August 2010
38 posts
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Casabianca by Elizabeth Bishop Love’s the boy stood on the burning deck trying to recite “The boy stood on the burning deck.” Love’s the son stood stammering elocution while the poor ship in flames went down. Love’s the obstinate boy, the ship, even the swimming sailors, who would like a schoolroom platform, too, or an excuse to stay on deck. And love’s the...
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“I don’t think I am finite. I have my limitless desires. But from the...”
– one of my professors.
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“Love tells us, humming, that the stalled motor of the heart has started to work...”
– Vladimir Mayakovsky
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I should really know better by now.
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“You know how many times you’ve smashed yourself to bits on the rocks.”
– Henry Rollins
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“You know the way Jesus
rips open his shirt
to show us his heart, all flaming...”
– Nick Flynn
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“These are the days that must happen to you.”
– Walt Whitman
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Yesterday was the last day of summer and it makes sense you weren’t with me then. Or even on this rainy afternoon – you’re teaching me to live apart from you, which has reduced to breakfast dishes crowding the nightstand, the TV droning with some Julie Christie drama, My black hair unwashed for a fifth day. After all what’s grief to someone Who never tires of longing Except a manner of...
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“and if my heart isn’t in my mouth it’s because it knows its place”
– Phyllis Gotlieb
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Man and Camel, Mark Strand
On the eve of my fortieth birthday I sat on the porch having a smoke when out of the blue a man and a camel happened by. Neither uttered a sound at first, but as they drifted up the street and out of town the two of them began to sing. Yet what they sang is still a mystery to me— the words were indistinct and the tune too ornamental to recall. Into the desert they went and as they went their...
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“I swallowed a hand grenade that never stops exploding.”
– Jeffrey McDaniel
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Morning by Conchitina Cruz
You never know when somebody will walk away from you on a bright day on a busy street, never looking back and
you cannot believe the slow disappearance, cannot believe what is moving away from your reach until the busy street no longer needs its presence to look the same, because it is the same.
And the city offers you its fruits and fish, and the churchgoers life their veils as they step out...
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“You can wet the rim of a glass and run your finger around the rim and it will...”
– Margaret Atwood
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And suppose all we know of the world is how the greenhouse creaks and sighs in the cool dawn rain and crab apple leaves brush against the stone-cracked glass while love grows red and ripe and soft and summers pass like trains.
- Chris Powici
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“These are the best days of our lives. That’s a terrible thing to know.”
– Pirate Radio
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something honest.
I wonder how it is that people do this, day after day, but I am doing it. Walking through stores imagining you in each piece of clothing, knowing exactly what you would like, what you would buy if you were here walking beside me. The washed out jeans, the button down. I’m in a dressing room trying on Adidas jackets, and I have to mock myself for this pathetic attempt to make you feel closer....
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“And the time of night and the cave and the waterfall - and the stone angel in...”
– Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle
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Even There, Lyn Lifshin
it was December and yes finally you wanted me we ran down the slick narrow road houses leaned together the colors wine and brown remember the cracked snow our scarves floating getting there out of breath our hair melting boots clicked under the door there were quilts on the sloped ceiling and the old stove you smile toward going to heat up some coffee. I kept looking...
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Alone - Nikki Giovanni
i can be alone by myself i was lonely alone now i’m lonely with you something is wrong there are flies everywhere i go
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“We need in love to practice only this: letting each other go. For holding on...”
– Rainer Maria Rilke
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I do this thing where I think I’m real sick but I won’t go to the doctor to find out about it cause they make you stay real still in a real small space as they chart up your insides and put them on display. They’d see all of it, all of me, all of it— All the good that won’t come out of me and all the stupid lies I hide behind.
-Rilo Kiley
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“I would pretend so hard
that you couldn’t reach me.
A mountain
circled with...”
– miniature bridges: Eighty-one.
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triumph of a heart: Ash Ode →
When I saw you ahead I ran two blocks shouting your name then realizing it wasn’t you but some alarmed pretender, I went on running, shouting now into the sky, continuing your fame and luster. Since I’ve been incinerated, I’ve oft returned to this thought, that all things loved are pursued and never caught, even as you slept beside me you were flying off. At least what’s never had can’t be...
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“Let this leave me so something else can land.”
– Siken
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Hide out and run when no one’s looking. Love is hell, hell is love. Hell is asking to be loved.
-Emily Haines and the Soft Skeleton
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I remember reading in my room, just reading, and shutting the book, looking up, and missing you, missing you, and reading the paper again. There’s no freedom in it or in fear: my heart’s not mine.
Annie Dillard, Feast Days
