do you think we'll ever feel like this again?

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[luthienne]

George Seferis, from Collected Poems; "Memory I" (tr. Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard)

[Text ID: I whispered: memory hurts wherever you touch it,]

[soracities]

Natalie Diaz, from The Hand Has Twenty-Seven Bones — : These Hands If Not Gods 

[Text ID: “Those lovers are mostly gone. My hands remain–: like altars.”]

[metamorphesque]

— Franz Kafka, Letters to Felice

[lifeinpoetry]

Isn’t love / what they used to call holiness once, long ago, on earth?

— Carl Phillips, from “On Coming Close,” Then the War (via lifeinpoetry)

[malojasnake]

— To Raja Rao, by Czeslaw Milosz

[memoryslandscape-deactivated202]

All of his sorrow won’t fit in his chest It just burns like a fire in the pit of his chest And his heart is a bird on a spit in his chest How long, how long, how long?

Anaïs Mitchell, lyrics from “How Long,” Hadestown LP (Righteous Babe Records, 2010)

[geryone]

Crush, Richard Siken

[lifeinpoetry]

& isn’t this just like my poems? / Dressing a violence in something pretty & telling it to dance?

— torrin a. greathouse, from “Ekphrasis on My Rapist’s Wedding Dress,” Wound from the Mouth of a Wound (via lifeinpoetry)

[luthienne]

Gregory Orr, Orpheus & Eurydice: A Lyric Sequence; "It's winter..."

[Text ID: What / keeps me here? / Only my heart / that won't give up — / a puffed sparrow / gripping a twig, / a stubborn / leaf in a bare shrub.]

[maderilien]

"Even if it is full of love, all a ghost can do is haunt."

or, the limitation of the medium | In stillness, terror. musings

[luthienne]

Frank O'Hara, from Selected Poems; "Mayakovksy"

[Text ID: I love you. I love you, / but I'm turning to my verses / and my heart is closing / like a fist.]

[20genderchild]

thinking…

[outcrying]

YOU WANTED A STORY? WELL HERE IT IS. UNEARTH IT ALL AND WATCH IT ROT. WHEN I GOT A NEW PAIR OF SHOES, ALL I COULD THINK ABOUT WAS THE HOLE IN THE OLD PAIR. IT WAS RAINING WHEN I REALIZED.

DO YOU BITE YOUR FINGERNAILS UNTIL THEY BLEED? THE FEELING OF SKIN, RIPPING, WILL NEVER NOT BE WORTH THE CONSEQUENCE: WARM, METALLIC, ENTIRELY MINE.

WHEN I LOOK AT MY SHOES. MY NAILS. MY ZIP CODE, MY SEVENTEENTH SUMMER, MY FIRST JOB, MY FIRST KISS, MY FIRST MY FIRST MY FIRST MY FIRST—

WHAT AM I TO DO THE NEXT TIME IT RAINS, THE NEXT TIME I BLEED? I CARRY AN UMBRELLA IN MY PURSE AND HOUSE KEYS BETWEEN MY KNUCKLES AND I CAN’T WAIT UNTIL THIS PINCHING FEELING—EITHER IN MY TOES OR FROM THE GRIP THIS HAS ON MY HEART—SURRENDERS TO ME, FINALLY

BREAKING THEM IN, A BLISTER FORMS ON MY ANKLE AND I CAN’T HELP BUT BE REMINDED OF WHAT HAS BEEN TAKEN FROM ME, IN UNFAIRNESS AND IN VAIN. 

THE ONLY THING THAT IS TRULY MINE IS THE WEIGHT I CARRY, 2021 | n.p

[lifeinpoetry]

A new friend asked me where my wildness lives, and I remembered that I have a body. The clovers have taken over the front yard. I’m not in love, and so have no one to whisper this to.

— Taylor Johnson, from “June, DC,” Inheritance (via lifeinpoetry)

[lifeinpoetry]

(I managed to stay alive by not / needing anything )

— Alessandra Lynch, from “Roy,” Pretty Tripwire (via lifeinpoetry)

[lifeinpoetry]

I take out my throat / but the grief remains

— Alessandra Lynch, from “Couplets” Pretty Tripwire (via lifeinpoetry)

[luthienne]

Lucille Clifton, from The Book of Light; “Climbing”