Donated

A five-hundred-pound US Navy practice bomb.
A stolen Frederic Remington sculpture.
Customized Air Jordans made for Spike Lee.
The first stamp issued in the US.
More than 5000 used blood vials.
Three pounds of marijuana.
Live Japanese grenades.
A mastodon tooth.
A live puppy.

People.

Items found in donation bins, according to The Death of a Superman.

A wildness remains

The herd has gathered loosely around
an adult roe deer on the ground.
The black mare does not want it there.
She bites at its neck, pinning it down
and sending tufts of pale fur flying up.

The mare pummels it with both front hooves.
The other horses circle, tension
rising. Every time they approach, the mare
chases them off, ears back, teeth bared.
The brutal scene unfolds until –

what palpable relief – the deer is dead.
Outside, too, has seemed peculiar:
three oystercatchers on the cut grass
of the Norfolk Showground, their orange beaks
flashing neon as they probe for earthworms.

From Even in tame horses, a wildness remains.

I’m not sure what the lesson is

The garage is lined with meticulously
indexed old magazines, vinyl records,
World War II artifacts, rare stamps,
VHS tapes and vintage fishing rods.
A Hermes 3000 typewriter, framed
oil paintings, ancient Chinese vases.

He told me about a unit
in Hackensack that had belonged
to a socialite. It was heaped
with trash bags containing Prada
dresses, Hermès scarves and jewelry.
There were also empty vodka
bottles, divorce papers and
distressing financial documents.

One evening in 1985,
Mr. Crispo and a gallery assistant
picked up a Norwegian art student named
Eigil Dag Vesti. After a drug-fueled night,
Mr. Vesti was shot dead while naked
and handcuffed. Three weeks later, hikers
discovered his corpse in a smokehouse,
a zipped leather hood over the head.

Mr. Crispo died destitute in 2024
in a Brooklyn nursing facility,
causing his storage unit to go delinquent.

Michael sold a Man Ray painting
and some Walt Kuhn drawings he found
inside for nearly $50,000.

Its contents seemed routine at first —
tool boxes, hammer holsters, saws,
drills, some Spanish-language comic books.
But deep within the clutter, in a tattered
box, Michael found a Purple Heart.

The address brought him to a home
with a rusted white fence in an
immigrant enclave of Union City.
A pair of dust-caked Timberland
boots sat by the entrance. No one
answered Michael’s knocks at the door.
No one answered his calls after he pulled
a phone number through public records.
Then he sent a letter. He is
still waiting to hear back.

People’s lives are in these lockers.
Belongings can tell you a lot
about a person. When you meet
someone, you might think you know them,
but you just don’t.

From A New Jersey Teen Finds Treasure, and More, in Abandoned Storage Units.

Manager on fire

Our training ground is across the hedge from
Arsenal. There was smoke and you could smell it.

He usually starts his day at five thirty
AM: two hours before Guardiola.
He planted a one-hundred-and-fifty
year-old olive tree outside his office
to symbolise the history of the club
and the responsibility to look
after the roots every single day. From
using a lightbulb during a pre-match
team talk to create electricity and
energy, to hiring professional
pickpockets during a pre-season dinner
and adopting a chocolate-coloured labrador
called Win, no stone has been left unturned.

From After bonfires, bulbs and a dog called Win, will Arteta get Arsenal going again?

Resistance is futile

At precisely nine in the morning,
working with focus and stealth,
our entire membership succeeded
in simultaneously beheading no one.

We set, on roads in every city,
in every nation in the world, a total of zero
roadside bombs which, not being there,
did not subsequently explode,
killing or maiming a total of nobody.

Also, none of us blew himself or herself up
in a crowded public place.

No bombs were dropped, during
the lazy afternoon hours,
on crowded civilian neighborhoods.

No stun guns, rubber batons, rubber bullets,
tear gas, or bullets were used.
No one was forced to don a hood.
No teeth were pulled in darkened rooms.
No drills were used on human flesh,
nor were whips or flames. No one
was reduced to hysterical tears
via a series of blows to the head or body.

In addition, zero planes were flown into buildings.

Since the world began,
we have gone about our work quietly,
resisting the urge to generalize,
valuing the individual over the group,
the actual over the conceptual,
the inherent sweetness of the present
over the theoretically peaceful future
to be obtained via murder.

To tell the truth, we are tired. We work.
We would just like some peace and quiet.
We stand under awnings during urban
thunderstorms, moved to thoughtfulness
by the troubled, umbrella-tinged faces rushing by.

We are many. We are worldwide.
Though you are louder, though you create
a momentary ripple on the water of life,
we will endure, and prevail.

A Press Release from People Reluctant to Kill for an Abstraction, 26 August 2004.

Paul

From a walled garden and some shepherds’ huts,
a huge, tri-peaked white zeppelin would come
into view. Then Paul Hollywood would close in
across the lawn, his silver quiff cutting

the air like a fin. A crisp oxford shirt
meant to make his eyes pop—a velvety navy
just across the color wheel from his tan.
Mary dispensed praise prudently, as if

pressing a toffee into your palm. But
Paul Hollywood can entwine seven strands
of dough into an ornamental wreath
with the dexterity of a concert pianist.

The rest of the time, he will handle your
bread like airport security. He flips
it upside down, knocks on its bottom,
interrogates it with sausage fingers.

When he is done, he dusts his hands and sheaths
them in his denim carapace. Sometimes we
observed Paul from afar, smoking alone
near the meadows’ edge, pacing like a bull.

From Inside the world of “The Great British Bake Off”.

Supporting England

England is by many
objective measures
a terrible country
ruled by terrible people
with a terrible past
and a terrifying future,

and I support England.
None of my forebears
were born in England,

and I support England.
When I watch the news
or follow England games abroad
or read about politics
I often feel utterly
disconnected from this country,

and I support England.
It was an Englishman
who snarled at me
on the street last month
while I was taking
my daughter to nursery:
Fuck off Chinaman,
take your Covid patient with you.

Nevertheless, I support England.

The supermarket is selling
something called “meatless burgers”.
There are women on Match of the Day.
You hear vague noises about “defunding the police”.
You suspect, on some sinister level,
that something you love is being taken away
And so amid this landscape
of shifting plates and cultural norms,
you have a choice: you can get with the programme
or you can stand your ground and fight.

I am not one of you
and you are not one of us.
But for this month,
for these 90 minutes,
for these sunlit days in June and July,
let’s pretend we are.

Let’s build a house together
and watch it fall.
Let’s pick apart Southgate’s 3-4-3
and debate the merits of Jack Grealish.
Let’s elate and commiserate together.
The past is the past
and the future is the future.

From My cross to bear, June 2021.