Like much of the coastal northeast, Portland is battening for a blizzard--my first major snowfall in the city. Here in this tall house overlooking a bare oceanside hill, we have gotten used to being windswept. Even in a cheerful breeze, our sea-facing bedroom can feel like a treehouse. So today will be exciting. I am looking forward to the howl.

Meanwhile, a righteous woman is gagged, our so-called president ignores a tornado in New Orleans in order to whine about a "so unfair" department store, administrative mouthpieces fabricate terrorist threats, military actions are bungled, racist incompetents clot the cabinet, and so on, and so on.

He's been in power for less than a month.

* * *

Your dream:
                    His name was Hitler and he lived over
The yelping forest where wolves run bearing the bones
Of Tristan back and forth forever.
In a castle, in firelit rooms,
His shadow passes, enigma of the gothic tower
Become the home of horror. See there, a sword
Hopping on a hare's foot, or a disembodied
Arm that floats stiff in a bloodied
Sleeve, or maybe a boot slopping with hot liquid
That you know is not what it seems;
And there, that indeflatable phallus disguised in a hood
With one hole for the hangman's eye. Screams
You cannot hear issue from mouths you cannot mistake
Inside each stone of the walls. So you make your dreams
Of Hitler, you also screaming, knowing you cannot wake. 

--from Hayden Carruth, "The Sleeping Beauty"