lucymauds

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“My husband is calling me from somewhere upstairs. It sounds as if he is in a hallway. I get interested in my own breath, which doesn’t happen very often. The curtain moves, and I like the way it matches something inside me. But I know that a curtain shouldn’t match me, and that I shouldn’t like it.”

— Amina Cain, from “The Sleeve of My Coat,” Creature  (via lifeinpoetry)

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“Today I want to resolve nothing. I only want to walk a little longer in the cold blessing of the rain, and lift my face to it.”

— Kim Addonizio, from ‘New Year’s Day’, Wild Nights: New and Selected Poems

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[ID: excerpt from “The Collected Poems: The Rival,” Sylvia Plath

‘If the moon smiled, she would resemble you. You leave the same impression Of something beautiful, but annihilating.’]

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“It was all so good, these blowing quiet October nights…”

— Ray Bradbury, from Something Wicked This Way Comes

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I can’t help it. I will never get over making everything such a big deal.

— Ada Limón, from “The Last Thing,” published in Mississippi Review 

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What I’ve learned, time and again: Get up. You cannot have what they have. 

*

from “LESSONS ON LESSENING” by JANE WONG

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A Hill by Frank O’Hara

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“Summer night in love Sigh of honeysuckle scent Moonlight unbuttoned”

— Greg Sellers, haiku journal entry, 8 March 2018 (via rosemiu)

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GREETINGS FROM NEBRASKA

I’m listening to a song I think you’d like. It’s about California and being involuntarily alive. It’s about grapes, and a mattress, and a hand touching another hand without pulling away. “EVERY MOMENT IN THE TRAJECTORY OF HUMAN HISTORY EXISTS FOREVER,” says a scientist who has the startled eyes to prove it. Which means somewhere my body is always meeting your body for the first time. Somewhere else, in the belly of the beast, I sit, always young and unrough, trapping your brain in a tin can to hear the stunning rattle of your thoughts. Somewhere else, ripe with shameful faith, you wipe the bruises from your knees and always decide prematurely that you love me. But no where, of course, do you actually love me. Which means somewhere else, I’m in a car, always moving in the opposite direction of you, writing you a postcard that says, “I miss you. I’m glad you aren’t here.”

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Now I fold you down, my drunkard, my navigator, my first lost keeper, to love or look at later.

Anne Sexton, from Anne Sexton: The Complete Poems; All My Pretty Ones

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NICOLE SEALEY

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I am tired of worshipping your absence. Many things will kill us in this life, why shouldn’t desire get first dibs.

Catherine Pond, from “Beacon,” published in Bennington Review

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“how many times will you snap my love like a wishbone? is it sweeter at the marrow?”

— Danie Shokoohi, from “Letters to Shadow Men,” published in Glass

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to love life, to love it even when you have no stomach for it and everything you’ve held dear crumbles like burnt paper in your hands, your throat filled with the silt of it. When grief sits with you, its tropical heat thickening the air, heavy as water more fit for gills than lungs; when grief weights you like your own flesh only more of it, an obesity of grief, you think, How can a body withstand this? Then you hold life like a face between your palms, a plain face, no charming smile, no violet eyes, and you say, yes, I will take you I will love you, again.

ellen bass, “the thing is”

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What I know of tenderness is what I know of violation, / the restless insect of touch and our end.

Natalie Eilbert, from “Ezekielle” published in The Lifted Brow (via lifeinpoetry)

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The way you knew me is unlike the way anyone else knows me. The person I have always wanted to be is the person I am.  In the very beginning of our love, I had said one of us is a small town hazard.  I am living in a city big enough for everyone’s nightmares, My heart is not just a ticking time bomb, it’s a clock unwinding. It’s the sound on your nightstand.  When we first started drawing maps, we were so careful  with the scale. Somewhere in this mess, I think I drew my own heart too big. I am never going to stretch myself again.  By the time you read this, it won’t be quite as sincere. I love the way you do laundry. If you can wash love out, I hope it has already happened.  Do you think some people can see us for who we are? What happens when they look away?

Yena Sharma Purmasir, “EMAIL DRAFT #5″ (via fly-underground)