A writer takes on subjects as varied as vomit, Kathy Acker''s wardrobe, and Occupy Oakland, in lyric explorations of illness, health, and the body.A moving meld of essay, memoir, and story, When the Sick Rule the World collects Dodie Bellamy''s new and recent lyric prose. Taking on topics as eclectic as vomit, Kathy Acker''s wardrobe, and Occupy Oakland, Bellamy here examines illness, health, and the bodyboth the social body and the individual bodyin essays that glitter with wit even at their darkest moments. In a safe house in Marin County, strangers allergic to the poisons of the world gather for an evening''s solace. In Oakland, protesters dance an ecstatic bacchanal over the cancerous body of the city-state they love and hate. In the elegiac memoir,Phone Home,Bellamy meditates on her dying mother''s last days via the improbable cipher of Steven Spielberg''s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Finally, Bellamy offers a piercing critique of the displacement and blight that have acc