Why It Matters

Related by blood, marriage

Living their large portions

Vascular and landmark

Junior harvested his own power

Papaw sculpted glass

And often spent evenings blowing

(with the broader glass community)

Meemaw mostly stayed home

Mamaw worked at 7-Eleven

Mom worked at the community kitchen

Dad worked for the county

Angel worked at Walmart, Amazon, 

And, before she went to Buffalo

Wild Wings, there was Ross, Boot Barn, 

Torrid, Best Buy, Powerade, that hot dog place

Hell, Angel worked everywhere

But she didn’t come home one night

And next morning her body was discovered in an arroyo

Her head crushed and face mutilated

By the bloody concrete block found at the scene

You fucking unfollowed me

He had yelled over and over and over and over.

© Copyright 2026 Randy Stark

www.randystark.com

Randy Stark’s Amazon Author’s Page

 

Sunday Lit: A This and a That

Want to first give a memorial shout out to the artist Betye Saar who passed away last week. She received tributes from all major media. I have been lucky enough to see her work on display in various museums and galleries. Images of her art are widely available on the internet. I return to them frequently for inspo.  Her artistic expression was satire-laden assemblage, and I’m a big fan of that, and she was awfully good at it.

Betye Saar's 1972 piece The Liberation of Aunt Jemima, in the collection of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.

Meanwhile, my writing continues, as does reading, thinking, notetaking, and I’ve added a new habit: staring into space.

As W.S. Merwin wrote “the trouble with pleasure is the timing.”  Yesterday as I lay dying and reading As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner, my laughter practically healing me, I got about why, and how i came to be, a writer.

I attended the University of Southern California (USC) for the same number of semesters (3) that William Faulkner attended the University of Mississippi (Old Miss).

Bedight with delight, John Keats went to the ocean for the same reason I do, to refresh “ears…dinn’d with uproar rude/or fed too much with cloying melody.”

Just a coincidence? Or are there a deeper connections. For example, I was born in Chicago as were Sandra Cisneros, John Dos Passos, Patricia Smith, Carl Sandburg, Richard Wright, Nelson Algren, Gwendolyn Brooks, Sherwood Anderson, Fenton Johnson, and Studs Turkle, among many others.

I'll give it some more thought.

And in closing, have I mentioned that my hometown library participates in a consortium of county, city, and university libraries in California where if one library doesn’t have the book being requested, there’s a good chance that one of the other libraries will. I’ve requested books from libraries all over state and they’re ready to pick up at my hometown library usually within seven days.

www.randystark.com

Randy Stark’s Amazon Author’s Page

Works used for this post:

As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner, 1931

The Window Seat, by Aminatta Forna, 2021

The Shadow of Sirius, by W.S. Merwin, 2008

And various poems by John Keats, circa 1820

  

I, Schizo Human Algorithm

Endlessly is back, retooled

Prayer flags worse than inutile

Like expired medications

Unrealized video game scripts

Urine sloshed bathroom floors

Dirty pants, greasy bottoms like fast food sacks 

Industrial pollution leads to bad test scores.

Pet cameras beeping amidst deadly unrest

Fuels, lubricants, solvents

Rudely introduced to they throats

Details emerge

Officials pledge

Cases climb

Threat worries.

Are you picking up what I’m throwing out here?

Barechested white guy 

Accelerants virile and viral 

Checking Insta 

Checking Facebook

Checking checking

Like a rat hitting a pipe.

Fuck that plot point

And other reasons why

Being a miniaturist

(“In more ways than one” she adds, helpfully)

Never been tagged

Don’t have nice things

Like a flexible outlook

Or a smart nose ring.

© Copyright 2026 Randy Stark

www.randystark.com

Randy Stark’s Amazon Author’s Page

  

Cloacal Elucubrations in Ablations of Aporia

We were so in love and our dreams were so big

We turned an old packing house into a soundstage

Celebrated with Champagne and raw

Dolphin-safe tuna, all you can eat

But Truth found other careers

As well as moisturizing routines

Film shoot days are down

From chains to valet parking

Pointing to die back sugared

With sprinkles of ideological luxury

The only way our work will be seen

Is to murder a celebrity

Or kidnap their mother

And demand a queen’s ransom

Pilgrims gather

Talks teeter.

© Copyright 2026 Randy Stark

www.randystark.com

Randy Stark’s Amazon Author’s Page

 

Night-Night Gestures

Tripping over new time horizons

Falling asleep to the gentle hum 

Of orbiting data centers.

Eschewing misguided buzzing 

The locals wax taciturn 

But flex high trust scores.

Spotted skunks spotted  

Ride hailing to food halls

Means “no way is way.”

Awakening to alt-pop icons 

Tracks a high tensile relationship to

Price points at fast casual chains.

A strong hub is a springboard for

Influencer-designed boutique lifestyle

Island hopping, ziplines and logistics.

Every last finale kicks off a new beginning

Tennis is not an autonomous vehicle 

Vibe coding bangs.

But um so it’s easier to be immortal now

Behind a paywall of course

And yeah the smart money is on sequels.

© Copyright 2026 Randy Stark

www.randystark.com

Randy Stark’s Amazon Author’s Page

 

From Petticoat Junction to Extreme Unction

SOLIDARITY

Comments “you haven’t seen”

About posts “you haven’t seen”

About a reel “you haven’t seen”

Join the millions who also haven’t

And are already dead.

VINDICATION

Nah, it was a friendly thing nigga

But vindication does not mean recovered

You selling again?

SPEAKING OF IDIOMS

As Socrates said

Tease the trailer

Then turn off transponders

Basically he’s like

Don’t be an idiom

Keep your friends close and  

Strike your enemies remotely.

© Copyright 2026 Randy Stark

www.randystark.com

Randy Stark’s Amazon Author’s Page

 

As Reach Drops Straighter Than Straight to Voicemail

A pod of the obsequious, beached

In a resort lounge at the end 

Of the second day of the 

Three

Day

Conference.

Truth is, whether you were there or not

That’s whose feed I’m not in.

What happened was those

Things I wanted to happen 

Those things did not happen.

We never even went there

Although later she “let slip”

That “a couple of times”

She’d “thought about it.”

That’s whose feed I’m not in as well.

© Copyright 2026 Randy Stark

www.randystark.com

Randy Stark’s Amazon Author’s Page