The Writer's Allman Brother for Friday, May 8, 2026

Pejk Malinovski

Phillis Wheatley

Roddy Doyle

"Hello, I'm Erica Jong" by Kathy Acker

Transcript

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And here's the Rider's Allman Brother for Friday, May 8th, 2026. This week marks the 50th birthday of poet, publisher, radio boy, and human sex baguette Pike Melinovsky. Born a Dane in Spain, but mainly staying Danish, he wowed the Spaniards from an early age by catching flies with chopsticks hewn from the bones of Madridian prisoners. At age 13, he grew his first pencil, went dancing with it down the pathway in Copenhagen's Assistans Cemetery, where all the dead get help. TM. Pike danced past the graves of Hans Assistens Anderson and Sorin Assistens Captain Kierkegaard. He danced past the tea leaves and the witch hazel, past the elderberry bush and the neophyte berry bush. He boogied right on by the lovers with the bumps on their hump, slapping ice cream off each other's knuckles like no one was running past them with a pencil he just grew, TM. When he got to the other end of nature's death arcade, he plopped down to the asphalt, licked the leaden tip of his new writing implement, and wrote his first poem, a cistina, in which the repeating words were pike, phoneme, asphalt, endowed, and banquet. The dead rose up from their graves and applauded, Never has anyone given us so much assistance as this young lad with his art, they chanted. May his chest rest easy and flutter with bees, may his charms be as malty and yummy as cheese. May he wander through forest and purpose and sound, gathering muck and moulding proof rock. May he glisten with droplets and dribblings of babes, their cooing philanthropy cooling his jaws. May it always be May, the sixth day specifically. Let us all celebrate at the tops of our tongues. Pike Malinovsky, he may be fifty, but he's still fucking nifty. Also thrifty, he's wicked frugal. It's the birthday of Phyllis Wheatley, the first African American female poet to publish in the United States. That we know about it was 1773, and we don't even know Wheatley's actual name nor where she was from because she was kidnapped along with twelve point five million other Africans and sold his property to a family who encouraged her poetical talents at a young age and tasked a different enslaved human being with the household chores, as though that is supposed to make any of this better. Lots of famous white politicians whose names you would recognize didn't believe the poems were hers, until she wrote a bunch of sycophantic verses praising them, and they all drifted off to sleep, lulled by the sounds of their own names. Then she stole the keys from John Hancock's pocket and let herself out of the sex dungeon. Once she was emancipated, her patrons dropped her like a hot stone. Because where's the novelty in hobnobbing with someone who isn't owned by somebody else? And then she met a guy. Just a guy. He sold cheese. They got hitched, lost the first two kids. And because God is a bastard, they went broke, and Wheatley did have to scrub some white person's floor to stay alive, which she didn't for very much longer, succumbing to pneumonia and dying penniless and alone on the same day as her third child. Because of course she did. And it's the birthday of Rowdy Roddy Doyle, the Irish novelist who sold out his countrymen as hacked out caricatures so he could make a buck and elicit Snickers from Americans. Born in 1930, he came out of the womb talking smack to the Worldwide Wrestling Federation cameras about the other sickly infants in the Premi unit. He never quite grew hair. And he'd never say what was actually under his kilt. Though, as his avatar Patty Clark says in the 1993 novel, Micheleley, it shines through the bloomin' clover with green horseshoes and blue diamonds, and a fine fresh scent. Two deodorants. Here's a poem for today by Kathy Acker called Hello, I'm Erica Jong. Hello, I'm Erica Jong. All of you liked my novel Fear of Flying because in it you met real people. People who loved and suffered and lived. My novel contained real people, that's why you liked it. My new novel, How to Die Successfully, contains those same characters. And it contains two new characters. You and me. All of us are real. Goodbye. Hello, I'm Erica Jong. I'm a real novelist. I write books that talk to you about the agony of American life, how we all suffer, the growing pain that more and more of us are going to feel. Life in this country is going to be more horrible, unbearable, making us maniacs 'cause mania and death will be the only doors out of prison except for those few rich people, and even they are agonized prisoners in their masks, the paths, the way they have to act to remain who they are. You think booze, sex, coke, rich food, etc. are doors out? Temporary oblivion at best. We need total oblivion. What was I saying? Oh yes, my name is Erica Jong. I would rather be a baby than have sex. I would rather go goo goo. I would write goo goo. I would write fuck you up your cunts, that's who I am. The fuck with your money, I'm not catering to you anymore. I'm getting out, I'm getting out, I'm ripping up my clothes, I'm ripping up my skin. I hurt pain, oh hurt me, pain at this point is good. Do you understand? Pain at this point is good. Me, Erica Jong, wee woo woo. I am Erica Jong, I am Erica Jong. Fuck me, you creep who's going to Australia. You're leaving me all alone, you're leaving me without sex, I've gotten hooked on sex, and now I'm My name is Erica Jong. If there is God, God is disjunction and madness. Yours truly, Erica Jong. Hello, I'm Erica Jong by Kathy Acker. Used without permission here on the Writers Almond Brother, supported by wheat, the heat that a W turned into food. Until next week, be well. Chew your lunch, and kiss a boy.