sorry about the blood in your mouth. i wish it was mine.

— Mark Doty, from Still Life With Oysters and Lemon

i do, often, think of that quote from wislawa szymborska talking about love and the inexplicability of some of it. "great love is never justified" etc. and it truly isn't. and thank god for that.

"We’re dealing here with the phenomenon of great love. Detached observers always ask in such cases: “So what does she (he) see in him (her)?” Such questions are best left in peace: great love is never justified. It’s like the little tree that springs up in some inexplicable fashion on the side of a cliff: where are its roots, what does it feed on, what miracle produces those green leaves? But it does exist and it really is green—clearly, then, it’s getting whatever it needs to survive."

— from "Great Love", in Nonrequired Reading

Safia Elhillo, from Spring

I had this feeling suddenly. I get this feeling a lot, but I don’t know if there’s one word for it. It’s not nervous or sad or even lonely. It’s all of that, and then a bit more. The feeling is I don’t belong here. I don’t know how I got here, and I don’t know how long I can stay before everyone else realizes that I am an impostor. I am a fraud. I’ve gotten this feeling nearly everywhere I have ever been in my life. There’s nothing you can do about it except drink some water and hope that it subsides. Or you can leave.

I’m lonely. What kind of loneliness? Every kind. I feel disconnected. Abandoned. As always. Repetition. So what, my love? So what? At first, I just wanted to run away. Now I have no where else to run to, nothing to run from. I don’t belong anywhere, I don’t want to go anywhere, I just want to be happy.

(1) Czeslaw Milosz, New and Collected Poems: 1931-2001 (2) Leila Sales, This Song Will Save Your Life (3) Daniela Fischerová, Fingers Pointing Somewhere Else (4) Wisława Szymborska, tr. by Clare Cavanagh and Stanisław Barańczak, from “The Railroad Station”, Map: Collected and Last Poems (5) Daul Kim (6) Sarah Kay, from “The Paradox”, No Matter the Wreckage

Marwan Makhoul

[image description: poem from palestine writes literature festival.

In order for me to write poetry that isn't political, I must listen to the birds and in order to hear the birds the warplanes must be silent

لكي أكتب شعرًا ليس سياسيا يجب أن أصغي إلى العصافير ولكي أسمع العصافير يجب أن تخرس الطائرة

مروان مخول // Marwan Makhoul]

there is no unlived life or alternative reality where everything went right…. there is only here and now what are you going to do with it

yeah “i can teach you” is kind and gentle and warm and comforting. it’s also hot. right

Jules Laforgue, from Modern Poets of France: An Anthology; "Solo by Moonlight,"

i think every flower in the world deserves a poem.

just 2 be clear i dont ONLY mean each flower species. i mean each and every individual flower on earth . 6 trillion odes for 6 trillion dandelions please. they deserve nothing less.

Vincent van Gogh, from a letter to his brother Theo

wow that's a nice inflexible honour code you've got there. i can't wait to see it broken under immense pressure, and you along with it.

—

Just create the thing you want to create. Because who's going to stop you? Oh, it's you yourself? Well you can't let that bastard win, can you?

i highly recommend for women and girls to be intellectually curious and difficult to shame

what's the opposite of feeling sand slip through your fingers because I feel this poem more and more as time passes

There is supposed to be a place where no one can reach you. Traditionally, the home, but now we settle for the ocean, the airplane, the summit of a mountain, the middle of a lake, the shower, the womb, the grave