Jenny Holzer, taken at the installation: ’Jenny Holzer, Lee, Aron Fink’, American Graffiti Gallery, Amsterdam, 1982.
[plain text: Jenny Holzer, taken at the installation: ’Jenny Holzer, Lee, Aron Fink’, American Graffiti Gallery, Amsterdam, 1982.]
[image description: a photo of jenny holzer standing in front of one of her plaques installed on the wall. the plaque reads, in all caps, "someone wants to cut a hole in your mouth and fuck you through it, buddy."]
the unbearable heaviness of girlhood / Su Xinyu / Lucie Brock-Broido
“Leisure, Hannah, Does Not Agree With You,” Hannah Gamble
[Image description: a poem that read:
My house disgusted me, so I slept in a tent. My tent disgusted me, so I slept in the grass. The grass disgusted me, so I slept in my body, which I strung like a hammock from two ropes. My body disgusted me, so I carved myself out of it. My use of knives disgusted me because it was an act of violence. My weakness disgusted me because “Hannah” means “hammer.” The meaning of my name disgusted me because I’d rather be known as beautiful. My vanity disgusted me because I am a scholar. My scholarship disgusted me because knowledge is empty. My emptiness disgusted me because I wanted to be whole. My wholeness would have disgusted me because to be whole is to be smug. Still, I tried to understand wholeness as the inclusiveness of all activities: I walked out into the yard, trying to vomit and drink milk simultaneously. I tried to sleep while smoking a cigar. I have enough regrets to crack all the plumbing. I’m whole only in that I’ve built my person from every thought I’ve ever loved.]
Franz Kafka, The Diaries of Franz Kafka
Allie Ray, Holler
Richard Siken, Crush
Ada Limón, from “The Great Blue Heron Of Dunbar Road”, Bright Dead Things
[ID: “Just now, I felt like I wanted to be alone / for a long time, in a folding chair on the lawn / with all my private agonies, but then I saw you” /end ID]
“want” from cold river: poems by joan larkin, october 1997
Mary Oliver, “Heavy.” Thirst
Ada Limón, from “The Hurting Kind,” in The Hurting Kind
[text ID: Before my grandfather died, I asked him what sort / of horse he had growing up. He said, / Just a horse. My horse, with such a tenderness it / rubbed the bones in the ribs all wrong. / I have always been too sensitive, a weeper / from a long line of weepers. / I am the hurting kind. I keep searching for proof.]
ray bradbury, somewhere a band is playing
[Text ID:
Somewhere a band is playing.
Oh listen, oh listen that tune!
If you learn it you’ll dance on forever
In June and yet June and more June.
And Death will be dumb and not clever
And Death will lie silent forever
In June and June and more June. :End ID]
Anita Brookner, Hotel Du Lac
Mabel, from Letters to juniper
Danez Smith, quoted by Saeed Jones in How We Fight for Our Lives
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu — The room in the Dragon Volant
Jennifer Saunders, from “When the Guest Speaker Told Us“
