Author: Christina's Words

“The darkness around us is deep.” ~ William Stafford

❝ At 19, I read a sentence that re-terraformed my head…

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❝ At 19, I read a sentence that re-terraformed my head: “The level of matter in the universe has been constant since the Big Bang.”
In all the aeons we have lost nothing, we have gained nothing – not a speck, not a grain, not a breath. The universe is simply a sealed, twisting kaleidoscope that has reordered itself a trillion trillion trillion times over.
Each baby, then, is a unique collision – a cocktail, a remix – of all that has come before: made from molecules of Napoleon and stardust and comets and whale tooth; colloidal mercury and Cleopatra’s breath: and with the same darkness that is between the stars between, and inside, our own atoms.
When you know this, you suddenly see the crowded top deck of the bus, in the rain, as a miracle: this collection of people is by way of a starburst constellation. Families are bright, irregular-shaped nebulae. Finding a person you love is like galaxies colliding. We are all peculiar, unrepeatable, perambulating micro-universes – we have never been before and we will never be again. Oh God, the sheer exuberant, unlikely fact of our existences. The honour of being alive. They will never be able to make you again. Don’t you dare waste a second of it thinking something better will happen when it ends. Don’t you dare. ❞

“The Strongest Of The Strange” by Charles Bukowski

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry
you won’t see them often
for wherever the crowd is
they
are not.
those odd ones, not
many
but from them
come
the few
good paintings
the few
good symphonies
the few
good books
and other
works.
and from the
best of the
strange ones
perhaps
nothing.
they are
their own
paintings
their own
books
their own
music
their own
work.
sometimes I think
I see
them – say
a certain old
man
sitting on a
certain bench
in a certain
way
or
a quick face
going the other
way
in a passing
automobile
or
there’s a certain motion
of the hands
of a bag-boy or a bag-
girl
while packing
supermarket
groceries.
sometimes
it is even somebody
you have been
living with
for some
time –
you will notice
a
lightning quick
glance
never seen
from them
before.
sometimes
you will only note
their
existance
suddenly
in
vivid
recall
some months
some years
after they are
gone.
I remember
such a
one –
he was about
20 years old
drunk at
10 a.m.
staring into
a cracked
New Orleans
mirror
facing dreaming
against the
walls of
the world
where
did I
go?

❝ This is the cemetery. The good bones are in here, the bad bones are out there…

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❝This is the cemetery. The good bones are in here, the bad bones are out there, beyond the church wall, beyond the pale, unsanctified.

The bad bones behaved badly, perhaps because of bad blood, bad luck, bad childhoods. Anyway, they did not treat their bodies well. Walked them over cliff edges, jumped them off bell-towers. Tried to fly. Broke things.

The good bones lie snug under their tidy monuments. They have been given brooches to wear, signet rings, poems carved on stone, marble urns, citations. Circlets of bright hair. They have been worthy and dutiful, they deserve it. That’s what it says here: the last word.

The bad bones have been bad, so they are better left unsaid. They are better left unsaying. But they were never happy, they always wanted more, they were always hungry. They can smell the words, the words coming out of your mouth all warm and yeasty. They want some words of their own. They’ll be back.

[. . .]

You can wipe your feet on me, twist my motives around all you like, you can dump millstones on my head and drown me in the river, but you can’t get me out of the story. I’m the plot, babe, and don’t ever forget it.

❞

—   Good Bones, Margaret Atwood

“bird & hand” by Anne Shaw

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry

bird & hand

listen:   you are an eyesore   glitzy
as a billboard   my bluelight
special baby  my-shiny-in-the-rain
but the heart is a homey summer

slippy as a raw egg on my plate
crumped   open like a torso   my
bloody clementine    pitched
on the tarmac   under the jizz of stars

and the street’s gone vacant    vagrant
the lawn unmown   the lawn
a little forest a little savagery
like the one between us darling

a bird trapped in the house
banging   and banging   and when I
opened my fist to the blueblack
it was already gone

– Anne Shaw, “bird & hand”

via diode: Anne Shaw’s first poetry collection, Undertow, won the Lexi Rudnitsky Poetry Prize and is available from Persea Books; her new collection, Shatter & Thrust, is forthcoming. Her work has also appeared or is slated to appear in Harvard Review, Massachusetts Review, Barrow Street,Hotel Amerika, and Black Warrior Review. Her extended poetry project can be located online at http://www.twitter.com/anneshaw.

❝ You look invincible,’ my mother said one night…

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❝ You look invincible,’ my mother said one night.
I loved these times, when we seemed to feel the same thing. I turned to her, wrapped in my thin gown, and said:
I am. ❞
—   The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold