self-portrait against red wallpaper, richard siken
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." ]
Lee Hyemi, tr. by Soje, from Unexpected Vanilla; “Inside the tower”
[Text ID: “Why am I / inside this absence”]
the way you say soil sounds like soul // the way you say soil you make a poem out of every speck of dirt
[Galatée, Charles François Jalabert // soil, Irène P. Mathieu // Take Me to Church, Hozier // Quote, Jonathan Swift // The Triassic Cuddle, alissaurus_rex // Poem, Tanner Olson // Painting (detail), Josef Neugebauer // Work Song, Hozier // Wolfstar Microfic, tumblr user @mkaugust // Dreaming of Pomegranates, Felice Casorati]
Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself”, Leaves of Grass
[Text ID: “I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,”]
selected diaries, virginia woolf / abandonment (the pair), henri de toulouse-lautrec / pillow thoughts, courtney peppernell / in bed, henri de toulouse-lautrec / work song, hozier / the two friends, henri de toulouse-lautrec / portrait of a lady on fire (2019), dir. céline sciamma
“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