The Writer's Allman Brother for Friday, May 15, 2026

The Papal Bull Ad Extirpanda

The National Women's Suffrage Association - New York Charter

L. Frank Baum

"Visions of Rotterdam" by Gregory Corso 

Transcript

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And here's the Writer's Almond Brother for Friday, May 15th, 2026. It was on this day in 1252 that Pope Innocent, who wasn't, issued the Papal Bull ad extra panda, adding an extra panda to every paper bull writing contest at the Vatican Food Court Expo. I hate the Pony Express, the Pope confessed, thumbing his Popley nose at a service that wouldn't exist for four millennia. The Panda Express is much cheaper, and it has ribs. It was today in 1869 that the National Women's Suffrage Association opened its charter in New York, giving women in all five boroughs access to unimaginable suffering, especially when dealing with the men in their lives. Its founders were Susan B. Anthony Hopkins and Elizabeth Caddy Harry Dean Stanton, the latter of whom wore a gallon hat, as all female headwear back then was fractional in proportion to masculine haberdashery. It would be another hundred years before sequined unisex tiaras would be available at the Olivia Newton John Paul Joan Armitrading Post, the first of which opened at the Nippelring Emporium in the Hall of St. Prude. And it's the birthday of L. Frank Baum, born a sapling pinned under a fallen tree branch in the remote quadrant of the merry old land of a child's psychogenic imaginings in South Dakota. He was yanked to freedom by a girl. She had pigtail braids and a naive sense of rootlessness wherever she went, also a penchant for disquietingly opulent footwear. Together they set out on a pilgrimage to the lair of a powerful bridge salesman living in a white castle in a city known mysteriously as Chicago. They learned of his wish fulfilling prowess from a crone that visited Frank while he and his nameless bride were on a peyote binge in Syracuse, writing plays and then burning them at night in the driveway for the insurance money. Frank and his wife made friends along the way, one an overgrown chicken called Hamburg, who aspired to be an opera lover. Don't you mean singer? Frank said. Hamburg said, a sewing machine. The trio developed a traveling show in which they collected stamps in real time, and attached them to the exposed flesh of their audience members, one of whom, at a stop in Bakersfield, cried Foul. Literally foul, pointing at Hamburg, who said, And what of it? Bacok? People and chickens shouldn't consort, said the Tuff, a cloud of smoke enreathing his simian brow. Who says? said Frank, now getting involved, his upper branches engorged with sap. You did, the Tuff said. In an essay published in Anti Everything Magazine, I remember the font. Is this true? Hamburg said, turning and fixing Frank with a frank and feathered glare. Without a word, Frank let the full heft of his timber fall atop a horseless carriage in the road, pinning its owner underneath. The tuff ran up and robbed the driver's rubber boots, and all four of them ran into a wood where drugs grew freely from the earth, and every pathway led to a different and more puzzling career center. Here's a poem for today by Gregory Corso entitled Vision of Rotterdam. September nineteen fifty seven, summoned by my vision agent via ventriloqual telegram delivered by the dumb mouths stoned upon Notre Dame, given golden fare and seventeenth century diagram. I left the Gargoyle city, and two suitcases filled with despair, arrived in Rotterdam. Rotterdam is dying again. Steamers and tankers unload an awful sight. May nineteen forty Stevedores lead forth a platoon of leukemia. Pleasure ships send metal voiced rats teeheeing a propaganda of ruin. A cargo of scream deafens the tin horn of feeble war. Bombers overhead. Young blonde children in white blouses crawl in the streets, gnawing their houses. The old, the sick, the mad leave their wheelchairs and cells and kneel in adoration before the gentle torpedo of miracles. Bombers unanswerable to the heart vitalize a Sunday afternoon dream. Bombs like jewels surprise. Explosion, explosion, explosion Avalanche on medieval stilts brought down nineteen forty. Mercy leans against her favorite bombardment and forgives the bomb. Alone, eyes on the antique diagram, I wander down the ruin and see, amid a madness of coughing bicycles, the scheme of a new Rotterdam, humming in the vacancy. Vision of Rotterdam by Gregory Corso, used without permission here on the Writers Almond Brother, supported by the Tort Reformer, a Pilates machine that shrinks both your waist and your exposure to liability. Until next week, be well, shake my hand, and show regret.