Devasri

[classicalcanvas]

After the Dance (1876) by John William Waterhouse

[classicalcanvas]

Johan Christian Dahl (1788 - 1857)

[classicalcanvas]

View of Ventimiglia (1884) by Claude Monet

[classicalcanvas]

Under the Lemon Trees (1884) by Claude Monet

[weltenwellen]

“The way human beings speak is so heartbreaking to me—we never sound the way we want to sound. We’re always stopping ourselves in mid–sentence because we’re so terrified of saying the wrong thing. Speaking is a kind of misery. And I guess I comfort myself by finding the rhythms and accidental poetry in everyone’s inadequate attempts to articulate their thoughts. We’re all sort of quietly suffering as we go about our days, trying and failing to communicate to other people what we want and what we believe.”

— Annie Baker 

[dxrk-crimson]

Gayatri 2: The eulogy of an eagle

[dxrk-crimson]

[luthienne]

Mary Gaitskill, from Lost Cat as featured in Granta [ID’d]

[anthropoetics]

readings: essays, articles & short stories pt. 2

the winter of civilisation

fruits we'll never taste, languages we'll never hear: the need for needless complexity

emily dickinson and the creative solitude of space

the lost art of looking at nature

the bowl, the ram and the folded map: navigating the complicated world

ada limón on preparing the body for a reopened world

before it was 'bittersweet', nostalgia was seen as a parasite

why alien languages could be far stranger than we imagine

the fig leaf, benjamin shane evans

cat pianos, sound-houses, and other imaginary musical instruments

of shark moves, shell shocks, and trash landings on the moon

as bright as a feather — ostriches, home dyeing, and the global plume trade

getting ahead, jonas karlsson

do these florida dolphins have a language?

the form of a demon and the heart of a person: kitagawa utamaro's prints of yamauba and kintarō (ca. 1800)

who needs ai text-generation when there's erasmus of rotterdam

when memories from fiction become part of who you are

how do transgender people remember their earlier selves?

[cowboyproletarian-deactivated20]

Anyone got that poem written from the perspective of an English teacher where they know deeply personal things about their now adult students because of the essays they wrote

[cowboyproletarian-deactivated20]

FOUND IT it was in one of my boards

[corpsesoldier]

Text ID:

Small Town English Teacher

In your town, former students sling your drinks, snap your x-rays, and report your news on TV. You hold their secrets because you remember their essays.

One returns from combat, homecoming party at the airport, and you know he only joined up because his mom was ashamed of him. You remember the essay.

One dies from an opioid OD and you know about the man who groped her at work and how she told his wife. You remember the essay.

One smiles and wins an award and you know her drunk dad pushed her mom into a wall. You remember the essay.

One closes her eyes halfway in the mugshot and you know she worked in assisted living and once brushed a dying woman's hair. You remember the essay.

- Jessie Lovett Allen

(c) 2020 by Jessie Lovett Allen

Jessie Lovett Allen teaches reading, writing, and literature at North Platte Community College in western Nebraska. She holds a doctorate in Literary Education from the Univerity of Wyoming. She can be reached at Jessie.lovett.allen @ gmail. com or @ jesslovettallen

End ID.

[dxrk-crimson]

Work setup for tonight.

[dxrk-crimson]

These doors in the house I live in

they’re made of stone.

I can’t pull them open.

I don’t have the strength.

Each molecule in the door whispers,

"You don’t own me."

My father does.

And so, they don’t listen

when I try to go through.

But one day,

I’ll have my own doors.

Beautiful ones.

Some I’ll paint ultramarine,

some a deep, burning crimson.

One of them,

I’ll paint yellow.

A warm Indian yellow,

the kind that holds sunlight

for when my soul catches a chill.

I’ll walk through those doors freely.

I’ll never be afraid

to open them,

or to close them behind me.

And one day,

I’ll find the strength

to shut my father’s doors.

I’ll lock them.

And forget where I put the keys.

With time,

they’ll stop haunting me.

I’ll buy new clocks too,

not the kind my father owns.

His clocks torment my mind,

condemn my hours,

kick my gut until I bleed.

They tick too loudly.

They say,

"Tick-tock. If you don’t obey,

I’ll shame you forever."

But my clocks..

they’ll be quiet,

gentle on the heart.

They won’t tick my life away.

And I’ll buy all the little things:

A spatula that stirs food I love,

a bed that shapes itself

to the bend in my spine.

I’ll rest,

knowing that everything around me

is light,

untouched by the weight

of my father’s money.

25.5.25

[bitesizedpoetry]

Sylvia Plath, aged 18, journal entry #35, from "The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath" (c. November 1950)

[foone]

I'd be unstoppable if I didn't have to worry about time or money or having a body

[classicalcanvas]

Portrait of Père Tanguy (1887) by Vincent van Gogh

[jugurtti-deactivated20210925]

baby girl delete instagram 

[dxrk-crimson]

She was once a monument.

A womb of roots, heavy with life,

Splitting the earth with each breath,

Her limbs stretched toward horizons,

Begging the sky for more light.

Now, she gnaws at her own bones.

Her bark, once a coat of armor,

Peels back like brittle flesh,

Leaving her veins exposed to the wind’s indifference.

Her ribs buckle under the weight of remembering.

I watch her decay,

But oh, how she glows...

Fractured, adorned in the soft haze of violet and gold,

She gleams as she rots,

Each splinter crowned with honeyed light.

I almost mistake her for holy...

The sky drips its colors into her wounds,

Painting them into something celestial,

Something almost too beautiful for grief.

And for a moment,

I forget she is dying.

But she does not forget.

Her limbs are heavy with memory:

Of rain that once ran fingers through her leaves,

Of crows that mourned in her shade,

Of earth that held her roots like a mother holds her child.

She is still dying.

No matter how gently the light touches her skin,

No matter how I name her lovely,

She is still dying.

And so am I.

Stepping closer,

I almost press my palm to her spine,

To feel if her body still remembers warmth,

If her breath still lingers in the grain.

But I know better.

I leave her be,

A ruin bathed in light,

Beautiful in her unbecoming.