Lidia Yuknavitch, From The Chronology Of Water: A Memoir

“Do you love him? I don’t know. I believe he is my fate.”

— Anne Carson, excerpt of “TV Men: Akhmatova (Treatment for a Script); AKHMATOVA’S MARRIAGE (1910) HAS LITTLE EFFECT ON HER”, in Men in the Off Hours

ghada al-samman // little women, louisa may alcott // howl’s moving castle, hayao miyazaki // the inferno, henri barbusse // the book thief, markus zusak // a letter to louise webb, charles bukowski // anastasia, don bluth & gary goldman // primer for the nuclear age, rita dove // san francisco poems or letters to jack, cathy linh che // night and day, virginia woolf

“I don’t know how to stay tender with this much blood in my mouth”

— Ophelia, Act IV, Scene V 

i think my body is falling in pieces i think my blood is passing me by

Micah Nemerever These Violent Delights / I.B. Vyache Excerpt 07.01.21 / Silas Denver Melvin excerpt from Grit: A Poetry Collection / Christa Wolf excerpt from Cassandra: A Novel and Four Essays / Ethel Cain Family Tree (Intro) / unknown / Fiona Apple Left Alone / Richard Siken The Worm King's Lullaby / Gwen Benaway Holy Wild

i. Micah Nemerever, These Violent Nights

[ "I don't think you've ever felt anything that didn't hurt you. / We've found each other, out of everyone else in the world. Does that hurt, too?" ]

ii. I.B. Vyache, Excerpt 07.01.21

[ "It's time to forgive my hands for being hands. I'm going to hate myself a little less tomorrow. I'm going to hate myself a little less tomorrow." ]

iii. unknown

[ "have you shot a gun? is your blood authentic? is your blood authentic? is your blood authentic? can you prove it to me?" ]

iv. Christa Wolf, Cassandra: A Novel and Four Essays

[ "You looked at me / (did you still see me?)" ]

v. Ethel Cain, Family Tree (Intro)

[ "The fate's already fucked me sideways / Swinging by my neck from the family tree / He'll laugh and say, 'You know I raised you better than this' / Then leave me hanging so they all can laugh at me" ]

vi. unknown

[ "I fight. I resist. It doesn't even matter what I resist; there is simply something in me that tends to resist things as they are. I have been fighting since I was very small." ]

vii. Fiona Apple, Left Alone

[ "[Chorus] / How can I ask anyone to love me / When all I do is beg to be left alone?" ]

viii. Richard Siken, The Worm King's Lullaby

[ "Someone has to leave first. This is a very old story. There is no other version of this story." ]

ix. Gwen Benaway, Holy Wild

[ "I am tired of explaining the fire, / it burns because it must." ]

“(…) no one wants a half-remembered tragedy. You must know the width of the knife and how it ruined you, name the organs it kissed.”

— Life of the Party, ‘Addendum II to No Baptism’ by Olivia Gatwood (via decreation)

Federico García Lorca

journal excerpt, july first

1. Clarice Lispector | 2. Egon Schiele | 3. Dylan Thomas | 4. Joseph Lorusso | 5. Jenny Slate | 6. Ron Hicks | 7. Mary Oliver | 8. Safet Zec | 9. Madeline Miller | 10. Antonio Piatti | 11. Ocean Vuong | 12. Peter Wever | 13. Richard Siken

How much can you change and get away with it, before you turn into someone else, before it's some kind of murder?

The Complete Poems; “The Sickness Unto Death”, Anne Sexton//Jean Baudrillard//Absolute Solitude: Selected Poems, Dulce María Loynaz//Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky//Alex Venezia//La Femme de trente ans, Honoré de Balzac//War of the foxes, Richard Siken

“Alleyways are a coffin–– this city is become my tomb. I am ghost: nameless, soon to be forgotten, another statistic for articles. Here lies NO-ONE, NO-BODY, child in an adult’s body. Heartless, warm, harsh/gentle, innocence stripped away too soon. Here lies a childhood. Alleyways are a coffin–– this city is become my tomb. Little child, lost: Another faceless child swallowed in the belly of a beast.”

— unmarked graves. (CNS)