While she sleeps, I paint Valencia oranges across her skin, seven times the color orange, a bright tree glittering the limestone grotto of her clavicle—
— Natalie Diaz, from “I Lean Out the Window and She Nods Off in Bed,
the Needle Gently Rocking on the Bedside Table,” in When My Brother Was an Aztec
Maybe you have grown out of yours— maybe you no longer haul those wounds with you onto every bus, through the side streets of a new town, maybe you have never set them rocking in the lamplight on a nightstand beside a stranger’s bed, carrying your hurts like two cracked pomegranates, because you haven’t learned to see the beauty of a busted fruit, the bright stain it will leave on your lips, the way it will make people want to kiss you.
— Natalie Diaz, from “The Beauty of a Busted Fruit,” in When My Brother Was an Aztec
My brother is arrested again and again. And again / our dad, our Sisyphus, pushes his old blue heart up to the station.
Natalie Diaz, from “Downhill Triolets,” in When My Brother Was an Aztec
to have you a last time, at last, a touch away, but then, to not reach out because my hands are dressed in scarves of smoke;
to lie silent at your side,
an ember more brilliant with each yellow breath, glowing and dying and dying again,
dreaming a mesquite forest I once stripped to fire before the sky went ash, undid its dark ribbons, and bent to the ground, grief-ruined,
as I watch you from the window—
in this city, the city of you, where I am a beggar—
— Natalie Diaz, from “Monday Aubade,” in When My Brother Was an Aztec
When the doctor says the word sarcoma, I consider how it might be a nice name
for a daughter, that good feminine a, the way parents name their children for all
sorts of inappropriate things—apples, for instance, or the place where the baby
was conceived—and I trace my fingers over the barrow of my belly as he
speaks, flesh distended beneath the blue tissue I wear for a dress—an ideal grief
frock, throwaway—and he says something about life expectancy but of course I
expect my life, so plain I thought nothing would ever take it, and while he
explains I cup my palms around my center—as if comforting a child, or covering
her ears.
shame was a blade
you turned against yourself
and once you knew it
you could use it—
Deluge; ‘Questions Directed Toward the Idea of Mary’ by Leila Chatti (via decreation )
Osip Mandelstam (b. 15 Jan 1891) in his poem describing life during the years of being a fugitive and exile, translated by Christian Wiman, featured in My Bright Abyss
#oh god all of this is... #w#osip mandelstam #the precious intimacy of little things #q
I scarcely remember the crust of the snow. I scarcely remember the icy dawns and the sun like a lamp
without a fuse.
I don’t remember the fury of loneliness.
The world was suddenly still; nothing was being required of me; I could stand in the quiet of my own skin. Maggie O’Farrell, from I am I am I am (via weltenwellen )
The tenderness that you find between the poems emerged from my need for it, and as I assembled the book, from my awareness that the reader needs it too. I don’t think I could have continued to write the poems in “Fugitive Atlas” if I did not know that there are places for tenderness that I could reach out for in the world, moments to buoy me, and to assure me that kindness exists in abundance, and it’s what we live for. Khaled Mattawa, interviewed by Ilya Kaminsky, in Short Conversations with Poets (via soracities )
#oh...oh... #w #without tenderness we are in hell #q
‘There’s this world,’ she banged the wall graphically, ‘and this world,’ she thumped her chest. ‘If you want to make sense of either, you have to take notice of both.’
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson (via decreation )
hi! in your own words, what is fiction (fiction books)? love your blog so much 💞
Answer:
i love to think of fiction as a way of putting into words what it means to be human. i feel like every book of fiction can be reduced to this. exploring large matters such as hope, compassion, love, through individual characters and stories. a beautifully crafted portrait of the human experience
“But—that one summer of bliss. In that kitchen. I was not afraid of burns or scars; I didn’t suffer from sleepless nights. Every day I thrilled with pleasure at the challenges tomorrow would bring. Memorizing the recipe, I would make carrot cakes that included a bit of my soul. At the supermarket I would stare at a bright red tomato, loving it for dear life. Having known such joy, there was no going back.”
“Her hair rustled, brushing her shoulders. There are many days when all the awful things that happen make you sick at heart, when the path before you is so steep you can’t bear to look. Not even love can rescue a person from that. Still, enveloped in the twilight coming from the west, there she was, watering the plants with her slender, graceful hands, in the midst of a light so sweet it seemed to form a rainbow in the transparent water she poured. “I think I understand.””
in average
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