You Are The Prey

[absolvam]

having this blog became such an unexpected burden. thank you for sharing this space with me, everyone, it was a treasure to grow with you.

[lifeinpoetry]

Nothing I see is real / And nothing is not.

— Meena Alexander, from “Transmigration,” In Praise of Fragments (via lifeinpoetry)

[amouthfulloflove]

“an open mouth survival of the body a perceived fragility that turns against her the body as a mirror as an opening mouth (…)” 

A Field Guide to the Body, Jennifer Bartlett

[weltenwellen]

Rita Dove, from “November for Beginners“

[lifeinpoetry]

call me sea glass        because you can only                      love me

when i’m broken & small & harmless.

— jaye simpson, from “sea glass,” it was never going to be okay

[absolvam]

My father hovers at the threshold to my room like he’s standing on the edge of a crevice that could swallow him whole. He tells me there is fresh fasoulia and fattoush, I should eat He tells me this because he never could say I love you, are you okay?

Y.C.

[absolvam]

My father hovers at the threshold to my room like he’s standing on the edge of a crevice that could swallow him whole. He tells me there is fresh fasoulia and fattoush, I should eat He tells me this because he never could say I love you, are you okay?

Y.C.

[lifeinpoetry]

You change the suffix          The noun can become a verb // Terrorizing          For example // Police are terrorizing our people

Or the tense can be changed to the past // Terrorized          For example // On this land // Our people were          Terrorized by police // By ICE

Is it writers only // Who obsess over punctuation          The question mark // So cute in curiosity          Question // Who do we call terrorist & why

— Christopher Soto, from “The Terrorist Shaved his Beard,” published in the Kenyon Review

[bvkspine]

the amount of books you consume is not an appraisal of your worth as a reader nor should it be a criterion for any type of hierarchical separation among people who love reading

[whimsicalwomon-deactivated20231]

I wish people realized that the people in their 20s currently speaking out against hypersexual internet culture aren't doing it because we're killjoys but because we were the first generation of people who grew up fully online and we can see the damage its done to us. If you can't tell the difference between us and your puritanical conservative uncle then that's on you!

[msburgundy-but-worser-deactivat]

and so much of that damage was done not by even partaking directly in that culture but by being desensitized to it through exposure and subsequently losing our concept of healthy expectations and boundaries, and being groomed by people we thought were our friends. we have normalized receiving unwanted sexual advances and comments/opinions and you get called a prude for telling someone not to be inappropriate with you.

[lifeinpoetry]

Pain. That is all. I tell it with my lips in an O. I carry it in slow motion.

I enter the room when I remember I exist.

— Joshua Jennifer Espinoza, from “WHAT IS LEFT TO SAY,” published in Vida Review

[pussyhaver-deactivated20231126]

Kind of fucked how existing socially as a human being means not only enduring harm but inevitably inflicting it as well, no matter how you choose to socially navigate

[absolvam]

Knees pressed into the Persian rug, I rewind our story again, the soft whirr of the VHS mechanism takes us back to the start. Black and white bliss bathing the walls in a litany of shadows. I could wear that part of the tape to breaking point. Slowing us down, over and over again Watching the light bloom in my eyes again For the first time. Building our own Paris to have - always, I mouth our lines to each other, the next great tragedy is opening in front of me like veins on my arms. So again, I’ll drag my body of failures to the cliffs; Their red maw a bight that scars the divide between blue and white. I wait, with my feet kicking over the edge, I wait to see if I am what needs to be consumed.

- Y. C. ‘Prayer Points’

[malglories]

“I lost a God once. It’s easier done than people think. Forget a prayer once in a while or simply grow grief in your kitchen window along with the basil and rosemary. Somewhere inside my heart, I misplaced my faith, misunderstood my own origin story, became a person half tragedy, more misery, and I started to relish it.”

— Nikita Gill, from A Mortal Interlude in “Great Goddesses: Life Lessons From Myths And Monsters” (via adrasteiax)

[absolvam]

Knees pressed into the Persian rug, I rewind our story again, the soft whirr of the VHS mechanism takes us back to the start. Black and white bliss bathing the walls in a litany of shadows. I could wear that part of the tape to breaking point. Slowing us down, over and over again Watching the light bloom in my eyes again For the first time. Building our own Paris to have - always, I mouth our lines to each other, the next great tragedy is opening in front of me like veins on my arms. So again, I’ll drag my body of failures to the cliffs; Their red maw a bight that scars the divide between blue and white. I wait, with my feet kicking over the edge, I wait to see if I am what needs to be consumed.

- Y. C. ‘Prayer Points’

[weltenwellen]

Fernando Valverde, tr. by Carolyn Forché, from “Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia, 2007.”

[weltenwellen]

Czeslaw Milosz, New and Collected Poems: 1931-2001