you envied the stars

their height

[heenbeans]

Chelsea Dingman; Notes on Inheritance

“This is the only kingdom. The kingdom of touching: the touches of the disappearing, things.” — Aracelis Girmay

When I see wax, I think of submission.

I think of afterlife. I think of the sky what it leaves behind. I used to think

myself a doe, then a hurricane. The muscle inside the tongue. The prayer-sore. Again

& again, something foreign. Fugitive. So briefly

I was a girl. A young woman. A mule, mother, arm-

rest—the sky resting on a bridge overlooking

the river. That cold, cold water. I waded in, three seconds to numb. & nothing. I can’t give in

to love. What will become of us

when it’s the child that is imagined? Our gods: the fields under a haze

of mosquitoes. And lo, the stars’ white fire. And lo, the splintered spines of spruce

trees. And lo, the disappearing hours.

I stretch my neck into the next life. I breathe in the cherry blossoms & bomb-

scent of aftermath. I don’t care why I didn’t want this. I lean into myself.

I take what is offered until I forget

I am what is offered. With the orchard & the apple I didn’t name. There is

an hour that bears my grave already. It’s late. I can’t help but wish I wasn’t

lonely. That I wasn’t made to disappear.

[heenbeans]

Kim Addonizio; Nothing Gold

Nothing gold can stay. — Robert Frost

And nothing else can stay, either– not the pay phone or parking meter, not the coo and keck of the passenger pigeon or the ambivalent lover returning to his wife. A banner saying Everything Must Go sags over the failed restaurant supply store. A plane takes off with a living brother and lands with a dead one. Another black car arrives at the gates. Dear anyone, tell me how to hear the sea’s consoling murmur as it withdraws, then savages the shore. Tell me how to love the nevermore.

[heenbeans]

Victoria Chang; I Once Was A Child

I once was a child am a child am someone's child             not my mother's not my father's the boss       gave us special treatment treatment for something                   special a lollipop or a sticker glitter from the

toy box the better we did the better the plastic prize made             in China one year everyone got a spinning top       one year everyone got a tap on their shoulders                   one year everyone was fired everyone

fired but me one year we all lost our words one year             my father lost his words to a stroke       a stroke of bad luck stuck his words                   used to be so worldly his words fired

him let him go without notice can they do that             can she do that yes she can in this land she can       once we sang songs around a piano this land is your land                   this land is my land in this land someone always

owns the land in this land someone who owns             the land owns the buildings on the land owns       the people in the buildings unless an earthquake                   sucks the land in like a long noodle

[heenbeans]

Anne Boyer; WHAT RESEMBLES THE GRAVE BUT ISN'T

[heenbeans]

Chris Tonelli; Nearing Summer

A warm film coats everything poisoning everything, so the only prayer I can muster lately goes You’re alright, Chris. Everything is alright. What the fuck is that? What sort of god have I ruined in me? Wide tree, what are you like?

[reuels]

Past Lives (2023) dir. Celine Song

[apoemaday]

Telescope

by Louise Glück

There is a moment after you move your eye away when you forget where you are because you’ve been living, it seems, somewhere else, in the silence of the night sky.

You’ve stopped being here in the world. You’re in a different place, a place where human life has no meaning.

You’re not a creature in a body. You exist as the stars exist, participating in their stillness, their immensity.

Then you’re in the world again. At night, on a cold hill, taking the telescope apart.

You realize afterward not that the image is false but the relation is false.

You see again how far away each thing is from every other thing.

[heenbeans]

("Anti-Love Poem" -- Grace Paley)

[heenbeans]

Chelsea Dingman; Letter from the Gulf Coast

I could be someone who twists the truth. I knew what I was asking

when I said Stay here with me. The walls waved in your image, a storm

on the horizon, growing. Hurricanes all have their own names & we earned ours, secret

triumphs locked away in other apartments, other cities. It wasn't having a house to tend that kept us

together. We weren't supposed to stay anywhere long. We paint different walls the same

stark white, but they dim & darken to a dingy beige as we stand waiting

to see what skyline comes next. Who doesn't wake & want

to be somewhere different? Different birds at the door. I still want your hands

on my hips. On my collarbones, arcing toward you. A space we're meant to

dust & darken. To wake in a different city, longing for home. Where home is the curve of our hands

on the doorknobs. Where we know ourselves by thunder & the smell of thick

rains. By the way rain tastes as it's meant to taste. Our mouths, upturned. Open.

[voirlvmer]

In what I think is a dream, I look at some manifestation of the past

& say, I know you’re not real. Someone has to. And as most dream-things do, the past

shape-shifts, reconstitutes itself with new eyes & a new haircut—the past

made over—& then I forget its name. I forget what I’m doing with the past.

What is that joke about the river? It’s not really a joke, no more than past

is really past—the one about water never being the same water. As it flows past,

the river’s current—now that’s a joke— is always flowing now, now, now. Past

seven, when I wake from what I think is a dream—a dream where I tell the past

the truth about itself—it is the present as it always is. There is no past.

Maggie Smith, “Joke”, Goldenrod

[gizkasparadise]

when the blind date doesnt go as hard as you

[aconissa]

Poet James Schuyler to painter John Button (Spring 1956) 

[heenbeans]

Natalie Wee; After the Atlanta Spa Shootings, We Sat in a Field

              sprawled over grass

                                                               made an endless planet

by nightfall. Our faces

                                             lifted to the season’s end

              were a cloister of moons.  

                                                               I asked for a legend

about what glows

              so we could fill our bellies

                                             with something death

                                                               hasn’t yet touched.

             To be moved

                                             by what’s untouchable

              means we are conduits for more

than flesh, fallibility.

              To ready ourselves

                                                         for gentleness, then,

                                             is to make a landscape

                                                               of desire, translate farewell

             into the sum of all distances

measured by light.

                                             Nothing’s as visceral

             as the hard-won kiss

                                                               where we press our lips

to ghosts & inhale

             until we are vessels for life

                                                             still unlived.

             Genealogy creates room.

I only have my shadow

                        to bear—& even that is theory

                                                               in another throat.

We are both endangered

                                             species, you & I,

             but the weight

of your heart’s chambers

                                             upon my breast

                                                               was a dream

             no prayer could give us.

If there’s anything

                                         that still surprises me

             it’s the fact joy too has weight.

                                                               That at the end of all hurts

there lies another to climb out of

                                         while wearing your own face.

[milflaszlo]

EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE (2022)

[feuillesmortes]

The phrase ‘you saw nothing in Hiroshima’ can be read on a number of interconnected levels, all of which are central to an understanding of the film. Firstly, as a tourist, the woman, like the majority of the viewers of the film, witnesses the site (and sight) of the city long after the atomic bombing has taken place. She does not ‘see’ Hiroshima as an event, only its aftermath. Secondly, she has not seen ‘Hiroshima’ because the event has been mediated through photographs, films and archiving. Filmic reconstructions that are so realistic ‘that the tourists cry,’ are dangerous, the film implies, because they give the tourists the impression that they have witnessed something of what actually happened when all that they have seen is the representation that stands in place of the real. Thirdly, the word ‘nothing’ is a negation. The footage of Hiroshima does not allow the atomic bomb survivors to enter  the frame for more than a few seconds; they turn away from the gaze of the camera resisting characterisation. The very presence of the incomplete images points to the absence of all that cannot be incorporated of the atomic bomb experience, to all that exceeds the representational frame. This opening scene can be understood as a template for the film as a whole. The lovers’ disagreement over the possibility of knowing and understanding Hiroshima extends to the film’s broader concern as to whether a traumatic past can be represented or communicated to another.

— Sarah French, From History to Memory: Alain Resnais’ and Marguerite Duras’ Hiroshima mon amour (2008)

[billy-crudup]

Before, you were asking about ‘our daughter’. It’s crazy. But… it really got me thinking… what if… you had come with me all those years ago.  You want to know what would have happened? ‘What if?’ We’d wake up everyday… in a tiny apartment… over a failing laundromat.  EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE (2022) dir. Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert 

[heenbeans]

José Olivarez; Getting Ready to Say I Love You to My Dad, It Rains

i love you dad, i say to the cat. i love you dad, i say to the sky. i love you dad, i say to the mirror.

it rains, & my mom's plants open their mouths. my dad stays on the couch. maybe the couch opened

its mouth & started eating my dad. i love you dad, i say to the couch, its tongue working my dad like a puppet.

i hear the rain fall & think the city is drinking. or making itself clean. i am here with my dad & the TV & the TV drones

on & on, so i'm not sure i hear it-- my dad grunting and nodding, not the mushy stuff i was expecting,

neither of us cry, no hug or kiss. a grunt & a nod.  i love* you dad, i say to my dad.  we sit together

and watch TV.  outside it rains. my dad turns the volume up. the city is drunk. the city is singing badly in the shower.

i killed a plant once because i gave it too much water. lord, i worry that love is violence.  my dad is silent

& our relationship is not new or clean. i killed a plant once because i didn't give it enough water. my dad & i watch TV

on a rainy day. we rinse our mouths with this water.

*America loves me most when i strum a Spanish song. mi boca guitarrón. when i say me estoy muriendo, they say that's my jam.