February 2012
9 posts
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Avalanche
I haven’t had sex like that since: Aspen, snowed-in, your thumb deep in my anus, heart half out of water. Complete— you skiing Pyramid Peak, leaning into turns, body swooshing the summit. Sky unzipped. At your age, my father says he scaled icefalls, and played trombone on Ithaca rooftops. We can never wholly take in the art we become, or remember quite how it happened. Did we really...
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Siren Song
I phone from time to time, to see if she’s
Changed the music on her answerphone.
‘Tell me in two words,’ goes the recording,
‘what you were going to tell in a thousand.’
I peer into that thought, like peering out
To sea at night, hearing the sound of waves
Breaking on rocks, knowing she is there,
Listening, waiting for me to speak.
Once in a while she’ll pick up...
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I Saw A Man
I saw a man pursuing the horizon; Round and round they sped. I was disturbed at this; I accosted the man. “It is futile,” I said, “You can never — “ “You lie,” he cried, And ran on.
-Stephen Crane
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The Quiet World
In an effort to get people to look
into each other’s eyes more,
and also to appease the mutes,
the government has decided
to allot each person exactly one hundred
and sixty-seven words, per day.
When the phone rings, I put it to my ear
without saying hello. In the restaurant
I point at chicken noodle soup.
I am adjusting well to the new way.
Late at night, I call my long distance lover, ...
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The Diner
The short-order cook and the dishwasher
argue the relative merits
of Rilke’s Elegies
against Eliot’s Four Quartets,
but the delivery man who brings eggs
suggests they have forgotten Les fleurs
du mal and Baudelaire. The waitress
carrying three plates and a coffee pot
can’t decide whom she loves more—
Rimbaud or Verlaine,
William Blake or William Wordsworth.
She refills the rabbi’s cup
...
January 2012
3 posts
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Miss You
After the affair, we didn’t speak again for two months. When we saw each other again, he hugged me and whispered in my ear, “Miss you.” Too stingy to include the I. Miss you. Like he was a fragment in search of a pronoun. Miss U! Or he was at a football game rooting for Mississippi State. Miss You I have just won a beauty pageant in the State of Myself. So I push him away and say, “That’s Ms. Me...
October 2011
1 post
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September 2011
9 posts
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Work
I wanted to be a rain salesman, carrying my satchel full of rain from door to door, selling thunder, selling the way the air feels after a downpour, but there were no openings in the rain department, and so they left me dying behind this desk—adding bleeps and subtracting chunks—and I would give a bowl of wild blossoms, some rain, and two shakes of my fist at the sky to be living.
...
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An Analogy of Reality: From Caterpillar to...
The metamorphous which the caterpillar must undergo to transform from the caterpillar into the butterfly is very painful, but unless the caterpillar endures the metamorphous, the caterpillar cannot become the butterfly. The caterpillar has no idea what to expect when the process is complete. As the metamorphous progresses, the caterpillar slowly starts to understand what it is happening. However,...
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July 2011
5 posts
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Circuitous
We do not divulge our histories chronologically. It’s not like we can sit each other down and say, “Tell me what happened,” and then rise from that conversation knowing everything; most of the time, we don’t even realize that we’re dividing ourselves into clues. You’ll say, “That was before my dad left my mom,” and I’ll say, “Your dad...
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Ode to Carbonation
You taste like what I imagine swallowing radio wires feels like all sparks and pop music in my throat.
-Sierra DeMulder
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June 2011
7 posts
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"Mingus at the Showplace"
I was miserable, of course, for I was seventeen, and so I swung into action and wrote a poem,
and it was miserable, for that’s how I thought poetry worked: you digested experience and shat literature. -William Matthews
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He said "We'll see"
Guess a drunk man’s word is a sober man’s regret Which is too bad ‘cause I bet we could’ve had it all You see, Life’s a risk and love’s a choice I’d rather choose than miss out, rather raise my voice than bite my tongue My vice is that I care too much I talk too much I’ve said too much And as much as I’d like to say more, the door you just...
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First Listen: Hear Bon Iver's New Album A Week... →
Out June 21st, critics are calling Bon Iver’s new self-titled album a “grand, chance-taking record.” Thanks to NPR, you don’t have to wait any longer to hear it.
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May 2011
13 posts
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You Can't Make This Stuff Up
Marie Stopes International is a prominent London charity that robustly promotes a woman’s right to choose abortion, but a whimsical public service campaign in January has created unusually savage criticism. The organization partnered with the British comedy music band The Midnight Beast to produce a video suggesting anal sex as a contraceptive of choice. Among the lyrics of one song,...
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April 2011
11 posts
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Hills Like White Elephants
“We can have everything.” “No, we can’t.” “We can have the whole world.” “No, we can’t.” “We can go everywhere.” “No we can’t. It isn’t ours anymore.” “It’s ours.” “No, it isn’t. And once they take it away, you never get it back.” “But they haven’t taken it away.”
-Earnest Hemingway
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