"Believe me, everything looks like a noose if you stare at it long enough.”
-Sherman Alexie, from “Indian Education"

"I walked home,
Chanted the first lines of this poem,
And committed them to memory.
And if a few strangers thought me crazy

For writing poetry, aloud, in public,
Like another homeless schizophrenic,
Then fuck them for wanting clarity
And fuck them for fearing mystery.”
-Sherman Alexie, from “Mystery Train"

When I woke up on the batture
& you were not only gone
but had never been there
& I heard the aluminum
silence of the river
I was scared—
it wasn’t metaphysical
exactly
I just thought they were firing
cannons over the water
to make Huck’s carcass rise
-Everette Maddox, “Composed On the Back Of A Dark Green
Muddy Waters Poster”

"I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love. I felt in myself a superabundance of energy which found no outlet in our quiet life.
-Leo Tolstoy, from “Family Happiness"

After a certain age, there’s no one left to turn to.
You’ve got to find Eurydice on your own,
you’ve got
to find the small crack
between here and everywhere else all by yourself.

How could it be otherwise?
Everyone’s gone away, the houses are all empty,
and overcast starts to fill the sky like soiled insulation.
-Charles Wright, “No Direction Home”

On the other side of a mirror there’s an inverse world, where the insane go sane; where bones climb out of the earth and recede to the first slime of love.

And in the evening the sun is just rising.

Lovers cry because they are a day younger, and soon childhood robs them of their pleasure.

In such a world there is much sadness which, of course, is joy …
-Russell Edson, “Antimatter”

"Prof. W. explained to me that there are weightless things. Gravitation for one. It is not material, yet it exists, we feel its pull. So the dead may likewise still exist. Through what they have left behind, through memory, their influence, and so on.

This is no comfort, though, when you howl, yearning for familiar hands, the chest, the one dear body.”

Anna Kamienska, (trans. Clare Cavanagh) from “In That Great River: A Notebook”

"

from “Blue Yodel of the Desperado”

I went to New York to leave you
Flowers of blood and light
In the Picture Shows I dreamed
Of your birthmark in the shape of a pistol

There you were alone and asleep
In your bed like a lake
And your Father watched over you
And his land

As always you slept naked
With the windows wide open

The down on the small of your back
Was like dust on the guitar
Holding up the pane

I believe you left strawberries
And a glass of water
Untouched on the desk
There were ashes hidden in your drawers
And your fingers smelled like backwater…

I wanted to ride down to where I come from
On an appaloosa
And take you away for good
I wanted to tie your hands with my belt
And watch you stare at the campfire
In the mountains not saying a word

So it was in this dream
I gave you things to eat
So you would speak to me

I watched you grow silent and hungry
Like the middle of the night…

The first time you wept like a wooden boat
Was just launched
The sounds of the night…

At dawn you said you were thirsty
Even the darkest night must give in

When you spoke
It was hard for me to say a word
I couldn’t open my mouth
It was like being underwater

A bird came from nowhere
And lighted on your wrist
In the dream it drank from your palm
You stroked its throat and I could have sworn
Your finger was on the trigger

The wind came up you looked away
You were always cold…

When luck and money ran out
I deserted you somewhere in South America…
And stowed away on the first rig I saw
A ship full of wild horses
bound for America
I hid below with the animals that were
To be broken at sea
More than once I put my teeth to the tapaderas
Hunting the musk of your white feet…

I had nightmares about the vessel
Going down with the horses…

My sleep was like a long swim…

I dreamed they brought you aboard
To commend you to the sea
I dreamed you rode off to your wedding sidesaddle
And the only thing you let between your legs
Was the melancholy blood of the cello

You with your instinct for music and danger
Always without escort…

(Source: katherinerebeccanoble)

night writing
text reads: this doesn’t compare to the feel of your skin

(Source: nattrozanska, via katherinerebeccanoble)

Print made by John Condé After Richard Cosway