October 2011
17 posts
things to do in the belly of a whale | dan...
measure the walls. count the ribs. notch the long days. look up for blue sky through the spout. make small fires with the broken hulls of fishing boats. practice smoke signals. call old friends, and listen for echoes of distant voices. organize your calendar. dream of the beach. look each way for the dim glow of light. work on your reports. review each of your life’s ten million choices....
what the mapmaker knows | mary jo bang
o is the ocean and t the consequence of time at the edge of a landscape of dots plotted into the plane with a constant scale.
any place can be located and later divided by cultural and social data and sketched on a napkin—disregarding distance and leaving only the little one knows.
description is reductive: a shirt on the back, buttons on the front, a mind that is willing to enact its own...
gestalt prayer | fritz perls
i do my thing and you do your thing i am not in this world to live up to your expectations, and you are not in this world to live up to mine. you are you and i am i and if by chance we find each other, it’s beautiful.
to love life | ellen bass
the thing is to love life to love it even when you have no stomach for it, when everything you’ve held dear crumbles like burnt paper in your hands and your throat is filled with the silt of it. when grief sits with you so heavily it’s like heat, tropical, moist thickening the air so it’s heavy like water more fit for gills than lungs. when grief weights you like your own flesh...
after the movie | marie howe
my friend michael and i are walking home arguing about the movie. he says that he believes a person can love someone and still be able to murder that person.
i say, “no, that’s not love. that’s attachment.” michael says, “no, that’s love. you can love someone, then come to a day
when you’re forced to think ‘it’s him or me,’ think...
some advice from a mother to her married son |...
the answer to do you love me isn’t, “i married you, didn’t i?” or, “can’t we discuss this after the ballgame is through?” it isn’t, “well that all depends on what you mean by ‘love’.” or even, “come to bed and i’ll prove that i do.” the answer isn’t, “how can i talk about love when the bacon is...
absence makes the heart. that's it: absence makes...
waving hello versus waving goodbye is an interpretative act. we could make it directional: from left to right is hello, right to left, goodbye. the buoy clanged all night so my sleep would know where to go. i could pray. tambourine myself to death. electroshock the worms. wrap the maple in tinfoil and decry the lightning that splits it as misguided and deceived. nothing i do will bring you back....
the confession of an apricot | carl adamshick
i love incorrectly. there is a solemnity in hands, the way a palm will curve in accordance to a contour of skin, the way it will release a story. this should be the pilgrimage. the touching of a source. this is what sanctifies. this pleading. this mercy. i want to be a pilgrim to everyone, close to the inaccuracies, the astringent dislikes, the wayward peace, the private words. i want to be close...
something about the wind | sidney hall jr.
there’s something about the wind coming off the ocean, the waves washing the rocks that makes a person who is quickly annoyed by cigarette smoke and men putting nails into roofs forgetful and unconcerned. if you are easily disturbed you need to get an ocean.
the moon | andrew michael roberts
all the other moons get their own names
the abandoned valley | jack gilbert
can you understand being alone so long you would go out in the middle of the night and put a bucket into the well so you could feel something down there tug at the other end of the rope?
books | dorianne laux
you don’t know it yet but what you’ll miss is the books, heavy and fragrant and frayed, the pages greasy, almost transparent, thinned at the edges by hundreds of licked thumbs. what you’ll remember is the dumb joy of stumbling across a passage so perfect it drums in your head
buddy wakefield's introduction to hurling... →
so in the pursuit of happiness and love, oftentimes what happens in this - because it’s a pursuit and it’s not a guarantee and it’s something that you work for, to manifest and you create and attract to yourself, there is this thing that happens where one person oftentimes loves someone and it’s not returned. it’s not reciprocated and so the person who loves the...
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hurling crowbirds at mockingbars | buddy wakefield
if we were created in god’s image then when god was a child, he smushed fire ants with his fingertips and avoided tough questions. there are ways around being the go-to person, everybody, even for ourselves. even when the answer is clear like the holy water gentiles would drink before they realized forgiveness is the release of all hope for a better past.
i thought those were chime shells in...
a myth of devotion | louise glück
when hades decided he loved this girl he built for her a duplicate of earth, everything the same, down to the meadow, but with a bed added. everything the same, including sunlight, because it would be hard on a young girl to go so quickly from bright light to utter darkness gradually, he thought, he’d introduce the night, first as the shadows of fluttering leaves. then moon, then stars. then...
don't hesitate | mary oliver
if you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. give in to it. there are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. we are not wise, and not very often kind. and much can never be redeemed. still, life has some possibility left. perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world. it could be...
