#Aimee Nezhukumatathil

[feral-ballad]

Aimee Nezhukumatathil, from Oceanic; “When I’m away from you, I feel like the second-place winner in a bee-wearing contest”

[kiisuuumii]

Aimee Nezhukumatathil, from "Spring (a conversation)," featured in Leaning toward Light

[havingapoemwithyou]

Letters from Two Gardens by Ross Gay & Aimee Nezhukumatathil

[sageandscorpiongrass]

hiii can you do web weaving about finding your true purpose in this world?

The world is so vast and beautiful and I am exactly where I'm supposed to be.

I'm terribly sorry this took so long! ;^^

No Accidents, Nikita Gill | Baked Goods, Aimee Nezhukumatathil | Errand Upon Which We Came, Stephanie Strickland | Ulysses, Alfred Lord Tennyson | Bluebonnet Scene, Robert Julian Onderdonk | In Way of Music Water Answers, Adam Wolfond | The House Was Quiet and The World Was Calm, Wallace Stevens | Cento Between the Ending and the End, Cameron Awkward-Rich | Cat Stop, Farah | The Invention of the Interstate System, Mira Rosenthal | Watching you talk on the phone, I consider the empty space around atoms–, Rhiannon McGavin | Presumably Dead Arm, Sidney Gish | Oakland in Rain, Aria Aber

[text transcription and image ID in alt text]

[asoftepiloguemylove]

hi uhm, i was listening to cinnamon girl by lana del rey and there was this lyric "if you hold without hurting me, you'll be the first who ever did" and it would be amazing if you did a webweave based on that <3333

on love and healing

i decided to take this into a more positive direction, i hope that's okay !! have a good day <33

@ruhlare / Call Me By Your Name (2017) dir. Luca Guadagnino / Aimee Nezhukumatathil Baked Goods (via @girlfictions) / Cassandra Clare City of Glass / Lana Del Rey Cinnamon Girl / E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) dir. Steven Spielberg / @typewriter-worries

[smokefalls]

For what is home if not the first place where you learn what does and does not nourish you? The first place you learn to sit still and slow down when someone offers you a bite to eat?

Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Bite by Bite: Nourishments and Jamborees

[dk-thrive]

For what is home if not the first place where you learn what does and does not nourish you? The first place you learn to sit still and slow down when someone offers you a bite to eat?

— Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Bite by Bite: Nourishments and Jamborees (Ecco, April 30, 2024)

[contremineur]

Baby, don’t even come near me with that napkin. Just let me at each bone, slick & sweet with smoky sugar sauce. See all the steam when I nudge all the meat off with my tongue? (The only kind of cloud we see this lemonade day in June). All this driving & I need to feel food in my hands no knife or fork tonight. I want to burn my lips just enough, but not too much it hurts to kiss. & that reminds me of the glowing heart inside me. How each rib curves around, locks tight in neat snaps along the back—make your hand like that around my small wrist & lead me to the bathroom. Stand with me in the shower feel the tender spot just underneath my ribs, lift my hands above my head & trace the space- bone-space-bone- space-bone down my sides with a blue bar of soap—let this be the only way I’ll ever come clean.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Why I crave ribs tonight

from here

[kitchen-light]

There's a spot over Lake Superior where migrating butterflies veer sharply. No one understood why they made such a quick turn at the specific place until a geologist finally made the connection: a mountain rose out of the water in that exact location thousands of years ago. These butterflies and their offspring can still remember a mass they've never seen, sound waves breaking just so, and fly out of the way. How did they pass on this knowledge of the invisible? Does this message transmit through the song they sing to themselves on their first wild nights, spinning inside a chrysalis? Or in the music kissed down their backs as they crack themselves open to the morning sun? Does milkweed whisper instructions to them as it scatters in the meadow?

Aimee Nezhukumatathil, from “World of Wonders | In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks and Other Astonishments”, Souvenir Press, 2021

[judgeitbyitscover]

World of Wonders by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Cover art by Fumi Mini Nakamura

Milkweed Editions, September 2020

As a child, Nezhukumatathil called many places home: the grounds of a Kansas mental institution, where her Filipina mother was a doctor; the open skies and tall mountains of Arizona, where she hiked with her Indian father; and the chillier climes of western New York and Ohio. But no matter where she was transplanted—no matter how awkward the fit or forbidding the landscape—she was able to turn to our world’s fierce and funny creatures for guidance. “What the peacock can do,” she tells us, “is remind you of a home you will run away from and run back to all your life.” The axolotl teaches us to smile, even in the face of unkindness; the touch-me-not plant shows us how to shake off unwanted advances; the narwhal demonstrates how to survive in hostile environments. Even in the strange and the unlovely, Nezhukumatathil finds beauty and kinship. For it is this way with wonder: it requires that we are curious enough to look past the distractions in order to fully appreciate the world’s gifts.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Lower East Side • New York City • 1940's :: Flashback Frames

* * * *

I love this sentence for a bunch of reasons, including that a lot of people think being broken is unusual, a violation of the terms of agreement, and the end of the story rather than something that quite often happens in the middle. What often happens after that with skin, bones, hearts, and other things is repair...... And sometimes post-traumatic growth.

Roshi Joan Halifax, 2022: "The experience of breakdown can give one a very deep and optimistic view of the potential of others to grow from trauma, instead of being diminished. This is called post-traumatic growth and refers to the benefit from psychological changes that can be experienced as a result of the struggle with challenging life circumstances. It can foster greater resilience. We have to remember that people who have survived trauma can come back transformed by the experience and see that suffering has made them more resilient rather than more fragile, with the ability to thrive in the present rather than being overwhelmed by the past. Beyond the ending of the old way of being, there is hope for the emergence of the new, and to imagine a future in which the wounds are still there, but in a form that makes one wiser and humbler and helps one to thrive."

+

"One of the pleasures of getting older is learning that though we are not all broken the same, we're all broken."

~ Ross Gay

(From a marvelous interview with Aimee Nezhukumatathil in Poets & Writers last year.)

[Rebecca Solnit]

[feral-ballad]

Aimee Nezhukumatathil, from Oceanic; “When You Select the Daughter Card”

[havingapoemwithyou]

Letters from Two Gardens by Ross Gay & Aimee Nezhukumatathil

[autumnbell32]

-from, “World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments,” by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

[bunnybisexual]

aimee nezhukumatathil, first time brushing teeth next to you

[smokefalls]

Cooking with pepper (as with so many sugars and spices) is never neutral because of the weight of the peppercorn’s history and how it traveled all over the world from where it was first grown.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Bite by Bite: Nourishments and Jamborees