“My hands shake more these
days than I want them to. I’m
tired of letting go.”
– Haiku by Mary Kate Teske
Month: July 2014
“Start Here” by Caitlyn Siehl
Start by pulling him out of the fire and
hoping that he will forget the smell.
He was supposed to be an angel but they took him
from that light and turned him into something hungry,
something that forgets what his hands are for when they
aren’t shaking.
He will lose so much, and you will watch it all happen
because you had him first, and you would let the world
break its own neck if it means keeping him.
Start by wiping the blood off of his chin and
pretending to understand.
Repeat to yourself
“I won’t leave you, I won’t leave you”
until you fall asleep and dream of the place
where nothing is red.
When is a monster not a monster?
Oh, when you love it.
Oh, when you used to sing it to sleep.
Here are your upturned hands.
Give them to him and watch how he prays
like he is learning his first words.
Start by pulling him out of another fire,
and putting him back together with the pieces
you find on the floor.
There is so much to forgive, but you do not
know how to forget.
When is a monster not a monster?
Oh, when you are the reason it has become so mangled.
Here is your humble offering,
obliterated and broken in the mouth
of this abandoned church.
He has come back to stop the world
from turning itself inside out, and you love him, you do,
so you won’t let him.
Tell him that you will never know any better.
Pretend to understand why that isn’t good enough.
– “Start Here” by Caitlyn Siehl
Caitlyn Siehl is the author of What We Buried
Her Tumblr page is: alonesomes
“Folk Song” by Tomaz Salamun
Every true poet is a monster.
He destroys people and their speech.
His singing elevates a technique that wipes out
the earth so we are not eaten by worms.
The drunk sells his coat.
The thief sells his mother.
Only the poet sells his soul to separate it
from the body that he loves.
– Tomaz Salamun, Folk Song (via Poetry International)
“I love your silence. It is so wise. It listens. …
“I love your silence. It is so wise. It listens. It invites warmth. I love your loneliness. It is brave. It makes the universe want to protect you. You have the loneliness that all true heroes have, a loneliness that is a deep sea, within which the fishes of mystery dwell. I love your quest. It is noble. It has greatness in it. Only one who is born under a blessed star would set sail across the billowing waves and the wild squalls, because of a dream. I love your dream. It is magical. Only those who truly love and who are truly strong can sustain their lives as a dream. You dwell in your own enchantment. Life throws stones at you, but your love and your dream change those stones into the flowers of discovery. Even if you lose, or are defeated by things, your triumph will always be exemplary. And if no one knows it, then there are places that do. People like you enrich the dreams of the world, and it is dreams that create history. People like you are the unknowing transformers of things, protected by your own fairy-tale, by love.”
– Ben Okri, Astonishing the Gods
“Good Girl” by Kim Addonizio
Look at you, sitting there being good.
After two years you’re still dying for a cigarette.
And not drinking on weekdays, who thought that one up?
Don’t you want to run to the corner right now
for a fifth of vodka and have it with cranberry juice
and a nice lemon slice, wouldn’t the backyard
that you’re so sick of staring out into
look better then, the tidy yard your landlord tends
day and night — the fence with its fresh coat of paint,
the ash-free barbeque, the patio swept clean of small twigs —
don’t you want to mess it all up, to roll around
like a dog in his flowerbeds? Aren’t you a dog anyway,
always groveling for love and begging to be petted?
You ought to get into the garbage and lick the insides
of the can, the greasy wrappers, the picked-over bones,
you ought to drive your snout into the coffee grounds.
Ah, coffee! Why not gulp some down with four cigarettes
and then blast naked into the streets, and leap on the first
beautiful man you find? The words Ruin me, haven’t they
been jailed in your throat for forty years, isn’t it time
you set them loose in slutty dresses and torn fishnets
to totter around in five-inch heels and slutty mascara?
Sure it’s time. You’ve rolled over long enough.
Forty, forty-one. At the end of all this
there’s one lousy biscuit, and it tastes like dirt.
So get going. Listen: they’re howling for you now:
up and down the block your neighbors’ dogs
burst into frenzied barking and won’t shut up.
“Good Girl” by Kim Addonizio from Tell Me
Words ... for the Time Being 