crowsummer

[crowsummer]

Full offense but your writing style is for you and nobody else. Use the words you want to use; play with language, experiment, use said, use adverbs, use “unrealistic” writing patterns, slap words you don’t even know are words on the page. Language is a sandbox and you, as the author, are at liberty to shape it however you wish. Build castles. Build a hovel. Build a mountain on a mountain or make a tiny cottage on a hill. Whatever it is you want to do. Write.

[crowsummer]

"In my culture, we know death intimately. In Arabic, the highest expression of love is the phrase "ya'aburnee" Translated "you bury me" . It means "I love you so much, I'd sooner die than bury you". It was used by mothers in our lineage who were so used to losing their young in war. In my culture, we cannot talk about love without speaking death's name"

-George Abraham, "Untitled," Published In Black Napkin Press

[crowsummer]

deer enclosure

(translation 1 of 鹿柴 by 王维)

you do not meet anyone in the empty mountains but still, you hear the echoes of people speaking

at sunset, light reflecting off clouds pierces the deep forest and touches once again the blue-green moss

[crowsummer]

a miscellaneous poem

(translation 1 of 杂诗 by 王维)

you, who have come here from my hometown, you must know what has happened there of late.

the day you set out, had the plum tree outside my window already begun to bloom?

[crowsummer]

missing one whom i love

(translation 1 of 相思 by 王维)

when the red-beaned plants native to your southern country sprout new branches with the coming of the spring

i hope you pluck many of them for, in doing so, you will remember how you miss me

[crowsummer]

the song of a new bride

(translation 1 of 新嫁娘词 by 王健)

on the third day, she goes down to the kitchen washes her hands and makes a soup

still unfamiliar with her mother-in-law's tastes she first asks her sister-in-law to try it

[crowsummer]

on climbing the stork and sparrow tower

(translation 1 of 登鹳雀楼 by 王之涣)

the white sun leans against the mountains, then vanishes the yellow river flows toward the sea

you, in your ardent desire for broader horizons: ascend yet another floor

[crowsummer]

the temporary palace

(translation 1 of 行宫 by 元稹)

the old temporary palace lies deserted in solitude, its flowers are blooming red

the white-haired court ladies who remain there sit idly, gossiping about the xuanzong emperor

[crowsummer]

Rebecca Perry, Beauty/Beauty; from 'Kintsugi 金継ぎ'

[crowsummer]

i didn’t have anything to say. long time since the last poetic thought– it was easy to think of romance and squeal too close to the hand for distance to intrude, the kind of lover i longed to fall asleep to

with time, what face did that bright boy evolve for me? still a high laugh, a passionate word but not for me–for me only subdued touches, a murmur an exhale, embrace turning into embrace, night shifting into night-with-outside-lights, breezy curtains, house dust

what if i gave myself up, then, to rationale? all my life, reserved, for what eventuality? until when would i decide to cease eating words, the act of suppression so deep my mind distills nothing, a clear surface, an anti-wind, a non-existence so exquisite i settle into the future which i, in some other universe, dreamed for me?

[crowsummer]

“Ghosts are a problem for historicism precisely because they disrupt our sense of linear teleology in which the consecutive movement of history passes untroubled through the generations” (14). They continue by pointing out that ghosts signal “the appearance of something in a time in which they clearly do not belong” (14). Humans like to think of time moving in a straight, ordered line with a clear distinction between past, present, and future…the ghost disrupts this desire for a well-ordered sense of time because it refuses to go away and stay in its proper time and place. In this way, ghosts respond to our own existential anxieties about time and death, our inability to control or fully understand either, and our nagging sense that categories like past, present, and future are not easily distinguishable from one another.

Ghostly Time in Lake Mungo

[crowsummer]

“It’s summer now, and you’re craving a simpler existence. You want to read. You want to write. You want to meet strangers for dinner, and not refuse another drink at another bar. You want to dance. You want to find yourself in a basement, neck loose, bobbing your head as a group of musicians play, not because they should, but because they must. It’s summer now, and you’re looking forward to worrying less. You’re looking forward to longer nights and shorter days. You’re looking forward to gathering in back gardens and watching meat sputter on an open barbecue. You’re looking forward to laughing so hard your chest hurts and you feel light-headed. You’re looking forward to the safety in pleasure. You’re looking forward to forgetting, albeit briefly, the existential dread which plagues you, which tightens your chest, which pains your left side. You’re looking forward to forgetting that, leaving the house, you might not return intact. You’re looking forward to freedom, even if it is short, even if it might not last. You’re looking forward.”

— Caleb Azumah Nelson, Open Water (via soracities)

[crowsummer]

i’m sorry but if i don’t disappear mysteriously, causing an odd group of people who knew me to get together to solve my disappearance, all the while they find out they all knew wildly different versions of me and didn’t really know me at all, then what has this all been for?

[crowsummer]

images from an early winter, ii

i have not said anything in so long. i touch your skin, blue beneath moonlight—what a marvel. i obsess with looking at you, the high colour of your cheek, the deep ridge of your spine. i said, for so long, don’t give me a literary love. now, i want to scream. do i love you again? you have taken from me, you have corrupted me—i am not who i once was, and i see myself, the other version of me, who still lives walking down the old path. didn’t i love her? don’t i want her? i know nothing of grief, only of envy. under white lights i search your curls for the colour of your hair: a dishwater brown. but your lashes shine, turning lead into gold—and couldn’t you be beautiful if i made you? couldn’t i cease to have second thoughts? couldn’t i perform the trick of myself, for an old friend, frustrated and poisonous, obsessive in the way only i taught myself to be, dismal at the thought of the future—please,

[crowsummer]

[crowsummer]

  ― Billy-Ray Belcourt, A History of My Brief Body

[text ID: To love someone is firstly to confess: I'm prepared to be devastated by you.]

[crowsummer]

left behind

Alejandra Pizarnik, tr. by Yvette Siegert, Extracting the Stone of Madness: Poems 1962 - 1972 // KK Kozik, Floating (oil on linen), 2020 // Joan Didion, Blue Nights (2011) // Adonis, tr. by Khaled Mattawa, Selected Poems; “The Child Running Inside Memory” // Carol Marine // Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time // Lucy Mckenzie, Kerry, 2001 // Mitski, Working for the Knife // Holly Warburton, Night-time Solitude