b-luish - you've got to believe in the poetry
b-luish
you've got to believe in the poetry

because everything else in your life will fail you, including yourself

113 posts

Latest Posts by b-luish - Page 2

b-luish
1 month ago
There's a saying. I don't know. What doesn't love you kills you longer. Something like that. I remember washing your hair. The skin of your back felt wombsoft. Like no one had ever touched it before me. Not even your mother. When I kissed you you said we'd never talk about it. This was a kindness. I know that now. Then, I only knew that the world was ending. And I loved you. And I wanted to eat your heart.

Joan Tierney

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b-luish
1 month ago
[ID: my love, there will always be grief, / but there will be days where I can hold hands with it / days where i can lay flowers at its feet]

Ghost Of My Ghosts, Sol Rios

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b-luish
1 month ago
Naomi Shihab Nye, From Fuel: Poems; “Hidden”

Naomi Shihab Nye, from Fuel: Poems; “Hidden”

[Text ID: "If you tuck the name of a loved one / under your tongue too long / without speaking it / it becomes blood"]

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b-luish
1 month ago
“Oh Rascal Children Of Gaza,” By Palestinian Poet, Khaled Juma, 2014

“Oh Rascal Children of Gaza,” by Palestinian poet, Khaled Juma, 2014

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b-luish
1 month ago
December BY MICHAEL MILLER I want to be a passenger in your car again and shut my eyes while you sit at the wheel, awake and assured in your own private world, seeing all the lines on the road ahead, down a long stretch of empty highway without any other faces in sight. I want to be a passenger in your car again and put my life back in your hands.

december by Michael Miller

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b-luish
1 month ago
b-luish - you've got to believe in the poetry
b-luish - you've got to believe in the poetry
b-luish - you've got to believe in the poetry
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b-luish
1 month ago

“Some animals take themselves away to a private place to die, into the forest or under a raised wooden deck constructed of weather-treated pine. Are there animals that seek out the most public place to die, the greatest number of eyes to watch them lie down, roll over, stiffen? Is it true that all living creatures feel the instinct to survive, or are there ones that don’t, only we know nothing about them because they die so swiftly, in utter silence, before they can be seen and recorded?”

You Too Can Have A Body Like Mine - Alexandra Kleeman (2015)

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b-luish
1 month ago

“The other day, lying in bed, I felt my heart beating for the first time in a long while. I realized how little I live in my body, how much in my mind”

-Rodger kamenetz, from Terra infirma

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b-luish
1 month ago

can’t focus on work. can only think of that one lesbian poem about chivalry

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b-luish
1 month ago
*

*

j. sullivan

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b-luish
1 month ago
Sad It is sad to tip the kettle over the cup & discover there is no more tea in the kettle. It is sad when the diner is closed. It is sad when the hawk seizes the rat & sad when the hawk misses. It is sad when the child encounters too early. It is sad when a mother apologizes. It is sad when the aphids have chewed holes in the lacinato kale. It is sad when there is a shopping list taped to a refrigerator. It is sad in the morning, Bach or no Bach. It is sad in winter & depending on the city sadder in summer. It is sad to finish a book & sad to not finish. It is sad to make love imperfectly. It is sad when the body is ready but not the mind. It is sad when [ ] has left the group chat. It is sad when the wrong thing dies. It is sad when it is three in the morning & the wind is howling & the moon is like a burning umbrella oh god who will put up with me

sad by Jeremy Radin

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b-luish
1 month ago
Late Poem to My Father by Sharon Olds Suddenly I thought of you as a child in that house, the unlit rooms and the hot fireplace with the man in front of it, silent. You moved through the heavy air in your physical beauty, a boy of seven, helpless, smart, there were things the man did near you, and he was your father, the mold by which you were made. Down in the cellar, the barrels of sweet apples, picked at their peak from the tree, rotted and rotted, and past the cellar door the creek ran and ran, and something was not given to you, or something was taken from you that you were born with, so that even at 30 and 40 you set the oily medicine to your lips every night, the poison to help you drop down unconscious. I always thought the point was what you did to us as a grown man, but then I remembered that child being formed in front of the fire, the tiny bones inside his soul twisted in greenstick fractures, the small tendons that hold the heart in place snapped. And what they did to you you did not do to me. When I love you now, I like to think I am giving my love directly to that boy in the fiery room, as if it could reach him in time.

Sharon Olds, “Late Poem to My Father”

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b-luish
1 month ago
b-luish - you've got to believe in the poetry
b-luish - you've got to believe in the poetry
b-luish - you've got to believe in the poetry
b-luish - you've got to believe in the poetry
b-luish - you've got to believe in the poetry
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b-luish
1 month ago
Training BY DIANNELY ANTIGUA The puppy won’t stop eating rocks and moss. Sometimes I pry open her mouth to find whole splinters of bark on her pink tongue. We try to train her how to sit, how to stick out her paw when we ask. When she poops in the house, we bring it to the yard so she knows where to go next time. And later, after it’s dried in the sun, after the flies have had their fill, we scoop it up and throw it in the woods. Here, the world is perpetual March, and we love a dog as if that’s the only thing we can do, as if death cannot touch this slice of New England, the trees growing a canopy of shade just for us.
Yesterday, we strapped the smallest life jacket to her furry body, took her swimming for the first time. We watched her paddle from the shore to the center of the lake, then back again until she grew tired. And last night while we argued about things that won’t matter in a month, he was still petting the puppy’s wet head, and I cried like I’d never known a kindness so pure and gentle as that, as a pat on the head for doing nothing but existing. I wouldn’t call this jealousy, but there is no word in my human tongue that seems appropriate. It’s the feeling of all the stones I swallowed in my youth growing  jagged in my belly. And I scratch the surface of my skin with any sharp thing I can find to cut them out.

training by Diannely Antigua

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b-luish
1 month ago
Tori McCandless, "Post-Glacial"

Tori McCandless, "Post-Glacial"

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b-luish
1 month ago
b-luish - you've got to believe in the poetry
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b-luish
1 month ago
Safia Elhillo, From Spring

Safia Elhillo, from Spring

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b-luish
1 month ago

“a community without romance risks being brutish and crass, superficial and brittle, cruel and even muderous. . . i don’t mean just romantic romance. i don’t just mean erotic romance. . . i mean the romance that allows us to soften our voices when we see each other.”

maya angelou, 1998

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b-luish
1 month ago

I don’t remember where this story was from but it was about how the writers older brother died when he was young and years later had a son who, had never met the brother had the same mannerisms as him. Ok I think I remember the key words were “my son drinks from the water fountain like my brother” or something

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b-luish
1 month ago

god I just. love ruthlessness as a character trait so much. sexy sexy sexy

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b-luish
1 month ago
Mahmoud Darwish, From Journal Of An Ordinary Grief (tr. From The Arabic By Ibrahim Muhawi)

Mahmoud Darwish, from Journal of an Ordinary Grief (tr. from the Arabic by Ibrahim Muhawi)

[Text ID: A place is not only a geographical area; it's also a state of mind. And trees are not just trees; they are the ribs of childhood.]

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b-luish
1 month ago

“I’ve wasted a lot of time in my life. I’ve thought too much about what people will say or what they’re gonna think. And sometimes it’s over silly things like going to the grocery store or going to the post office. But there have been times when I really stopped myself from doing something special. All because I was scared someone might look at me and decide I wasn’t good enough. But you don’t have to bother with that nonsense. I wasted all that time so you don’t have to.”

— Julie Murphy, Dumplin’

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b-luish
1 month ago
Adonis, from Selected Poems, Tr. By Khaled Mattawa, Singular In A Plural Form

Adonis, from Selected Poems, tr. by Khaled Mattawa, Singular in a Plural Form

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b-luish
1 month ago
b-luish - you've got to believe in the poetry
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b-luish
1 month ago
In the un-story of my life I am three years old and my father lifts me into the air and then catches me again and again, pulling me into him. Or I am thirteen years old and my father sits on the porch with his arm around me and says yes, yes, look, everything will be fine, I’m here. In the un-story
he has his ties and pressed shirts hanging in the closet next to my mother’s blouses. The smell of his cologne washes over everything like a pot roast roasting all Sunday. But in the story of my life my father’s sons have to call him again and again and again and again like small children hitting a drum they can’t stop hitting. They have to beg for his attention, and one even dies, in his way, for him,
and like life, is buried without him. In the story of my life I inherit the fathers of other kids, other sons. How lucky am I? Fathers with names like Joseph, Yosef, Josiah, Yasef, meaning he will add. Meaning he will lift you up and catch you. Meaning he will sit with you, and your sorrow will be his too. Fathers with names like Ernie, Ernest, Ernesto, Arnošt, meaning kindness. Meaning he will walk among the lepers
of your actions and listen to them. Meaning he will not fail you even as you fail yourself. Right now dusk is moving around the house like a bad babysitter waiting for her boyfriend to come over, re-applying her eyeliner. Outside some coyotes are lighting up the air like teenagers. Meanwhile in the story of my life I lift my three- year-old up into the air and then catch him but also catch myself. In the story of my life I put my arm around my thirteen-year-old
But also around myself. When I feed them I feed myself. When I cool a fevered forehead with a cold rag I cool my own anger. When I leave I also return to them and return to myself. I know there are really three children in the story of my life. I must make a home for each of them.

father by Matthew Dickman

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b-luish
1 month ago

“please don’t come closer unless you plan to stay”

— Unknown

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b-luish
1 month ago
My boyfriend did not die in 1991. I told a lie and it turned into a fact, forever repeated in my official biography. He died on Christmas Day, 1990, when his family disconnected the mechanical breathing machine. He was a composer in the school of music. We were working on a piece for voice and strings. I liked writing the words under the whole notes, hyphenating them to make them last. I liked sitting on the bed in his apartment, writing on the sheet music—bigger paper, thicker, how it sounded when it fell to the floor when we got tired. It was winter break, friends in town, we hopped from party to party, catching up but separately. It was late, the night was clear, the roads were empty. The four of them were sober, the driver in the other car was not. I was a few miles away, in a bar, waiting. When the bar closed, I left him an angry message for standing me up. A few hours later, a friend called and told me. He suggested I break into the apartment and start removing things before the family arrived. For several minutes I didn’t understand, then—evidence. He hadn’t told his family and it didn’t seem right to tell them now, to suggest that they didn’t really know him. I drove in the darkness between the accident and dawn. I climbed through the window. I couldn’t figure which things looked suspicious and which things would be missed. I was sloppy, rushed. I grabbed the wrong sheet music. It was a piece that had already been performed. A few days after Christmas there was a memorial. I sat in the back. As part of his speech, his father mentioned the missing music and made an appeal for its return. I couldn’t give it back. On New Year’s Eve, in a black velvet jacket, at a party in the lobby of a downtown hotel, with a drink in each hand—one for him, one for me—I kept asking where he was, if anyone had seen him. I had his passport in my back pocket. I shouldn’t have taken that either. It was the only picture of him I could find.

cover story by Richard Siken

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b-luish
1 month ago
Chen Chen, Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced An Emergency

Chen Chen, Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency

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b-luish
1 month ago
Ray at 14 BY DORIANNE LAUX Bless this boy, born with the strong face of my older brother, the one I loved most, who jumped with me from the roof of the playhouse, my hand in his hand. On Friday nights we watched Twilight Zone and he let me hold the bowl of popcorn, a blanket draped over our shoulders, saying, Don't be afraid. I was never afraid when I was with my big brother who let me touch the baseball-size muscles living in his arms, who carried me on his back through the lonely neighborhood, held tight to the fender of my bike until I made him let go. The year he was fourteen he looked just like Ray, and when he died at twenty-two on a roadside in Germany I thought he was gone forever. But Ray runs into the kitchen: dirty T-shirt, torn jeans, pushes back his sleeve. He says, Feel my muscle, and I do.

ray at 14 by Dorianne Laux

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b-luish
1 month ago
Ada Limón, “To Be Made Whole”, On Being With Krista Tippett

Ada Limón, “To Be Made Whole”, On Being with Krista Tippett

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