Ram. Rama, […]
Editor-in-Chief Harold Jaffe has announced his selections as Pushcart Prize nominees for their texts in FI’s Fluids issue (# 48).
R. Sebastian Bennett – “MY COKE” Kalisha Buckhanon – “Word” Dani Heinemeyer – “The Great Flood” E. Kelly – “Stealing Time” Shane Roeschlein – “Punk Rock is Dead / Art/Dissent / Letter / Strike” KM Seehaus – “Jesus Loves the Little Children”