CHAPTER ONE: EVERYONE DIES

[slaughtervoid]

i am no longer here

i've changed accounts & started fresh. i am archiving some work over there, and leaving some here. if you wish to find me, my new location is @literiagan.

[slaughtervoid]

i am no longer here

i've changed accounts & started fresh. i am archiving some work over there, and leaving some here. if you wish to find me, my new location is @literiagan.

[slaughtervoid]

i am no longer here

i've changed accounts & started fresh. i am archiving some work over there, and leaving some here. if you wish to find me, my new location is @literiagan.

[slaughtervoid]

i am no longer here

i've changed accounts & started fresh. i am archiving some work over there, and leaving some here. if you wish to find me, my new location is @literiagan.

[slaughtervoid]

i am no longer here

i've changed accounts & started fresh. i am archiving some work over there, and leaving some here. if you wish to find me, my new location is @literiagan.

[slaughtervoid]

i am no longer here

i've changed accounts & started fresh. i am archiving some work over there, and leaving some here. if you wish to find me, my new location is @literiagan.

[apoemaday]

Fall

by Edward Hirsch

Fall, falling, fallen. That’s the way the season Changes its tense in the long-haired maples That dot the road; the veiny hand-shaped leaves Redden on their branches (in a fiery competition With the final remaining cardinals) and then Begin to sidle and float through the air, at last Settling into colorful layers carpeting the ground. At twilight the light, too, is layered in the trees In a season of odd, dusky congruences—a scarlet tanager And the odor of burning leaves, a golden retriever Loping down the center of a wide street and the sun Setting behind smoke-filled trees in the distance, A gap opening up in the treetops and a bruised cloud Blamelessly filling the space with purples. Everything Changes and moves in the split second between summer’s Sprawling past and winter’s hard revision, one moment Pulling out of the station according to schedule, Another moment arriving on the next platform. It Happens almost like clockwork: the leaves drift away From their branches and gather slowly at our feet, Sliding over our ankles, and the season begins moving Around us even as its colorful weather moves us, Even as it pulls us into its dusty, twilit pockets. And every year there is a brief, startling moment When we pause in the middle of a long walk home and Suddenly feel something invisible and weightless Touching our shoulders, sweeping down from the air: It is the autumn wind pressing against our bodies; It is the changing light of fall falling on us. 

[weltenwellen]

 Natalie Diaz, from "Manhattan is a Lenape Word", Postcolonial Love Poem

[orpheuslament]

October, Louise Glück

[luthienne]

Louise Glück, “Snowdrops”

[feral-ballad]

Jihyun Yun, from Some Are Always Hungry; “The Leaving Season”

[Text ID: “It’s strange / to know this world I loved, / loves me best / dismembered.”]

[onetwofeb]

[letterstotherestofme]

Text below the cut:

I want to go back to the beginning. We all do. I think: Hurt won't be there.

But I'm wrong. Where the water Bubbles up At the spring: Isn't that a wound?

― Gregory Orr

[queen-of-thunder]

Earth

Air • Water • Fire

“Postcolonial Love Poem” by Natalie Diaz // “Cradle” by Anis Mojgani // Tender Is The Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald // Post by @starei // “Sowing” by Audre Lorde // Untitled by @cielosky // “Love Poem: Mermaid” by Donika Kelly // “Outbound” by Hieu Minh Nguyen // “That Little Bird Was Not Okay” by Heather Christle

[apoemaday]

To the Reasoning of Eternal Voices, to the Waves That Have Kept Me from Reaching You--

by Brian Tierney

In the photo negative, the sea is light. Holding it I think of your lung and a spreading appears. Other winters-- The drip that by the bed filled the Folgers can with shit every hour. How I read you the weather and Dharma Bums. You said in time I'd understand Kerouac was unworthy of the Buddha, then asked me stop. By then you'd lost your right front tooth, which embarrassed me; you'd clear a corncob as if playing a flute, whichever side of your mouth hurt less that day. Which is maybe what you meant, that memory can be kind of an accomplishment. The chaplain tracing a cross of oil with his thumb on your forehead, and your eyes following upward his hand, then holding, following, holding. Like a kid who believes he's watching a kite, when he's watching the breeze.

[eesirachs]

adam wakes up, probes his side. rib gone, wound sticky. god's fingers have touched a place that will never be touched again. how does adam not curl up, swell and fall, beg god to touch him again. to touch him everywhere else. not just ribs but cheek, inner thigh, lap. the worst part of the side-wound is not that god penetrated you but that he won't do it again

[havingapoemwithyou]

and now it's october by Barbara Crooker

[bayouette]

I have a folder called Time is a Flat Circle in which I collect evidence of humanity. Here is most of them.

[aqueerkettleofish]

Okayokayokayokaybut "My hand will wear out but the inscription will remain" is kind of a power line BEFORE you factor in that it is, in fact, over a thousand years old.

[dduane]

It’s always good to spend a few moments, on a quiet day, looking through the Family album.