January 2012
3 posts
2 tags
“If that someone who’s me yet not me yet who judges me is always with me, as he...”
– The Gaffe // C. K. Wiliams
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That Night With The Green Sky // Tao Lin
It was snowing and you were kind of beautiful We were in the city and every time I looked up Someone was leaning out a window, staring at me I could tell you liked me a lot or maybe even loved me But you kept walking at this strange speed You kept going in angles and it was confusing me I think maybe you were thinking that you’d make me disappear By walking at strange speeds and in a strange,...
1 tag
TO THE WOMEN COMPETING ON E! ENTERTAINMENT'S HIT...
What will you tell your five-year-old daughter when she cannot find her face in yours?
Whoever loved you, loved you. Loved your scars and their legends, loved each vagrant hair. The first time he caught you lit up by the bright light of a midnight refrigerator, sneaking cookie dough into your mouth, he knew he would marry you. While you slept he called his mother to tell her, skated his finger...
October 2011
12 posts
1 tag
When the Glass of My Body Broke // Anne Sexton
Oh mother of sex, lady of the staggering cuddle, where do these hands come from? A man, a Moby Dick of a man, a swimmer going up and down in his brain, the gentleness of wine in his fingertips, where do these hands come from? I was born a glass baby and nobody picked me up except to wash the dust off me. He has picked me up and licked me alive.
Hands growing like ivy over me, hands growing out of...
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Purge // Michael Mlekoday
[purj] -verb 1. to try and be a storm, as in the way it always storms the day you leave a place 2. to try and be a saint, as in the forgetting of the body, its blush and rushes of blood 3. to leave the party early and alone 4. to abandon, as in watching ivy crawl up the side of a house 5. to set the house or body on fire 6. to kneel on the porch at midnight until the joints ignore their own...
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Fidelity // Ted Hughes
Plump and pretty, With a shameless gap-tooth laugh, her friend Did all she could to get me inside her. And you will never know what a battle I fought to keep the meaning of my words Solid with the world we were making. I was afraid, if I lost that fight, Something might abandon us. Lifting Each of those naked girls, as they smiled at me In their early twenties, I laid them Under the threshold of...
1 tag
Family Life // Antigone Kefala
I am tired, living at home among strangers, sitting at the same tables, waiting for an acceptance that never comes, an understanding that would not be born, the measure in us already spent. Then I go out, in the busy streets, and see you, young men made of for veers, talking or laughing in trains, unaware of the seed, already at work, with blind hands; and think of him, silent now, burdened with...
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Haiku (Failed) // Nick Flynn
The thin thread that hold us here, tethered / or maybe tied, together,
what / do you call it—telephone? horizon? song? Listen / to yourself
sing, We are all god’s children / we are all gods, we walk the earth /
sometimes, two sails inside us sometimes / beating, our bodies the
bottle, a ship inside each / until one day, for no reason, it sails—
hello? / damn phone—until one day it sails / out...
2 tags
“Sitting under a potlid, tiny and inert as a rice grain.
They are turning the...”
– Witch Burning // Sylvia Plath
1 tag
Horoscope // Ted Hughes
You wanted to study Your stars — the guards Of your prison yard, their zodiac. The planets Muttered their Babylonish power-sprach — Like a witchdoctor’s bones. You were right to fear How loud the bones might roar, How clear an ear might hear What the bones whispered Even embedded as they were in the hot body. Only you had no need to calculate Degrees for your ascendant disruptor In Aries. It...
2 tags
“She went through her morning mail with real anxiety, looking for invitations,...”
– The Country Husband // John Cheever
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A Working List of Things I Will Never Tell You //...
You are the only person to whom I’ve lied, knowing
I was telling the truth. I miss the way your neck wraps around my face like a cave we are both lost in. I remember when you said being with me
is like being alone with company […]
I have a growing queue of things I know will make you laugh and I don’t know where to put them. I mourn like you’re dead. If you had asked me to stay,
I...
1 tag
The Stories // Stephen Dunn
I was unfaithful to you last week. Though I tried to be true to the beautiful vagaries of our unauthorized love, I told a stranger our story, arranging and rearranging us until we were orderly, reduced.
I didn’t want to sleep with this stranger. I wanted, I think, to see her yield, to sense her body’s musculature, her history of sane resistance become pliable, as yours had twenty-two years ago....
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The Reason Why the Closet-Man is Never Sad //...
This is the house of the closet-man. There are no rooms, just hallways and closets. Things happen in rooms. He does not like things to happen … Closets, you take things out of closets, you put things into closets, and nothing happens … Why do you have such a strange house? I am the closet-man, I am either going or coming, and I am never sad. But why do you have such a strange house? I...
1 tag
On Last Lines // Suzanne Buffam
The last line should strike like a lover’s complaint. You should never see it coming. And you should never hear the end of it.
(via exempli-gratia)
September 2011
11 posts
1 tag
Love, Forgive Me // Sierra DeMulder
After Rachel McKibbens
My sister told me a soul mate is not the person who makes you the happiest but the one who makes you feel the most, who conducts your heart
to bang the loudest, who can drag you giggling with forgiveness from the cellar they locked you in. It has always been you. You are the first
person I was afraid to sleep next to, not because of the fear you would leave in the...
2 tags
1999 // Kevin Gonzales
If there were an antonym for suicide we could all choose when to be born. I would have been born after that day so I could not remember you. So my fingers would stop pointing at all the things that aren’t there.
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boom // Brian Dillon
I waited thirteen months to leave the home we had shared Not once locked a door I feared the cleaning The need to put fingers into the corners To scrape out the backs of the drawers Pieces of you were splashed against the walls Like I had not left you for someone else But had buried a grenade in your gut And ran out of the room.
2 tags
“I am stuffing your mouth with your
promises and watching
you vomit them out...”
–
Killing the Love // Anne Sexton
2 tags
I Was Told There'd Be Cake // Sloane Crosley
I bent down and took my shoes off. I wanted to walk barefoot in the dewy grass with them swinging in my hand. Except we weren’t on grass. We were on Prince Street. I made it half a block before James stopped me. “Enough,” he said, “you’re going to give yourself tetanus.”
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Theft // Katherine Anne Porter
I was right not to be afraid of any thief but myself, who will end by leaving me nothing.
In this moment she felt that she had been robbed of an enormous number of valuable things, whether material or intangible: things lost or broken by her own fault, things she had forgotten and left in houses when she moved: books borrowed and not returned, journeys she had planned and had not made, words she...
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Cantaloupe // Gillian Sze
If you were here, I would show you the cantaloupe that my grandmother never meant to grow. It just showed up by the rose bushes like a mistake, some bastard child that sprouted from an insatiable seed thrown in with the compost. It took root, and the cantaloupe is no larger than a baseball, the runt of the entire world’s litter of fruit. I would give it to you, pass it into yours hands, the way I...
2 tags
How to Be an Other Woman // Lorrie Moore
Some deaf and dumb kids, probably let out from a dance at the school nearby, are gathered downstairs below your windows, hooting and howling, making unearthly sounds. You guess they are laughing and having fun, but they can’t hear themselves, and at night the noises are scary, animal-like.
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In The Origami Fields // Sabrina Orah Mark
where I fold and unfold my left arm into November, my hair into my sister, where the black-gloved woman plays my heart like a crumpled violin, where I stand creased and lusting for paper, where I have no more dead lovers than you, where beautiful girls are always asked for directions, where I keep myself real, flirting with the ventriloquists, where my father holds me like a paper doll, where...
3 tags
Medea // Euripides
Then she began to shriek and shriek. Two agonies, and both at once: On her head, that golden crown Dripped scorching, liquid fire; And the dress, your children’s second gift, Branded her soft flesh. Poor girl, She hurtled up, all fire, And bucked her head to fling away the crown. But it was welded there, a shackle of gold. She fell to the ground in agony; None but her father would have...
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Theogony // Hesiod
As the bees in their sheltered nests feed the drones, those conspirators in badness, and while they busy themselves all day and every day till sundown making the white honeycomb, the drones stay inside in the sheltered cells and pile the toil of others into their own bellies, even so as a bane for mortal men has high-thundering Zeus created women, conspirators in causing difficulty.
August 2011
3 posts
1 tag
Elimination Dance (an intermission) // Michael...
[Note: the rules of the dance are simple: if the caller announces a circumstance that has occurred in the lifetime of you or your partner, you must leave the dance floor at once.]
‘Nothing I’d read prepared me for a body this unfair’ JOHN NEWLOVE ‘Toll we be roten, kan we not rypen’ GEOFFREY CHAUCER Those who are allergic to the sea Those who have resisted...
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Prayer to Persephone // Edna St. Vincent Millay
Be to her, Persephone, All the things I might not be; Take her head upon your knee. She that was so proud and wild, Flippant, arrogant and free, She that had no need of me, Is a little lonely child Lost in Hell, — Persephone, Take her head upon your knee; Say to her, “My dear, my dear, It is not so dreadful here.
(via exempli-gratia)
July 2011
6 posts
1 tag
Orange // Wendy Cope
At lunchtime I bought a huge orange The size of it made us all laugh. I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave— They got quarters and I had a half. And that orange it made me so happy, As ordinary things often do Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park This is peace and contentment. It’s new. The rest of the day was quite easy. I did all my jobs on my list And enjoyed them and had some...
3 tags
“Whoever you are—I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.”
– A Streetcar Named Desire // Tennessee Williams
2 tags
A Gate at the Stairs // Lorrie Moore
Though the interior of the casket was quilted white, like a beautiful suitcase, what I could see of my brother looked like garbage tossed inside. He had no legs, it seemed, so there was room for mine […] We would be kids again, lying in the woods somewhere, except the smell was starting to seem horrible, and I was curled against him in such a way that I realized he’d been stuffed with...
brettjenkins asked: Thanks for posting my poem! I was caught off guard by how many people reblogged it. I'm terribly fond of this project.
2 tags
The Bell Jar // Sylvia Plath
I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.
1 tag
Pluto to Persephone // Daniel Williams
I know what it is you want from me but you see I cannot give it I am hell and hell is a nice place to visit but when you want to leave you want to leave when you speak to me you converse with darkness hold my hand old bones rattle when you kiss me imagine kissing the skull of a saint mouldering in a cave large balloon of spirit flown imagine taste of white bone reposed in...
June 2011
2 posts
1 tag
Mondays // Emily Fragos
Every village has its lunatic, its talking parrot, its spot in the park where lovers lie between two trees.
At the post office, there she is, pushing her carriage filled with garbage; her head, a poodle of ludicrous yellow curls.
She tells her Bengali doctor: I don’t know how long it’s been out there on the lawn, but it’s not dead yet.
He looks back at her with liquid...
1 tag
In Conversation with Myself // Julia Gjika
I I don’t have that much faith to die for what I believe in. I go to the hospital regularly, once a month. There are people there who’ve lost their limbs. Their piercing eyes say: ”Everyone survives, so do we!” Once a month, I go to the town cemetery to remember those that have gone; I light a candle, plant something new. You can’t wake anyone there. ...
May 2011
14 posts
1 tag
December 21st, 2002 // Brett Elizabeth Jenkins
It’s said it takes seven years
to grow completely new skin cells.
To think, this year I will grow
into a body you never will
have touched.
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Vissi d'arte // Lorrie Moore
“Don’t fuck with my prose,” he’d been known to say in a loud voice.
“But, Harry, we need to shorten this to fit in an illustration.”
“You’re asking me to eat my children so you can fit in some dumb picture?”
“If you don’t want a picture, Harry, go publish in the phone book.”
“I have to think about this. I have to...
2 tags
To Fill // Lorrie Moore
In the elevator I touch my face, touch my eyes to see if they are behaving, if they are being, if they are having, or misbehaving, miss being had. The words conflate and dizzy me, smack of the errors of my life I misbe. I mishave.
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Selected Recent and New Errors // Dean Young
Do you think the dictionary ever says to itself I’ve got these words that mean completely different things inside myself and it’s tearing me apart? My errors are even bigger than that. You start taking down the walls of your house, sooner or later it’ll collapse but not before you can walk around with your eyes closed, rolled backwards and staring straight into the amygdala’s meatlocker ...
2 tags
“I may not have been sure about what really did interest me, but I was absolutely...”
– The Stranger // Albert Camus
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My Only Doubt // Sarah Abdel Razak
Am I wrong? Our nearness only strengthens the elastic tug of thick rubber wrapped haphazardly around my neck. Go back, or snap; Go back, or snap; Go back, or snap You run a bath, Your timid wet hands on the small of my back ask softly Relax The smell of scented warming water smothers my senses into spasm, I have no thought, I am reaction How so? A reflexive no, to every lusted Yes… A medical...
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Starving Again // Lorrie Moore
“But, Dennis, really, why do you think so much about love, of someone loving you or not loving you? That is all you read about, all you talk about.”
“Put the starving people of the world together in a room, and what you get is a lot of conversation about roast beef. They should be talking about the Napoleonic Code?”
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A Beautiful Grade // Lorrie Moore
“It was all very successful,” said Lina indignantly.
“But how exactly do you measure success?” asked Bill. “I mean, it took time, but, you’ll forgive me, we stopped the war in Vietnam.”
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True Love // Don Shea
The female empid fly also had a nasty habit of eating the male when he approaches her during mating season. To divert her from this purpose, the male typically finds a morsel of food and wraps it elaborately in a silk balloon formed by his glandular secretions. The time it takes the female to unwrap his gift is often long enough for him to copulate successfully and escape unscathed. But in one...
2 tags
Yard Sale // Lorrie Moore
I don’t want him to be happy. I want him to miss me. That is not really love; I suppose I understand that. But perhaps it is like a small girl who for one baffled and uncharmed instant realizes her rigid plastic doll is not a real baby—before she resumes her pretending again.
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XXI // Gerald Gould
For God’s sake, if you sin, take pleasure in it, And do it for the pleasure. Do not say: ’Behold the spirit’s liberty! — a minute Will see the earthly vesture break away And God shine through.’ Say: ‘Here’s a sin — I’ll sin it; And there’s the price of sinning — and I’ll pay.’
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Calling Him Back From Layoff // Bob Hicok
I called a man today. After he said hello and I said hello came a pause during which it would have been confusing to say hello again so I said how are you doing and guess what, he said fine and wondered aloud how I was and it turns out I’m OK. He was on the couch watching cars painted with ads for Budweiser follow cars painted with ads for Tide around an oval that’s a metaphor for life...
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Weather Forecast // Harold Pinter
The day will get off to a cloudy start. It will be quite chilly But as the day progresses The sun willl come out And the afternoon will be dry and warm In the evening the moon will shine And be quite bright. There will be, it has to be said, A brisk wind But it will die out by midnight. Nothing further will happen. This is the last forecast.