dystrophicmelancholy

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Kerry Egan, On Living

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margaret atwood / louise glück

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— Arthur Miller, The Crucible

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Hieu Minh Nguyen, from “Heavy”

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Omar Sakr, “On Finding the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) in Dante’s Inferno,” in Non-Essential Work

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deeply obsessed with this

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*

melissa broder, milk fed

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Sarah Kay, from “And Found”, No Matter the Wreckage

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still thinking about this

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Anaïs Nin, The Early Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1923–1927

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Margartia Karapanou, tr. by Karen Emmerich, from Rien ne va plus

[Text ID: “—Every time I want to write, I want to write love stories. But as soon as I pick up the pen I’m overcome by horror.”]

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The lady in the pond At St Ignatious Retreat house

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to love someone is firstly to confess: i'm prepared to be devastated by you.

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Carol Sansour, “A Censored Poem,” trans. Katharine Halls

Translator’s Note: The following poem by Palestinian poet Carol Sansour was slated to appear in Kontinentaldrift: Das Arabische Europa (Continental drift: the Arab Europe, 2023) but was among ten poems abruptly removed by German publishers Haus für Poesie. Edited by Ghayath Almadhoun and Sylvia Geist, the ground-breaking anthology features work by thirty-one poets writing in Arabic who are based in Europe. In the introduction to the anthology, Almadhoun writes: “bitterness is virtually everywhere in the texts [in the anthology]; you can touch it and yet it slips away like water through fingers.” In this poem, bitterness is mingled with a sense of wonder inspired by the spectacular escape of six Palestinian prisoners who dug their way out of jail using spoons in 2021. In another poem which was included in the anthology, Sansour writes: “In the East there is no home without war.”

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You deserve a partner who checks whether you’re comfortable. You deserve a partner who will respect your boundaries. You deserve a partner who will be cautious if you do not know what your boundaries are.

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Mary Oliver, from a poem titled "Work," featured in The Southern Review (edited)

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Hồ Xuân Hương, "Jackfruit" (tr. Natalie Linh Bolderston), pub. Modern Poetry Review [iD'd]