Episode 104: Accents and Human Remains
b"We have a special treat, Slushies!! In today's episode, you\\u2019ll get a duet from Nancy T and Rachael Philipps. Starting with the accents of Long Island, T\\u2019s poem makes Alex think of Nassau and Suffolk County while Marion recalls Billy Joel's music. The language also leaves the crew thinking about Tracey J Smith\\u2019s, \\u201cSolstice.\\u201d The tables turn when the crew reads, Philipp\\u2019s \\u201cAfter you left us,\\u201d going from jargon about the sounds of the world to the description of human remains. With cremation on the rise, the crew ponders the process being described in this not-so-sentimental poem.\\nAlex mentioned that he is able to do a full SNL Skit, which one do you think it is?\\nThis episode is brought to you by one of our sponsors, Wilbur Records, who kindly introduced us to the artist A.M.Mills, whose song \\u201cSpaghetti with Loretta\\u201d now opens our show.\\nNancy T is a high school teacher, poet, artist from NY, currently living down south.\\nRachael Philipps is a poet, journalist, and a properly misanthropic Welsh woman with anunhealthy dependency on caffeine and marmalade. She is constantly chastened by her iPhone\\u2019s audio settings for playing LCD Soundsystem too loud whilst out on her regular jogs around the mean streets of Westchester. Rachael\\u2019s poem \\u201cPerfect Little Houseguests\\u201d was published by Swwim Every Day in August 2022, she was awarded a Bethany Arts Poetry Residency in 2021 and was the recipient of an AWP Writer to Writer mentorship for poetry in 2020. Her journalism spans broadcasting for the BBC plus writing and editorial work for print titles including Time Out London, The New York Times and Food and Wine magazine. She is currently at work on her first chapbook.\\nNancy TLong Island Sound\\nThe chop on the soundnearly drowns the clubbingyou deal bluefish on deck.Red slicks beneath one bold bastardflipping you silveredcurses, straining for water\\nor flesh, some end. Then windsurprises, cracks you a backhand,a cleat bruise begins darkening your rose tattoo.\\nThey suspend at depth, hitand hit until sated and free,or iced under gray. The bow\\nbegs a turning backwe know you\\u2019ll refuse. Tired, stillfor a time not long, never long,you swear when the inboard coughstaunts and seizes,\\nand the rain, the rain dares spiton your back in the holdunder gulls striking near,the siren water soundsgone unlovely, steady long gone,just the sound of metal striking struckmetal, like metal resisting your forge hard and hot and bent and\\nThe gulls cry over diesel on wavessheening a sad iridescence, like soap on tongue.\\n\\xa0\\nRachael PhilippsAfter you left us\\nAfter you left us, I got the callHer cremains are ready, she said.The what? I said\\nThe cremains...cremated remains.She explained, testily. Like... duh.Oh, I say Her ashes.\\nWhat I wanted to say \\u2013She, shouldnever be called cremains.\\nOf course I angry-Googled it \\u2013industry term, euphemism,first found in a newspaper obituary in 1947.\\nDiscovered that her body,once incinerated, was swept fromthe furnace with a metal broom\\nand looked nothing like ashes (or cremains)but like sand and bleached sticks.A desiccated high-tide at the beach.\\nI found myself admiring our stubbornbig bones which apparentlyalways refuse to yield to 1800 degrees.\\nYet even they mustsubmit to process,get pulverized\\nin a Cremulatorto a uniform grindto fit the urn.\\nto make the gone,and their place inside us,take up the least space possible.\\n\\xa0\\n\\nNancy T\\n\\n\\n\\nRachel Phillipps"