The Fox and the Ocelot

Poetry, Literature, Writing, Books

[apocryphics]

Annie Dillard

[wovi]

*

d. h. lawrence, self-pity

[luthienne]

Gregory Orr, The Caged Owl; “The Dinner”

(transcription below cut)

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[heavenlyyshecomes]

Do you understand? When I am done telling you these stories, when you’re done listening to these stories, I am no longer I, and you are no longer you. In this afternoon we briefly merged into one. After this, you will always carry a bit of me, and I will always carry a bit of you, even if we both forget this conversation.

—Hao Jingfang, ‘Invisible Planets,’ in Invisible Planets: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation, tr. & ed. Ken Liu

[susandsnell]

feminist killjoy hours again, what the actual fuck is “weird girl literature” and how often do we acquiesce to the latest degrading gendered advertising campaigns

[susandsnell]

Women did not fucking pioneer horror, thriller, and science fiction as we know it for publishing to infantilize it into a high school phase

[susandsnell]

is Stephen king “weird boy literature”? Or does he get to be an adult horror novelist?

[wildestlovers]

embarrassment is the cost of entry.

if you aren't willing to look like a foolish beginner, you'll never become a graceful master.

[pangur-and-grim]

getting rocks thrown at you until you die is just part of the process. you can walk it off

[violettesiren]

I once lived by so many horses, so many goats and unendangered bison. Eagles, bald eagles! Really! Right there by the river in the dead tree. I lived there too, right by the river, by the minor league field. I had the neighbor man sharpen the blades on the push mower. There wasn’t so much electric. We didn’t plow the streets. I don’t know how else to say it. My life was very small and beautiful. I was young though I didn’t know it. I was happy when the lilacs filled the alleyways in June. I got drunk, I got loved so many ways. I carried a knife. The brakes weren’t good but good enough. I traded needles, I cut stalks, I planted garlic, I taught school, I put a check in the mail with a stamp on it. I fell off my bike. I wore a bandana like a bandit for the smoke. When I danced, I spun around. I paid a buck to shake the dice. There were dogs everywhere. There were cattle. Coyotes. Owls. Bats. Sage. I used to live right beneath the stars. Right there, between the hills. There’s no other way to say it. I was so animal, I wrote poems, I was so young. I thought it would always be this way. I can still smell it. I can hear the crickets. And the coal train, how it howled like a song.

Ecstatic Past by Alicia Mountain

[letterful]

— ANNA KAMIEŃSKA, trans. Clare Cavanagh & Stanisław Barańczak.

[going2hell4everythingbutbeingbi]

honestly yall just gotta be comfortable reading books that make you feel stupid

[goreprofonde]

Because I’m my mother’s son, I leave the arrow in my throbbing heart. What kills me keeps me alive

- Paul Tran, Taint.

[eraserheadadult]

the situation with harry potter is kind of unprecedented in some ways imo because it is maybe the largest media franchise in history to be created & owned by a single person who still has direct creative control over it. who is also a billionaire with significant cultural/political influence. like the usual "no ethical consumption under capitalism" type excuses shatter on impact when the bigoted author in question is logging onto twitter every day saying explicitly that when you buy the tim hortons ravenclaw donut she is using your donut money to fund the genocide of trans people. like with big franchises usually there's at least a little more diffusion of responsibility than this

[arospec-bard]

[awifubgegbfciebf]

"The Two-headed Calf" by Laura Gilpin

Tomorrow when the farm boys find this

freak of nature, they will wrap his body

in newspaper and carry him to the museum.

But tonight he is alive and in the north

field with his mother. It is a perfect

summer evening: the moon rising over

the orchard, the wind in the grass.

And as he stares into the sky, there

are twice as many stars as usual.

This poem appeared in The Hocus Pocus of the Universe by Laura Gilpin, published by Doubleday, 1975.

[awifubgegbfciebf]

[urgetocreate]

Mike Hall (British b.1937-2025), Sunlit Pub, 2024, Acrylic on panel

[blackcontemporaryart]

“That’s the best thing about language: every time you use a word you are summoning so many other things—all the times that word has ever been used. I know this sounds a little psychedelic, but maybe I have an ancestor one hundred years ago who used this word that I choose to write now. What does it mean that everything that we are writing is recycled? Words are full of ghosts. Poetry is full of ghosts.”

— Morgan Parker

[urgetocreate]

Anna Syperek (British/Canadian b.1950), Afternoon Nap, 2010, Watercolor on paper