@firstfullmoon

interlibraryloan :

Walk up in my high heels, all high and mighty
            And you say, “Hello”
                     And I lose

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

—the walls have been mortared with grief, dark enough
to make blindness a gift—we don’t have to look each other in the eyes.

— Natalie Diaz, from “As a Consequence of My Brother Stealing All the Lightbulbs,” in When My Brother Was an Aztec

inkwellspells :

glad shirley jackson and angela carter were really out there writing stories for reclusive & fanciful girls everywhere

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

In the dark our hands / pretend to pray but really make love.
Natalie Diaz, from “Cloud Watching,” 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

serratedpens:

Hands in Denis Sarazhin’s art

The sea keeps rocking in and I want to talk. I am that clumsy human on the shore loving you.
Leila Chatti, from “Deluge,” in Deluge

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.

— Leila Chatti, “Sarcoma,” in Deluge

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 )

I was young enough to think anything
that bled was a wound.
Deluge; ‘The Blood’ by Leila Chatti
(via decreation )

existential-celestial :

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

how do i have 12K 😳 this really means i need to stop sharing personal stuff on here

—if I could remember a day when I was utterly a girl
and not yet a woman—

but I don’t think there was a day like that for me.

When I look at the girl I was, dripping in her bathing suit,
or riding her bike, pumping hard down the newly paved street,

she wears a furtive look—
and even if I could go back in time to her as me, the age I am now

she would never come into my arms
without believing that I wanted something.

— Marie Howe, from “The Girl,” in What the Living Do: Poems

dykemulder:

sometimes i think u do need to make ur personality abt loving something. but not like a person or a celebrity but something good like broccoli

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.

— Mary Oliver, from “Crows”

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 )

toskka-deactivated20210124:

how intricately love crosses love; love makes knots; love brutally tears them apart. I have been knotted; I have been torn apart.

The Waves, Virginia Woolf

June Jordan, from “In Memoriam,” in Haruko: Love Poems

[text ID: We ate
A family tremulous but fortified
by turnips/okra/handpicked
like the lilies

filled to the very living
full
one solid gospel
                           (sanctified)
one gospel
                           (peace)

one fall Black lily
luminescent
in a homemade field

of love]

etherea1ity:

i sat quietly beside the window, closed my eyes and listened to the rhythm of gentle waves hitting the sea shore…

Question: what is emotional edging...
Answer:

Watching In The Mood For Love 19 times in one year

soracities :

*makes 2 tin can phones out of our red string of fate*

‘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 )

Question:

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

7000s:

“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.”

-Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto.

7000s:

“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.””

-Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto

I don’t know how to poultice my heart.
Jeanette Winterson, from Lighthousekeeping