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HOLLYWOOD AND THE CIA — Film historian Ed Rampell details Hollywood’s entangled relationship with the CIA and the Pentagon; HOUSES OF THE DEAD: Nancy Kurshan exposes the cruel human rights offenses taking place inside America’s vast gulag of Control Unit Prisons; BROTHERHOOD OF SUMMER:  David Macaray charts the history of the most powerful union in the US: the Baseball Players Association; TAR SANDS COME TO AMERICA: Steve Horn explains how the Keystone Pipeline debates have diverted  attention from Big Oil’s other plans to transport Alberta’s oil into the US. PLUS: Jeffrey St. Clair on CONSTITUTIONAL ENTROPY; Mike Whitney on HOW THE BANKS TARGETED BLACKS; Chris Floyd on THE RISE OF BRITAIN’S TEA PARTY; Kristin Kolb on THE NEEDLE AND THE DAMAGE DONE; Kim Nicolini on the FILMS OF WILLIAM FRIEDKIN; and Lee Ballinger on POETS VS. THE ONE PERCENT.
 

Marla Ruzicka, d. April 16

by FRANK B. FORD



Embraced the living
and counted the dead.

The friends she left
invoke the ordinary
over greater pain: mis-

placing her cellphone,
giggling California girl
asking where the party is.

And such. Round against
these the usual demons,

ending with exhaustion,
depression. Furious wheel.

Afterwards to work for all
those battered by the roar-
ing beast. I don’t know

if saints march in. Marla
enters a dim chapel, blond

hair brushing light along
the Stations of the Cross.

FRANK B. FORD lives in Florida and can be reached at: frank_b_ford@yahoo.com