#poplar street

[apoemaday]

Poplar Street

by Chen Chen

Oh. Sorry. Hello. Are you on your way to work, too? I was just taken aback by how you also have a briefcase, also small & brown. I was taken by how you seem, secretly, to love everything. Are you my new coworker? Oh. I see. No. Still, good to meet you. I’m trying out this thing where it’s good to meet people. Maybe, beyond briefcases, we have some things in common. I like jelly beans. I’m afraid of death. I’m afraid of farting, even around people I love. Do you think your mother loves you when you fart? Does your mother love you all the time? Have you ever doubted? I like that the street we’re on is named after a tree, when there are none, poplar or otherwise. I wonder if a tree has ever been named after a street, whether that worked out. If I were a street, I hope I’d get a good name, not Main or One-Way. One night I ran out of an apartment, down North Pleasant Street — it was soft & neighborly with pines & oaks, it felt too hopeful, after what happened. After my mother’s love became doubtful. After I told her I liked a boy & she wished I had never been born. After she said she was afraid of me, terrified I might infect my brothers with my abnormality. Sometimes, parents & children become the most common strangers. Eventually, a street appears where they can meet again. Or not. I’ve doubted my own love for my mother. I doubt. Do I have to forgive in order to love? Or do I have to love for forgiveness to even be possible? What do you think? I’m trying out this thing where questions about love & forgiveness are a form of work I’d rather not do alone. I’m trying to say, Let’s put our briefcases on our heads, in the sudden rain, & continue meeting as if we’ve just been given our names.

[hauntedbythenarrative]

Poplar Street, Chen Chen//House of the Dragon (2022-)

[dubblebubbleibuprofen]

When you ask your mom if she’s ok and she hisses at you

[slicklike007]

Pulled me to a door and stuck her teeth in deep

[thelilylav]

My mother's love is choking me

(Lorde)

Poplar Street (Chen Chen), Never Have I Ever (2020), Lady Bird (2017), Never Get Married (Honeymoon in Vegas)

[haveyoureadthispoem-poll]

"Still, good to meet you. I’m trying out this thing where it’s good / to meet people."

Read it here | Reblog for a larger sample size!

[federer7]

Poplar Street, Ashington, Northumberland, England, 1977

Photo: Mik Critchlow

[womansfilm]

Brief Encounter (1945) / Three Poplars on Plyuschikha Street (1968) / When Harry Met Sally... (1989) / La Cérémonie (1995) / Jerry Maguire (1996) / Unfaithful (2002)

[londonedge]

Grey flats above an almost deserted Chrisp Street Market in Poplar

[tranquilitybasehotelcasino]

i have a collection of like twenty songs that are MINE that i do NOT fucking play about and mama’s gun is one out of that list

[atlantathecity]

Bricks and leaves at the intersection of Fairlie and Poplar Streets in Downtown Atlanta. In this view: a mix of residential units, retail, offices. Plus street trees, plus windows and doors on the sidewalk. We've already got some good DNA for walkable density in Atlanta.  [I'll add: It's not perfect. Apart from the skinny sidewalk there are also ADA issues with the buildings. And if I panned a bit to the left you'd see a gross parking deck. I don't claim that we should replicate this exact format 100%, but in a general way it's some good inspiration.]

[obeetlebeetle]

finished lolita p1 and have been very stymied at the start of p2 bc it is sooo much of a list but a list concealing something that makes me feel sick and every paragraph or so i just have to walk away

[damn-these-eyes]

[haikuckuck]

[slicklike007]

𝘚𝘩𝘦’𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘮𝘺 𝘴𝘩𝘢𝘥𝘰𝘸 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘐 𝘢𝘷𝘰𝘪𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘵 𝘭𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 : On Poplar St. with Mrs. Moore & Mr. Keats

[aretarers]

the other side of paradise is like the how to be a human being version of of moons, birds, and monsters to me