Laura Makabresku - The Anatomy of Melancholy
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PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH

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Xuebing Du
YOU ARE THE REASON
trying on a metaphor

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Laura Makabresku - The Anatomy of Melancholy
Diana and Her Nymphs, Robert Burns, 1926
January by Charles Simic
Albert von Keller, Reclining Nude-Dream on the Beach, 1913
“Love Poem with Apologies for My Appearance” by Ada Limón, originally published in The Carrying (2018)
There is beauty in the mess and imperfections of a shared space; They mean “i love you”
Here Together by W. S. Merwin
Jack Penny - Together, 2025 - Acrylic and Oil on Canvas
SNOW AND DIRTY RAIN
Close your eyes. A lover is standing too close to focus on. Leave me blurry and fall toward me with your entire body. Lie under the covers, pretending to sleep, while I’m in the other room. Imagine my legs crossed, my hair combed, the shine of my boots in the slatted light. I’m thinking My plant, his chair, the ashtray that we bought together. I’m thinking This is where we live. When we were little we made houses out of cardboard boxes. We can do anything. It’s not because our hearts are large, they’re not, it’s what we struggle with. The attempt to say Come over. Bring your friends. It’s a potluck, I’m making pork chops, I’m making those long noodles you love so much. My dragonfly, my black-eyed fire, the knives in the kitchen are singing for blood, but we are at the crossroads, my little outlaw, and this is the map of my heart, the landscape after cruelty which is, of course, a garden, which is a tenderness, which is a room, a lover saying Hold me tight, it’s getting cold. We have not touched the stars, nor are we forgiven, which brings us back to the hero’s shoulders and a gentleness that comes, not from the absence of violence, but despite the abundance of it. The lawn is drowned, the sky on fire, the gold light falling backward through the glass of every room. I’ll give you my heart to make a place for it to happen, evidence of a love that transcends hunger. Is that too much to expect? That I would name the stars for you? That I would take you there? The splash of my tongue melting you like a sugar cube? We’ve read the back of the book, we know what’s going to happen. The fields burned, the land destroyed, the lovers left broken in the brown dirt. And then it’s gone. Makes you sad. All your friends are gone. Goodbye Goodbye. No more tears. I would like to meet you all in Heaven. But there’s a litany of dreams that happens somewhere in the middle. Moonlight spilling on the bathroom floor. A page of the book where we transcend the story of our lives, past the taco stands and record stores. Moonlight making crosses on your body, and me putting my mouth on every one. We have been very brave, we have wanted to know the worst, wanted the curtain to be lifted from our eyes. The dream going on with all of us in it. Penciling in the bighearted slob. Penciling in his outstretched arms. Our Father who art in Heaven. Our Father who art buried in the yard. Someone is digging your grave right now. Someone is drawing a bath to wash you clean, he said, so think of the wind, so happy, so warm. It’s a fairy tale, the story underneath the story, sliding down the polished halls, lightning here and gone. We make these ridiculous idols so we can pray to what’s behind them, but what happens after we get up the ladder? Do we simply stare at what is horrible and forgive it? Here is the river, and here is the box, and here are the monsters we put in the box to test our strength against. Here is the cake, and here is the fork, and here’s the desire to put it inside us, and then the question behind every question: What happens next? The way you slam your body into mine reminds me I’m alive, but monsters are always hungry, darling, and they’re only a few steps behind you, finding the flaw, the poor weld, the place where we weren’t stitched up quite right, the place they could almost slip right through if the skin wasn’t trying to keep them out, to keep them here, on the other side of the theater where the curtain keeps rising. I crawled out the window and ran into the woods. I had to make up all the words myself. The way they taste, the way they sound in the air. I passed through the narrow gate, stumbled in, stumbled around for a while, and stumbled back out. I made this place for you. A place for you to love me. If this isn’t the kingdom then I don’t know what is. So how would you catalog it? Dawn in the fields? Snow and dirty rain? Light brought in in buckets? I was trying to describe the kingdom, but the letters kept smudging as I wrote them: the hunter’s heart, the hunter’s mouth, the trees and the trees and the spaces between the trees, swimming in gold. The words frozen. The creatures frozen. The plum sauce leaking out of the bag. Explaining will get us nowhere. I was away, I don’t know where, lying on the floor, pretending I was dead. I wanted to hurt you but the victory is that I could not stomach it. We have swallowed him up, they said. It’s beautiful, it really is. I had a dream about you. We were in the gold room where everyone finally gets what they want. You said Tell me about your books, your visions made of flesh and light and I said This is the Moon. This is the Sun. Let me name the stars for you. Let me take you there. The splash of my tongue melting you like a sugar cube… We were in the gold room where everyone finally gets what they want, so I said What do you want, sweetheart? and you said Kiss me. Here I am leaving you clues. I am singing now while Rome burns. We are all just trying to be holy. My applejack, my silent night, just mash your lips against me. We are all going forward. None of us are going back.
RICHARD SIKEN
Fortune by Jenny George
A Ream of Paper
by Jane Hirshfield
I have a ream of paper, a cartridge of ink,
almonds, coffee, a wool scarf for warmth.
Whatever handcuffs the soul, I have brought here.
Whatever distances the heart, I have brought here.
A deer rises onto her haunches to reach for an apple,
though many fallen apples are on the ground.
Mark Rothko, Earth Green (detail), 1955
Monet's "Waterlilies"
by Robert Hayden
Today as the news from Selma and Saigon poisons the air like fallout, I come again to see the serene great picture that I love. Here space and time exist in light the eye like the eye of faith believes. The seen, the known dissolve in iridescence, become illusive flesh of light that was not, was, forever is. O light beheld as through refracting tears. Here is the aura of that world each of us has lost. Here is the shadow of its joy.
blue rotunda, louise glück
I am tired of having hands she said I want wings —
But what will you do without your hands to be human?
I am tired of human she said I want to live on the sun —
Pointing to herself:
Not here. There is not enough warmth in this place. Blue sky, blue ice
the blue rotunda lifted over the flat street —
and then, after a silence:
I want my heart back I want to feel everything again —
That’s what the sun meant: it meant scorched —
It is not finally interesting to remember. The damage
is not interesting. No one who knew me then is still alive.
My mother was a beautiful woman — they all said so.
I have to imagine everything she said
I have to act as though there is actually a map to that place:
when you were a child —
And then:
I’m here because it wasn’t true; I
distorted it —
I want she said a theory that explains everything
in the mother’s eye the invisible splinter of foil
the blue ice locked in the iris —
Then:
I want it to be my fault she said so I can fix it —
Blue sky, blue ice, street like a frozen river
you’re talking about my life she said
except she said you have to fix it
in the right order not touching the father until you solve the mother
a black space showing where the word ends
like a crossword saying you should take a breath now
the black space meaning when you were a child —
And then:
the ice was there for your own protection
to teach you not to feel —
the truth she said
I thought it would be like a target, you would see
the center —
Cold light filling the room.
I know where we are she said that’s the window when I was a child
That’s my first home, she said that square box — go ahead and laugh.
Like the inside of my head: you can see out but you can’t go out —
Just think the sun was there, in that bare place
the winter sun not close enough to reach the children’s hearts
the light saying you can see out but you can’t go out
Here, it says, here is where everything belongs
Lines for Winter
by Mark Strand
Tell yourself as it gets cold and gray falls from the air that you will go on walking, hearing the same tune no matter where you find yourself — inside the dome of dark or under the cracking white of the moon’s gaze in a valley of snow.
Tonight as it gets cold tell yourself what you know which is nothing but the tune your bones play as you keep going. And you will be able for once to lie down under the small fire of winter stars.
And if it happens that you cannot go on or turn back and you find yourself where you will be at the end, tell yourself in that final flowing of cold through your limbs that you love what you are.
meeee
Florence Welch for Gucci's Bloom Campaign (2020)
me writing fanfiction: [wracking my brain to figure out how a character can learn a piece of key information]
victor hugo: