To My Twenty-Four-Year-Old Self - Elisa Gonzales
To My Twenty-Four-Year-Old Self - Elisa Gonzales
Sometimes you feel more intimacy with the woman who lives
in the apartment opposite—twenty years older, probably,
though she looks barely ten, devoted to evading age—
than with anyone stroked or kissed or otherwise handled.
You sit naked on the white sofa, lights on, looking into her home,
lights on.
She paints her toenails, watches a black-and-white film,
Hitchcock, maybe: there’s a woman with a platinum chignon.
She applies a green mask. A cream. A mystery ointment.
When you meet an older woman who resembles her, enough,
you do the obvious thing.
That woman says, after, Don’t ever leave me
but when you report to your friends
you change her words to Don’t ever forget me.
Typical of us, the lie and the lie.
Why couldn’t you tell the truth? That’s what I’ve come to ask.
Not to her—to your friends.
I can’t remember why it embarrassed you.
Was it that she was old enough not to bare her throat?
Or was it shame at yourself, for misunderstanding
how well you were understood?
(It always comes back to knowledge with us, doesn’t it?)
Maybe it doesn’t matter: you’ll think of this woman
so often throughout the years
that by some lights
you’ll have kept your vow.
More Posts from Violets-and-honey and Others
Flying like a fish out of water
Sea levels rising as the earth gets hotter
I think this weekend I’ll go on an alcohol bender
But at least drinks are free when you’re the bartender.
The Queen
by Pablo Neruda tr. Donald D. Walsh
I have named you queen. There are taller than you, taller. There are purer than you, purer. There are lovelier than you, lovelier.
But you are the queen.
When you go through the streets No one recognizes you. No one sees your crystal crown, no one looks At the carpet of red gold That you tread as you pass, The nonexistent carpet.
And when you appear All the rivers sound In my body, bells Shake the sky, And a hymn fills the world.
Only you and I, Only you and I, my love, Listen to it.
What You Missed That Day You Were Absent from Fourth Grade
by Brad Aaron Modlin
Mrs. Nelson explained how to stand still and listen to the wind, how to find meaning in pumping gas,
how peeling potatoes can be a form of prayer. She took questions on how not to feel lost in the dark
After lunch she distributed worksheets that covered ways to remember your grandfather’s
voice. Then the class discussed falling asleep without feeling you had forgotten to do something else—
something important—and how to believe the house you wake in is your home. This prompted
Mrs. Nelson to draw a chalkboard diagram detailing how to chant the Psalms during cigarette breaks,
and how not to squirm for sound when your own thoughts are all you hear; also, that you have enough.
The English lesson was that I am is a complete sentence.
And just before the afternoon bell, she made the math equation look easy. The one that proves that hundreds of questions,
and feeling cold, and all those nights spent looking for whatever it was you lost, and one person
add up to something.
The people I love are the workers of my heart. They rebuild a heart they did not break from a house of ashes to a skyscraper ruling over the whole world.
- The Short Poem Series by Royla Paula Rădița Asghar
“As if you were on fire from within. The moon lives in the lining of your skin.”
– Pablo Neruda
Nicole W. Lee, from "Even the Dust"
things from sappho to call your girlfriend
ἀστέρων πάντων ὀ κάλλιστος (of all the stars, the fairest)
πόλυ πάκτιδος ἀδυμελεστέρα, χρύσω χρυσοτέρα (far sweeter-sounding than the lyre, far more golden than gold)
τὰν ἰόκολπον (violet-tressed, one with violets in her lap)
ὦ κάλα, ὦ χαρίεσσα κόρα (o beautiful, graceful girl)
ἦρος ἄγγελος ἰμερόφωνος ἀήδων (nightingale, sweet-voiced messenger of spring)
Kait | XXIV | PiscesThis is my personal commonplace book
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