Baby Baby Baby for April 15th
This tornado loves you/ This tornado loves you/ This tornado loves you....
Oh, hello, there—
Today’s newsletter is a quickie—I just wanted to check in, do some quick housekeeping, and resume staring blankly at the Google Doc on which my graduate thesis allegedly lives. (It is due…now? Now. It’s fucking due now).
First, a huge thank you for all the kind feedback I received on my Good-Time Girl series. I initially envisioned this newsletter as a pithier criticism project, but I really cherish the direction it’s taken as a first-touch site for bigger, more ambitious ideas. We’ve also hit 300 subscribers! Your attention means the world, truly. I’m really proud of the work I’m doing here, and, cringe as it sounds, Rat Bxtch has proven a vital lifeline for me during a season of enormous uncertainty. Y’all have buoyed me through, for real.
Here’s what’s coming up:
I’ve been struggling with what exactly to put behind this janky Substack paywall, and I think I’ve landed on recorded conversations (Look, I am wicked problematic! I should not be permitted to talk out of my ass! Ever! But you CANNOT CANCEL THE CANCELERINA! You can NEVER OUTDO THE DOER!) Expect the first one in the next few weeks. Strap in, bitch. It’s going to be dreadful.
My next project for Rat Bxtch is based on editorializing reader secrets. If you’d like to anonymously share a secret, please write it here! I promise I won’t blow up your spot.
Some topics up on the docket—book reviews, flowers made of glass, consent and the discography of Prince, good luck totems through the centuries, blow job ontology.
I’ve really been slacking on sharing my playlists! Here are a few for the ass.
For when you’re texting him all that evil pussy ra-ra shit while you’re ovulating
(Side note: have y’all ever gotten [redacted] so god-damn [redacted] that you just turned into a [redacted redacted redacted redacted redacted redacted redacted]? Because a bitch is [****************************************************************]
I’ll leave you with this article on Cobweb Valentines and this poem by Alice Notley.
See you next Tuesday, as they say.
-B
The Anthology
BY ALICE NOTLEY
No tone of voice being sufficient to the occasion
Flash that’s all, that we’re here. Are you ever
sarcastic and unlikeable    Mentally we are the
cast of one epic thought: You. How many
of you sweep through me, as I ride the métro
leading you, because I have to and not be poignant
oh who’s written anything poignant since ...  
An old woman of indeterminate race, in white hat
and scarf, no teeth staring back at me.
He sounded brittle and superior last night, do the
dead do that; Grandma had a plethora of tones of voice
compared to anyone in this anthology. Our
anthology, he says, being mental is complex
as hell. How do you keep track of your poems? Any-
one remembers what they like, but you have constantly
to emit them ... Everyone’s at me, Drown it
out, thinking of an icon emerald-throated.
I see the alley house at night dark I’m trying
to be pure again, but I want all the tones.
When you’re dead you can have them ...  thick
marine dark from the fencelike oleanders and a moon
calling to white boards. Enter. Lie down in
your own bed, in the room where Momma found a scorpion.