[geryone]

Black Jam, Matthew Haigh

[writerglittercaffiene]

[rain-44]

The embrace that feels like home

[davidperea-travelart]

Poetry Flow

[vexheart]

[theserpentspsalm]

[svdcvnt]

Everything I’ve Ever Let Go Of Has Claw Marks On It

[eternallykakurenbo]

2025

[nevver]

Abandomnet issues, David Palumbo

[quotespile]

“You have to talk, otherwise your head turns into a cemetery.”

— Chuck Palahniuk, Consider This

[nuktia]

[chloeinletters]

The Trouble With Being Human on Substack

[opiumvampire]

this one. fuck this poem.

[mompleaser]

i wanted to share this not to come off as corrective but because i actually think it really adds to the text to know that not only is it not from a poem, but that there’s a fuller version of this quote that is just as good. and it’s actually really good advice on how to a write emotion without becoming sentimental. james hall, the interviewer, is himself a poet worth looking into if you’re unfamiliar.

James Hall: I love that you risk sentimentality in the poems. Can you talk about how you construct a poem’s emotion without letting that emotion subsume the poem? What tools are available to a poet to mitigate emotion successfully?

Richard Siken: I didn’t see it as risking anything, and I suppose the tool for mitigating emotion is undercutting, but I’ll try to answer the question sideways: Even if you don’t believe in God, you have to believe in narrative. Things happen, one after another, world without end. Just because you’re self-aware doesn’t mean you can change what’s happening. Eventually someone is going to break your heart. Eventually something you love is going to be taken away. And then you will fall to the floor crying. And then, however much later, it is finally happening to you: you’re falling to the floor crying thinking “I am falling to the floor crying” but there’s an element of the ridiculous to it—you knew it would happen and, even worse, while you’re on the floor crying you look at the place where the wall meets the floor and you realize you didn’t paint it very well and when you’re having sex with your next lover on this very floor they will also notice that you didn’t paint it very well and they will think less of you for it. And then you think “Is that sentence too long?” And then you have to hold the  contradictions of sobbing uncontrollably and wondering about grammar in your head at the same time. I think if you are true to the entire experience, not just the sad part, you don’t risk sentimentality because you’re not overloading the experience with fake, melodramatic feeling. I also hear that whispering helps.

here’s to everyone who looked for this in crush and was confused because it isn’t there. the original interview is kind of hard to source nowadays because of how often it’s misattributed: https://web.archive.org/web/20060501211545/http://www.gulfcoastmag.org/GCIssues/gc18.1%20folder/18.1%20Samples/18.1IntSiken(Hall).html

[lunamonchtuna]

— Rachel Mennies, from The Naomi Letters "April 18, 2017" (via lunamonchtuna)

[archetype-femme-fatale-deactiva]

cycles of yearning

[stanestreet]

‘The liberating truth is: they’re probably not thinking about you’: Oliver Burkeman on how to quit people-pleasing

[greatestlittlegiant]

perpetually confused as to why im not sitting on a porch when there is a porch available….you guys there is a breeze and stringlights out there what are we doing insideeeeee

[greatestlittlegiant]

thank god

[wordsmadeofsoul]

and when the sun came bursting through the clouds // and when the birds sang their neverending song // and when the rain dried // and when the day seemed to shine the brightest // never for a second i forgot // the nostalgia // the melancholy // the infinite yearning for something that was never mine // in the happiest moments // the stain of your absence // seems to become even brighter