tell me what you loved, touched, wondered:did you dream?did you stare at your own reflection?an aching to sliver between the fluttering colors of her consciousness,the human of her, to know her ripest and most shiny parts,for her to hold my face close, spill her metallic language into meuntil i recognize that i am of her,… Continue reading Lucy Seward
Everything the dead do not needaspirin orsorrow,I suppose. but they might needrain.not shoesbut a place towalk. not cigarettes,they tell us,but a place toburn. or we’re told:space and a place toflymight be thesame. the dead don’t needme. nor do theliving. but the dead might needeachother. in fact, the dead might needeverything weneed andwe need so muchif… Continue reading Charles Bukowski
Love is holy because it is like grace—the worthiness of its object is never really what matters. — Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Reprint edition, November 15, 2004) Originally published October 28, 2004.
To the attentive eye,each moment of the yearhas its own beauty,and in the same field,it beholds,every hour,a picture which was never seen before,and which shall never be seen again. — Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature; Addresses and Lectures.(1849)
We do not notice the distant hills of our own breathing, — Conrad Hilberry, from “A Pleasant Conversation on the Roof,” Sorting the Smoke: New and Selected Poems (University of Iowa Press, 1990)
For some of us there is only the shadow we step behindthat turns always into night, a night that leaves no memory.Its galaxies constantly change shape because of the weightof dark matter. This too is only a question of belief. For us,there is no difference between the moon and its reflection.The earth releases the song… Continue reading Richard Jackson
We are cold, chattering with light, on the cusp of some bright shorewinter waterbirds shrieking a welcome: our hearts—math to math— willing, but not prepared. — Alisha Bruton, from “I Am Sorry I Compared You to a Cormorant When They Are Not Beautiful Birds,” Diagram (14.3)
It must be most dangerous then to be a man. It is indeed, madame, and but few survive it. ― Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon (Zinc Read, February 21, 2023) Originally publishedJanuary 1, 1932
She could never be a saint, but she thought she could be a martyr if they killed her quick. — Flannery O’Connor, “A Temple of the Holy Ghost,” A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories (Mariner Books; Reissue edition, October 15, 1992) Originally published January 1, 1955.
I will walk by myselfand cure myselfin the sunshine and the wind. — Charles Reznikoff, from “Autobiography: New York,” Poems 1918-1975: The Complete Poems of Charles Reznikoff (Black Sparrow Press, 1977)
The Vale of Soul-Making 