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Tender Buttons

@neglectedtuesday / neglectedtuesday.tumblr.com

‘A puzzle, a monster puzzle, a heavy choking, a neglected Tuesday’ - Sugar, Gertrude Stein
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“What makes a poem a poem, finally, is that it is unparaphrasable. There is no other way to say exactly this; it exists only in its own body of language, only in these words. I may try to explain it or represent it in other terms, but then some element of its life will always be missing. It’s the same with painting. All I can say of still life must finally fall short; I may inventory, weigh, suggest, but I cannot circumscribe; some element of mystery will always be left out. What is missing is, precisely, its poetry.”

— Mark Doty, from Still Life With Oysters and Lemon

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dreadwedge

the problem with fairy portals is they were designed in the 1970s as a stopgap, under the assumption that they would be replaced after the first 10 years, when the Duchess of Loathesome Satin and Splendid Offal's cycle of death and rebirth was due to roll over. The thinking was, her shed carapace would be such an ample source of fine allegorical essence that waiting until then to enact a more durable, long-term infrastructure plan would be worth it, because the next-gen ley ways woulda barely needed servicing and could have run smoothly for the next 1,000 years and 1,000 days, when her vileness's Moribund Arousal would recur and provide a new batch of raw material. But then in '82 when Wee William Prickertoe tricked his mother the duchess into severing her connection to the flow of time and subsequently took the throne for himself, he slashed the TransVeil department's budget and funneled all of those resources into "elixir development" (don't get me started). So basically we're still using portals that are half a century old and weren't meant to last for more than a decade at most. It's really no wonder they're so unreliable these days, the hardware just gets repainted and retrofitted every couple years when some petty aphid-king or other seizes power and invents a new season or wants to give the Old Passages a new look

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“The architecture of the Minotaur’s heart is ancient. Rough hewn and many chambered, his heart is a plodding laborious thing, built for churning through the millennia. But the blood it pumps—the blood it has pumped for five thousand years, the blood it will pump for the rest of his life—is nearly human blood. It carries with it, through his monster’s veins, the weighty, necessary, terrible stuff of human existence: fear, wonder, hope, wickedness, love. But in the Minotaur’s world it is far easier to kill and devour seven virgins year after year, their rattling bones rising at his feet like a sea of cracked ice, than to accept tenderness and return it.”

— Steven Sherrill, The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break

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Instead of saying we liked or loved each other, we just lay there on our backs, our brown skin shiny in the rosy light that poured in from the evening sun. We surveyed each other’s body: him seeing the scar above my clavicle from when I fell down the stairs as a kid, and me seeing the patch of hair missing from his scalp. I knew then that I loved him. 

Joshua Whitehead, Jonny Appleseed

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kalisbaby

every street, every house, every room, every window, every balcony, every wall, every stone, every sorrow, every word, every letter, every whisper, every touch, every glance, every kiss, every tree, every spear of grass, every tear, every scream, every air, every hope, every supplication, every secret, every well, every prayer, every song, every ballad, every book, every paper, every color, every ray, every cloud, every rain, every drop of rain, every drip of sweat, every lisp, every stutter, every yamma, mother, every yaba, father, every shadow, every light, every little hand that drew in a little notebook a tree or house or heart or a family of a father, a mother, siblings, and pets, every longing, every possibility, every letter between two lovers that arrived or didn’t arrive, every gasp of love dispersed in the distant clouds, every moment of despair at every turn, every suitcase on top of

every closet, every library, every shelf, every minaret, every rug, every bell toll in every church, every rosary, every holy praise, every arrival, every goodbye, every Good Morning, every Thank God, every ‘ala rasi, my pleasure, every hill ‘an sama’i, leave me alone, every rock, every wave, every grain of sand, every hair-do, every mirror, every glance in every mirror, every cat, every meow, every happy donkey, every sad donkey’s gaze, every pot, every vapor rising from every pot, every scent, every bowl, every school queue, every school shoes, every ring of the bell, every blackboard, every piece of chalk, every school costume, every mabruk ma ijakum, congratulations on the baby, every y ‘awid bi-salamtak, condolences, every ‘ayn al- ḥasud tibla bil-‘ama, may the envious be blinded, every photograph, every person in every photograph, every niyyalak, how lucky, every ishta’nalak, we’ve missed you, every grain of wheat in every bird’s gullet, every lock of hair, every hair knot, every hand, every foot, every football, every finger, every nail, every bicycle, every rider on every bicycle, every turn of air fanning from every bicycle, every bad joke, every mean joke, every laugh, every smile, every curse, every yearning, every fight, every sitti, grandma, every

sidi, grandpa, every meadow, every flower, every tree, every grove, every olive, every orange, every plastic rose covered with dust on an abandoned counter, every portrait of a martyr hanging on a wall since forever, every gravestone, every sura, every verse, every hymn, every ḥajj mabrur wa sa ‘yy mashkur, may your ḥajj and effort be rewarded, every yalla tnam yalla tnam, every lullaby, every red teddy bear on every Valentine’s, every clothesline, every hot skirt, every joyful dress, every torn trousers, every days-spun sweater, every button, every nail, every song, every ballad, every mirror, every peg, every bench, every shelf, every dream, every illusion, every hope, every disappointment, every hand holding another hand, every hand alone, every scattered thought, every beautiful thought, every terrifying thought, every whisper, every touch, every street, every house, every room, every balcony, every eye, every tear, every word, every letter, every name, every voice, every name, every house, every name, every face, every name, every cloud, every name, every rose, every name, every spear of grass, every name, every wave, every grain of sand, every street, every kiss, every image, every eye, every tear, every yamma, every yaba, every name, every name, every name, every name, every name, every name, every name, every name, all…

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