#pwatem

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"The Mouse's Tale" is a poem from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland.

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“Kenneka Cook” by Courtney Lebow

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i, a lover of men and women, meandering before a high altar, safe in the crumbling tower— orphaned in self-denial, left with the obvious absurdity of god himself, over respectability and renegade ambitions, my delusions gave no comforting superstitions—

Excerpt from “the gay atheistic beloved” by Caseyrenée Lopez with text appropriated from The Vampire Armand by Anne Rice, published in Calamus Journal 

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Listen first for anyone. Fill your pockets. Measure the ditch with a wad of gum. Listen. Stay still. Break open the gate with your fist. a backseat to torch. Ditch it. You will need someone, still. but later. from a pay phone. for the rope. Empty your pockets. Check for wild fur and the pant. who wad seats. or possums who hiss under wild shrub. Sharp shooters check the wind.

Excerpt from “first, take a fistful of hair” by francine j. harris, available on Poetry Foundation

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Help, I meant to shout to the girl, mute, wading near the pool’s edge, her wishes moneyless. I shoved her my dripping fistfuls—I have nowhere to put this.

Excerpt from "Landscape with Girl and Ibises" by Ellen Kombiyil, published in diode

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Nella Larsen, the first African-American woman to graduate from the NYPL Library School, would have her 127th birthday in April 2018. She was a prominent figure in the Harlem Renaissance and published two largely autobiographical novels exploring the gray area between her the white and black heritage.

Image courtesy of James Allen.

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The history of my stupidity will not be written. For one thing, it’s late. And the truth is laborious.

Czeslaw Milosz, “Account”

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Probably the most dangerous thing about college education, at least in my own case, is that it enables my tendency to over-intellectualize stuff, to get lost in abstract arguments inside my head instead of simply paying attention to what’s going on right in front of me.

David Foster Wallace, This Is Water