Lawrence W. Britt: 14 Characteristics of Fascism

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Sound familiar? Scarecrow certainly thinks so.

Vox Populi's avatarVox Populi

Historian Lawrence Britt studied the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia), and Pinochet (Chile) and found they had 14 elements in common. He calls these the identifying characteristics of fascism.

  1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
    Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.
  2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights
    Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of “need.” The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, and long incarcerations of prisoners.
  3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
    The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common…

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Listening to Cicadas, I See Charlottesville (Ghazal)

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Listening to Cicadas, I See Charlottesville (Ghazal)

Shedding one coat, you live in the red, apart
from the rest. Never together, forever apart.

In this sun-drenched field, the cracks drill deeper,
wider, dribbling soil and small lives, expanding, apart.

What falls truer than any words released from this man?
Once divided, never again to touch, always apart.

The electric shrill fluctuates pitch, in unison. Hundreds
of tymbals, shredding dusk, now together, then apart.

You narrow your eye to a slit, but still see the entire
spectrum. Wing clicks, stridulation. Whole yet apart.

Shearing syllables, I learn the language of half-truth.
What is my name? I reach for that fragment. It falls apart.

Journal Publications (June – August 2017)

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Mantle

I thought it might be worthwhile to assemble these in one place, to make it easier for anyone interested in reading my recent publications.

MockingHeart Review
“This Island is a Stone”

Vox Populi
“Scarecrow Calls Out the Man”

The Icarus Anthology
“Shadow Charm”
“Forgetting Charm”

Blue Fifth Review
“Heroes”

The Mantle
“Overlooked”

The Lake
“Letter to Wright from Between Gusts”

Eclectica
“A Word Bathing in Moonlight”
“Scarecrow Dreams”
“Missing Loved Ones”

Birch Gang Review
“Landscape with Jar”

Blue Bonnet Review
“Buddha’s Not Talking”

Picaroon Poetry
“Memorial Day, 2015”

Bright Sleep
“The Sky Withholds”

Crannóg
“Scarecrow Sings the High Lonesome”

Outcast Poetry
“The Theory and Practice of Rebellion”

CrannogFront

 

 

How to Take an Amazing Photo of a Solar Eclipse

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Today, of all days, I just had to reblog Stephanie L. Harper’s poem!

stephanielharper's avatarSLHARPERPOETRY

Eclipse.PNG“Solar Eclipse with Sunspots” by Matthew Harper

First,
get knocked up,
plan a wedding in three months
and waddle down the aisle in white pumps
that fit you when you bought them. 

Gain a total of forty-eight pounds
while throwing up for forty weeks,
and give birth to a nine-pound baby boy,
who is bigger and cries louder than any other
newborn in the maternity ward. 

After you blink once or twice,
find yourself moving across the country
for your husband’s engineering job,
with three cats, the six-week old baby,
and all of their respective paraphernalia
crammed into a purple minivan. 

Critical Step: Raising Your Boy
To do this, start learning more about more things than you knew existed;
begin appreciating that this cherubic, gorgeous,
but almost alien issue of your loins
sees individual ice crystals in distant clouds,
hears crickets chirping at dusk
over the sound of rush-hour traffic,

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Endurance, 1946

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Endurance, 1946

Unaware of the day’s movements, she paints her
reply to the bracelet of light flaring above

the horizon. Tomorrow’s edict is gather,
as in retrieving a sister’s bones in black

rain, reassembling in thought
a smile that could not endure despite

its beauty. I seek a place
of nourishment and find empty bowls.

What is the symbol for peace, for planet?
How do we relinquish the incinerated voice?

Under the vault of ribs lie exiled words, more
bones, and beneath them, relentless darkness.

And whose bodies mingle in this earth?
Whose tongue withers from disuse?

The eight muscles react to separate stimuli,
four to change shape and four to alter position.

Turning, she places the brush on the sill
and opens the window to the breeze.

Exit the light, exit all prayer. Ten strokes
form breath. She does not taste the wind.

Atomic Bomb Dome_03

“Endurance, 1946” first appeared here in January 2015.


Poem Up at Blue Fifth Review’s Summer Quarterly

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splash

My poem “Heroes” is live at Blue Fifth Review. Many thanks to editor Sam Rasnake for accepting this piece.

 

 

Journal Publications (January – February 2017)

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Links to my publications for January – February 2017:

The Slag Review
“Scarecrow Pretends”

Sourland Mountain Review
“I Praise the Moon Even When She Laughs”

Silver Birch Press “Me at 17” Prose and Poetry Series
“Letter from Kansas”

Postcard Poems and Prose Magazine
“Runaway Bus”

Glass: A Journal of Poetry
“What We Say When We Say Nothing”

Calamus
“Palinode (sol, ischemia, night)”

Steel Toe Review
“How to Do Nothing”
“And All Around, the Withered”

B. McClellan’s Weblog (International Poetry Month)
“From Left to Right I Ponder Politics and Kanji”
“A Brief History of Babel”

Taos Journal of International Poetry & Art
“Henry Lee Remembers Grandmother’s Garden”
“What are You Going to Do (Cento)”
“Magic”
“The Draft”
“Diverting Silence”

 

 

On Context, Otherness and the Role of Poetry (an Interview from 2013)

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For those of you who might care, I’m featured in an interview in Middle Gray.

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Originally posted in December 2013. Circumstances have changed a bit – I have more time to write these days, but somehow manage to constantly run behind…

In Praise of Chiggers

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In Praise of Chiggers

And the others
feasting unseen
upon you,
offering their
blessings
of digestive juices
and anticoagulants,
allergic reactions and
reddened mounds
made pleasurable
by your fingernails
scraping the skin
around them, over
and raw, again,
again, it feels
so good!

 

Nocturne with a Line from Porchia

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bureau

Nocturne with a Line from Porchia

Everything is nothing, but afterwards.
I rise and the moon disturbs the darkness,
revealing symbols, a few stolen words
on the bureau. Tomorrow I’ll express
my gratitude by disappearing be-
fore I’m found, which is to say goodbye
before hello, a paradigm for the
prepossessed. Compton tells us to imply
what’s missing, like Van Gogh or Bill Monroe,
but why listen to the dead before they’ve
stopped speaking? Unfortunately we throw
out the bad with the good, only to save
the worst. I return to bed, and the floor
spins. Nothing is everything, but before.

 

This first appeared in The Blue Hour Magazine in December 2014, and is also included in my chapbook, If Your Matter Could Reform. The line “Everything is nothing, but afterwards” comes from Antonio Porchia’s Voices, translated by W.S. Merwin. Porchia wrote one book in his lifetime, but what a book it was! Often described as a collection of aphorisms, Voices is so much more – each time I open the book, I find new meaning in old lines.

Vincent