right handed

an instrument for the muses

[soracities]

Oliver Herford, “I Heard a Bird Sing”

[theinternetarchive]

incense burner in the shape of a praying mantis, gold and iron alloy, japanese c. 1800s.

[feral-ballad]

Ama Codjoe, from Bluest Nude: Poems; “Bluest Nude”

[Text ID: “I crave. I want to be seen clearly or not at all.”]

[milodrama]

reimagining shame, on writing and being seen

[japaneseaesthetics]

Samurai-Class Woman’s Purse (hakoseko) with Carp in Swirling Water, 19th century

[realhumanbaby]

There is supposed to be a place where no one can reach you. Traditionally, the home, but now we settle for the ocean, the airplane, the summit of a mountain, the middle of a lake, the shower, the womb, the grave

[nancydrewwouldnever]

René Lalique, Diadem of pearls, diamonds, gold and enamelwork, ca. 1903 (Schmuckmuseum Pforzheim)

[infected]

Cashmere, John Singer Sargent, 1908

[kafk-a]

“Abundance” by Amy Schmidt, published in Rattle January 20, 2019

[flowerytale]

Jenny Hval, from Girls Against God

[deviika]

—Vladimir Nabokov, in a letter to his wife Véra (1924), Letters to Véra

[virgin-martyr]

So learn about life. Cut yourself a big slice with the silver server, a big slice of pie. Learn how the leaves grow on the trees. Open your eyes. The thin new moon is on its back over the green Cities' Service cloverleaf and the lit brick hills of Watertown, God's luminous fingernail, a shut angel's eyelid. Learn how the moon goes down in the night frost before Christmas. Open your nostrils. Smell snow. Let life happen.

Sylvia Plath, excerpt from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath 

[tamsoj]

Jane Hirshfield, from Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, "To Spareness"

[petaltexturedskies]

What is the meaning of life? That was all-a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years, the great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead, there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one.

Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

[old-school-romantics]

Zinaida Gippius

[mournfulroses]

Paul Celan, from a poem titled "Twelve Years," featured in Selected Poems & Prose

[the-cricket-chirps]

Vincent van Gogh

Kingfisher by the Waterside

Paris, July-August 1887