expressing feelings in ink @lovenliterature - Tumblr Blog

Collections Masterlist

Collection: responses to walking towards the noise

Collection: responses to increased risk

Collection: responses to night sky with exit wounds

Collection: responses to space struck

Years before the covid pandemic began, author Naomi Kritzer wrote the charming, emotionally genuine short story "So Much Cooking," which was a pandemic log through the eyes of a cooking blog. The premise is that the author is a home cooking blogger raising her kids, and then a pandemic hits--and bit by bit she's feeding not only her own, but her sister's kids, some neighbors' kids, and so on, in a situation of pandemic lockdown and food shortages.

It's very good, and was prescient for a lot of the early days of the covid pandemic. I found myself returning to it often in the first couple of years because of how steadfast it was in its hopefulness.

Last year she wrote a novelette, "The Year Without Sunshine," which attacks a similar problem in a similar way; instead of pandemic, this one is about the aftereffects of a distant nuke or a massive volcano explosion (it doesn't say), which has churned a great deal of dust into the air, causing massive damage to society and agriculture. The story covers one neighborhood, pulling together to keep each other alive--not through violence, but through lawn potatoes and message pinboards and bicycle-powered oxygen concentrators.

I recommend both stories. They're uplifting in a way that a lot of what I see lately isn't. They're a bit of a panacea for constant fearmongering about intracommunity violence and grinding hatefulness. We can be good to each other, if we try.

servantofclio

These are both excellent stories, and I also heartily recommend her story "Better Living through Algorithms."

mikkeneko

lunamonchtuna

— June Gehringer, ‘I get so jealous of euthanized dogs’ (via lunamonchtuna)

apoemaday

Scaffolding

by Seamus Heaney

Masons, when they start upon a building, Are careful to test out the scaffolding;

Make sure that planks won’t slip at busy points, Secure all ladders, tighten bolted joints.

And yet all this comes down when the job’s done Showing off walls of sure and solid stone.

So if, my dear, there sometimes seem to be Old bridges breaking between you and me

Never fear. We may let the scaffolds fall Confident that we have built our wall.

addamatic

THE AUDRE LORDE QUESTIONNAIRE TO ONESELF

1. What are the words you do not have yet? [Or, "for what do you not have words, yet?")

2. What do you need to say? [List as many things as necessary]

3. What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? [List as many as necessary today. Then write a new list tomorrow. And the day after. ]

4. If we have been socialized to respect fear more than our own need for language, ask yourself: "What's the worst that could happen to me if I tell this truth?" [So, answer this today. And everyday.]

geryone

Good Girl and Other Yearnings, Isabelle Correa

tineiya

genderoutlaws

Never read Baldwin before?

Nonfiction

The Price of The Ticket (borrow from IA)

The Fire Next Time (pdf download)

Notes of A Native Son (pdf download)

Nothing Personal (read on IA - not great quality sorry)

The Last Interview (pdf download) (only 10 pages!)

Fiction

Giovanni's Room (pdf download)

If Beale Street Could Talk (pdf download)

BONUS

Little Man Little Man (read or pdf download on scribd) (Baldwin's only children's book)

Go Tell It On The Mountain (pdf download)

Another Country (pdf and epub download)

Sonny's Blues (pdf download)

Going to Meet the Man (pdf download)

creatingblackcharacters

My next Black History Month request:

Pick one of James Baldwin's works and read it!!! The Fire Next Time is an excellent essay, most of us are familiar with the quote on gay white people from The Last Interview but not the rest of it. If Beale Street Could Talk even has a movie!

Cut me open, make me bleed

I think I was made to bleed on love's jagged edges I have always lived full-throated, jumping before I knew how to be afraid There's a perverse pleasure in the dripping blood that paints stories on my skin The red running and staining Until it's wiped away Visible only if you care to look Sometimes it's my own fault I look at the hilt in his hand, the dagger glinting Take his hand in mine And drive the blade home

#my writing #poetry #personal #creative writing #my poetry #writing #personal writing #spilled emotions #spilled feelings #spilled writing #spilled poetry #spilled words #spilled thoughts #spilled ink #collection: responses to night sky with exit wounds #responses to ocean vuong #responses to night sky with exit wounds: into the breach #responses to night sky with exit wounds: page 35-37 #inspired by ocean vuong

Liar, liar

You had never lied to them before No little white lies, no harmless deception The thought had never even occurred to you Why would you lie? You were, just as you've always been, an open book

It was never meant to be a lie, either Just a fact untold until it became a secret, something you kept Until slowly it morphed into a willing deception You bit into the fruit and saw the freedom you could have You thought it had been freely given But the tree was poison and you found yourself fleeing, falling Forgotten before you could spill your truth Held inside your chest Until it was cracked open Set free

#my writing #poetry #personal #creative writing #my poetry #writing #personal writing #spilled emotions #spilled feelings #spilled writing #spilled poetry #spilled words #spilled thoughts #spilled ink #collection: responses to night sky with exit wounds #responses to ocean vuong #responses to night sky with exit wounds: because it's summer #responses to night sky with exit wounds: page 33-34 #inspired by ocean vuong

Silhouette

The future is bright and golden and it lives in the curve of your brow, the strength of your jaw Glittering and light and so unlikely that it might as well be fiction No one ever loves and stays Love is always in the leaving Love can't survive in place, static I look up at you, on the crest of the hill Your wind tousled hair obscuring your face Your outstretched hand just out of reach As you stand, without me On the brink of forever

#my writing #poetry #personal #creative writing #my poetry #writing #personal writing #spilled emotions #spilled feelings #spilled writing #spilled poetry #spilled words #spilled thoughts #spilled ink #collection: responses to night sky with exit wounds #responses to ocean vuong #responses to night sky with exit wounds: of thee i sing #responses to night sky with exit wounds: page 31-32 #inspired by ocean vuong

Lost boys

We loved as only children can Reckless, open, sure Our days spent climbing trees and scaling bunk bed ladders and not for a second thinking that fate could ever end our quiet childhood But we weren't bound for Neverland, and our growing up was inevitable When I next saw you, you were a man, and so was I Used to cutting ourselves open with the knives we had used to prepare dinner Blood dripping on wooden floors Veins open, heavy, full Emptying Sitting atop the red stains, multiplying in rings as we added our glasses, long drained of cherry red As I kissed you goodnight, and dreamt of the children we had been

#my writing #poetry #personal #creative writing #my poetry #writing #personal writing #spilled emotions #spilled feelings #spilled writing #spilled poetry #spilled words #spilled thoughts #spilled ink #collection: responses to night sky with exit wounds #responses to ocean vuong #responses to night sky with exit wounds: homewrecker #responses to night sky with exit wounds: page 30 #inspired by ocean vuong

Independence

This city makes me feel at home, but fragmented The parts that make me up split across time A pandemic year, a post uni panic, a depressive haze This city the only constant 17, 5, 10 21, 24, 26 How old do I get to be here? How much of an adult or a child? Am I meant to shatter and crack harder each time? Is breaking open the cost of this freedom?

#my writing #poetry #personal #creative writing #my poetry #writing #personal writing #spilled emotions #spilled feelings #spilled writing #spilled poetry #spilled words #spilled thoughts #spilled ink #collection: responses to night sky with exit wounds #responses to ocean vuong #responses to night sky with exit wounds: thanksgiving 2006 #responses to night sky with exit wounds: page 29 #inspired by ocean vuong

Haunted

Sometimes I wonder whose bones are buried beneath these floors Whose phantoms haunt the halls when the lights are out and the house is quiet Sometimes I feel like I was built to join them Walking through the world, dreamlike and hazy, disconnected Functioning best in the hours when the city sleeps and I can see my breaths in the cold air I feel in between life and death But with a clarity that daylight never brings I want to haunt the halls of every place I have ever cried My footsteps echoing in the places my sobs rang out All that's left of me, my breaths in the cold night air

#my writing #poetry #personal #creative writing #my poetry #writing #personal writing #spilled emotions #spilled feelings #spilled writing #spilled poetry #spilled words #spilled thoughts #spilled ink #collection: responses to night sky with exit wounds #responses to ocean vuong #responses to night sky with exit wounds: self-portrait as exit wounds #responses to night sky with exit wounds: page 25-26 #inspired by ocean vuong

Child, adult, child again

The first time I filled a form in for my mother I was scared I was watching the death of my childhood in real time Years of us all trading off who helps grandma navigate the internet today had primed me to see the incomprehension as the beginning of the end, no matter how long and drawn out the journey was I was 22 and terrified Months and years of hiding her worry through anger and soft refusals to try to protect herself Meant that when it fell to me, it was a crisis She could be deported to a country I had rarely even set foot in And she refused to make a single move to stop it Surrendered herself to the relentless progression of unjust bureaucracy I remember recognising the worry for the first time, knowing I could help Spending two days on hold and writing countless emails and feeling more like a helpless child with every feeble step The hug I got when everything was done reminded me that even if I'm not a kid anymore, I'll always be her kid

In motion, on fire

You shine brighter than anyone I've ever met, I think It's calm, quiet It's in the way you learned my rhythms and flexed with them Or the way your laugh echoes in my mind when you're gone The fact that, in two years of friendship, and four months of cohabitation, I've yet to ever get tired of your presence You meet me, step by step (Or more honestly, in late nights on the sofa) My arm clinging to you, as we lie, gazes to the horizon and hearts on fire It's there in your absence In the way life is a little dimmer when you're gone But all it takes is a call, a match And the flame is lit And I feel warm again

The thaw

The green of the leaves peeks through the frost And I come unstuck where I had been frozen So bonded to you we had melted together in the summer heat And when you tore yourself away I leaked blood and viscera as the tears fell I was offered bandages, but no help to wind them around my aching body So I pressed them to open wounds, watched them turn crimson and scarlet I knew they'd scab over eventually And I'd pick them raw, like I always do Set them to gushing again when I felt like the healed over completeness of my body contradicted the all-consuming nature of my pain But in returning to the winter I was borne of, the wounds were covered in ice and red snow Until they could be seen but not felt And red was not the only colour in my field of vision And the green meant new life New beginning And belonging to no one but me again

Limitless

As a child, I didn't know you needed to be taught to breathe I thought it was all instinct After all, the saying implies it is easy I didn't know how much you can break in a breath It was a natural first step when my heart began to beat out of rhythm To follow soft instructions and feel my lungs be taught the proper way to draw breath and fuel my body

I didn't expect to need to learn to eat, either Something so fundamental and easy it should be automatic Unless you live in a society that tells you that to be fat is the very worst thing to be You can be kind and charming and beautiful and none of that will matter if your weight exceeds your permitted allowance And suddenly you find yourself carving off parts of yourself to fit into your seat And then the baggage has grown and you're over the limit again And it's just an apple this shouldn't be so fucking hard And the noise in your abdomen betrays your lies But the fat on your thighs says enough and The world joins in and grows ever louder And the apple rots And you feel yourself rotting with it And the voices never stop

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