January 2012
1 post
“Travel is so rewarding that it should take precedence over other things younger...”
– “Advice on Finishing With No Regrets” (via musingsinfemininity)
June 2011
1 post
April 2011
2 posts
To have and to hold.
A best friend of mine, Kaytlin, is getting married on Saturday. My mind is swimming with poems. Here’s one about trees by William Meredith.
Tree Marriage
In Chota Nagpur and Bengal
the betrothed are tied with threads to
mango trees, they marry the trees
as well as one another, and
the two trees marry each other.
Could we do that some time with oaks
or beeches? This...
March 2011
9 posts
hurryuppleaseit'stime
Time to work on these faults of mine.
(I just want to go camping in my backyard,
drink a thick cabernet and listen to Sparklehorse.
Is that too much to ask?)
“Sit me down, shut me up, I’ll calm...
("I am like a Desert Owl, an Owl among the Ruins")
I’ve been enjoying the desert lately.
Hi, spring. Please fill my days with open windows, early mornings, impromptu storms, Earl Grey and “Hinds Feet in High Places”, bare legs, downtown adventures and public transit, dream journaling, a living flower on my windowsill (I’m awful at that), oh, and the best company. Check. (Whoa. I’m blessed.) They enter the new...
February 2011
7 posts
“I’m a life in watercolor — I can wash away.”
– Annie Clark
A Baptismal Poem.
(There’s a garden in His voice)
A testimony is an attestation to the truth
of the matter. The matter is that I used to write lists
of things I was afraid of: one, sinking before I learned
to breathe underwater, undercurrent, inhaling
a drowning and two, my life closing
as a solitary force. Three: waiting for a person
who waits longer than guilt. Longer than
grief. Longer than doubt...
fwriction : review: La Dame du Lac, by Jack Allen →
fwrictionreview:
We came together in a train station. She drew behind her a large suitcase set with wheels, and the other train-goers made no path for us to walk as equals. I led the way, hoping she followed, and our hands, being once attached, somehow broke from one another in the commotion. In my breast pocket sat her ticket. Pigeons slept on pillars. Trains hurried in their ruts, and they...
Whither Thou Goest
Fish can have mad cow disease and I have a problem
with that. Purity suffers and salmon can’t
moo can’t paw grass with the furious
strokes the essential bovine
faith that there’s something in the earth
for everyone. All along I’ve wanted
the good days to be the good days and not
good like drilling your teeth is good
when it stops but good like moonlight
on my...
Jonathan Safran Foer.
(What are your ghosts like?)
(They are on the insides of the lids of my eyes.)
(This is also where my ghosts reside.)
(You have ghosts?)
(Of course I have ghosts.)
(But you are a child.)
(I am not a child.)
(But you have not known love.)
(These are my ghosts, the spaces amid love.)
January 2011
2 posts
“I accept your frailties,
I offer you my frailties;
Let us gather and run the...”
– (via sistersunrise)
Taryn, I think I’ve ‘liked’ every single one of your posts since I started following your Tumblr. Love you!
December 2010
2 posts
November 2010
6 posts
[nor can love be proven except by act]
i beg of you: listen
one lives, as if by accident
want & not wanting,
to turn. who like the saint
by practice more
than anything else is faithful
to presence. the memory,
for example, survives but waves
goodbye vanished
is vanishing into these black
lines. nobody’s isotope.
nobody’s encore. nobody’s
trapdoor. spawn of unless
believe of almost
as in slantwise,
askew we’re...
“I name things in the world after twilight. Things I can’t possess, like...”
– Lucas Farrell, from Bird Any Damn Kind
Der schwer gefasste Entschluss.
“It is a completely selfless love: Tereza did not want anything of Karenin; she did not ever ask him to love her back. Nor had she ever asked herself the questions that plague human couples: Does he love me? Does he love anyone more than me? Does he love me more than I love him? Perhaps all the questions we ask of love, to measure, test, probe, and save it, have the additional effect of...
In the City of Light
The last thing my father did for me
Was map a way: he died, & so
Made death possible. If he could do it, I
Will also, someday, be so honored. Once,
At night, I walked through the lit streets
Of New York, from the Gramercy Park Hotel
Up Lexington & at that hour, alone,
I stopped hearing traffic, voices, the racket
Of spring wind lifting a newspaper high
Above the lights. The...
from "A Little White Shadow"
Mary Ruefle
Source: Poetry Foundation
October 2010
3 posts
Remember when I used to take pictures?
You Stepping Lightly (Early Draft)
This is the once ripe petal of your trumpet
reverie: the caterwaul of an itching scalp.
In mourning, I place the ebb of gloaming
blossom between synapse and ear: now
it browns and clenches small fists.
Once, there was a jar of oil
for your crystallized brow. Tonight
you become the preservation
of December. Open mouth
and spill snow. The winter...
"Say, Brittany, whom no one understands anyway."
Understand THIS, English 498. Heh.
Father
This is the product of the faceless savior:
I gift to you, the tabula rasa of a young mind filled
with an unmade bed. Modify me. Together we can
roll avocado pits between our teeth and laugh. I found
you first. In the spacetime of dream I picked flecks
of gold from your hair, made you scream in loving tongues.
Still, cover my eyes with the seams...
September 2010
6 posts
Realization
There is nothing about the past that I miss. I want to explore the now and future, conquistador of bigger & better things. There were (and still are) days when I tried not to feel (anything): days were continuous sunsets and endings, the texture of a darkening landscape across some overwhelming scope of sky, then night. Night is too infinite for me. Now I’m full of sunrise and no...
Bedtime Story
The way I can carry a canary on my finger through the house, you’d think the littlest part of my body was a light somewhere else. I have been able to do this since I was a child. Since I was a child the boat on my head and the whistle in my hip have both fallen and disappeared. They say it’s important for a woman to have balance. She needs balance in order to have grace. That way the...
there's no lie in her fire (an almost made-up...
I see you drinking at a fountain with tiny
blue hands, no, your hands are not tiny
they are small, and the fountain is in France
where you wrote me that last letter and
I answered and never heard from you again.
you used to write insane poems about
ANGELS AND GOD, all in upper case, and you
knew famous artists and most of them
were your lovers, and I wrote back, it’s all right,...
i don't get it, first draft
The Marring of Dream & Falling Out of Bed or, How to be Grounded
The ground makes sense when it feels less
than infinite, taste of sea (see the peach-fuzz
of a breaking trough) and pineapple.
I learned to sink before I learned
to breathe underwater: cuttlefish
of the carpet (ugly and brittle
when unable to blend in) aching
for the opus of tide.
Call my mother the marsupial
that...
August 2010
3 posts
youth
When we said young we meant
loose we meant
untouched or untamed. You the dear
with blackberry
lip and snarl: I used to dress you with juice
stain on cheek and knee.
You used to dress me: unwashed pearls, rotted
fruit, seeds blackened teeth.
Don’t vex: don’t disturb the motion
when the body
confuses you, when the tongue feels for the empty
paint brush, taste of thistle.
Mothers...
Cricket, Post-War (A Pseudo Sonnet)
When Daddy’s soldier friends told me to jump,
they shouted Cricket!, pointed fingers. They call
him that because he twitches at that slump
of sound, the calm after the fire. All
is well when hands are empty, clean. We laugh
in black stream march of shining cars, parade
with medal suns and me asleep in troughs
of sandpaper chest. I smell a seaweed prayer
on lips of mothers, now the...
July 2010
2 posts
1 tag
June 2010
1 post
May 2010
3 posts
sestina in the making
[olympia]
I could dig my nails into the wrinkles of your face, dust
tingeing the skin like age and moss. We breathe heavy
in some elemental atoms of ash and rust. Inhale water, choke to
earth, vomit sparks and charred flesh. If you move you sink
faster. We survived our mothers and fathers but bone
will outlive us. I could be the worm that bleaches the shell
of your cheek. Your skull is...
April 2010
2 posts
Watchalligator:
Beach House, “Walk In The Park”
via Pitchfork.tv. Recommend watching the set in its entirety. Sooo GOOD!
So beautiful. The set design. The music. The people.
