Saw you walking barefoot
taking a long look
at the new moon’s eyelid
later spread
sleep-fallen, naked in your dark hair
asleep but not oblivious
of the unslept unsleeping
elsewhere
Tonight I think
no poetry
will serve
Syntax of rendition:
verb pilots the plane
adverb modifies action
verb force-feeds noun
submerges the subject
noun is choking
verb disgraced goes on doing
there are adjectives up for sale
now diagram the sentence
~Adrienne Rich (1929-2012)
By: Dağhan İş
We’re most alone while in a crowd.
We’re bloated the most when there isn’t room for even a toothpick on a table.
Our oldest comes into being after oppressing our youngest. And when our youngest is ready to give up a limb, they grow!
The safest place are those arms.
Insecurity is the name given to love even when love is still present.
The one with the most patience will pull teeth, whereas the least patient will drum fingers on a table.
While our most faithful will shy from gazing into a mirror, the one yelling “We don’t exist” will catch them in the air.
Our blind see. The seeing don’t even look.
While our masters free our binds, those killed for freedom will spit on the graves of those who died for freedom.
While the bravest don their armor, our most cowardly will hide behind a lanky tree.
We run to those who scream the loudest. Perhaps it’s the silent ones who are suffering more, we cannot know.
We hear best in pure silence. The deafest is the one who talks the most.
Those content with less always have a store under the pillow. The one who puts palms into another palm will bleed.
Widths to heights, heights to widths…
The ones with sight are blind, and while our blind are laughing, I get very bored…
Hunger won’t save you from anything but Silence
When we kiss
we tend to bite
We kiss,
devoured by
our appetite
But kisses and dreams
and all the works of art
They just cannot feed
the human heart
Darling, this hunger
cannot be appeased
Every time our lips meet
on hunger we feast
Darling, this famine
It is who we are
A man deprived of hunger
is destined to starve
Hunger’s why
a kiss is sweet
It’s why the slightest touch
becomes a treat
all the ways imaginable i’ve grown bigger
and all the ways unimaginable i’ve put myself to risk
there is a night at the end of the night
i am wanted
only the law of freedom i have wisely kept under
i’m better off tied
i’m better off tied
Photos: Tono Stano
Music: Le chat de Schrödinger, Les iles introuvables
Mirel Wagner. Minimal gothic folk, from Ethiopia, via Finland.
By: Steven Klein
When the superficial wearies me, it wearies me so much that I need an abyss in order to rest.
Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943
Archive, Francesca Woodman
Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color.
W.S. Merwin
