The Ostriches Archives - Public Seminar

Podcast

The Ostriches: Part VI

“By the flood of his dysregulation”

February 26, 2026 • by Val Vinokur

THE OSTRICHES: PART VI, APRES MOI LE DELUGE Happy is the idiotin the privacy of dreamssequestered from the busynessof business, at home under cloudswith every peripatetic steplike a dog licking every handsniffing every crotchbefore fondling his ownfloating on a raft of melting ice Unhappy is the tyrantin the publicity of powercaged by ...

Podcast

The Ostriches: Part V

“the padded paws in tactical gloves”

February 20, 2026 • by Val Vinokur

THE OSTRICHES: PART V, FORT SNELLING, MN Our hair is full of the sand of cliché,but the ostrich does not hide her head.When the big cats and jackals dancethrough the dry grass, the ostrich liesflat on the horizon, a plumed moundon the definitive curve of the earth.The brown feathers hide among ...

Podcast

The Ostriches: Part IV

“Forty to a clockless cell”

February 6, 2026 • by Val Vinokur

THE OSTRICHES: PART IV, 26 FEDERAL PLAZA Leonardo’s first inventions were machinesTo tear the bars off windows and openA prison from inside. He escaped the gibbetAnd the stake and wandered the marketBuying caged birds to set free. Every sketchAnd painting an endless draft for a pictureOf the mind in its movement, infinite. He ...

Podcast

The Ostriches: Part III

“Here at our sea-bashed gates she gloats and stands”

November 12, 2025 • by Val Vinokur

THE OSTRICHES: PART III, THAT OLD COLONIC So like the braised gullet of bleak shame,With plundering lips that glide on branded hands;Here at our sea-bashed gates she gloats and stands,A bronzy woman with a piece, whose flameIs an enfrissoned blighting, and her nameBreeder of Exiles. From her beaked handSpews world-wide hell—come, ...

Podcast

The Ostriches: Part II

October 29, 2025 • by Val Vinokur

THE OSTRICHES: PART II But he though blind of sight,Despis'd and thought extinguish't quite,With inward eyes illuminatedHis fierie vertue rouz'dFrom under ashes into sudden flame,And as an ev'ning Dragon came,Assailant on the perched roosts …And though her body die, her fame survives,A secular bird ages of lives. —Samson Agonistes Captain Kirk: crisscross ...

Podcast

The Ostriches: Part I

“This is the plague after the plague”

October 15, 2025 • by Val Vinokur

THE OSTRICHES: PART I Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that ruin the vineyards, for our vineyards are in blossom.—Song of Songs, 2:15 I have become a brother to the jackals, and go about in the company of ostriches.—Job, 30:29 Our vineyard is titanium and glassand the little foxes flickerin the ...