Forever controlled by the Force

100 year old rhododendron and the woman who planted it

April 27, 2024: Witness, Crystal Wilkinson

Witness Crystal Wilkinson

I’m convinced that if you could have seen my grandmother standing in the doorway waiting for him to come home from the fields, if you’d smelled that spectacular evening thick with sweat & felt the pulsing of the stars, if you’d borne witness to the animals’ moans echoing in the holler that night, if you just could have seen the hair rise up on granddaddy’s arm like that, like offerings to god, when his elbow touched hers, if you could have seen her longing dissipate just a little as he came through the door smelling like a day’s work, you should have seen them close enough to breathe the same air while not even touching. (He smiled at her without smiling.) If you could have seen them watching me watch them, then you’d know how much i love you. If you could have heard her say, You want some supper? We got pie.

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Also: + After Work, Richard Jones + I Come Home Wanting To Touch Everyone, Stephen Dunn

Here's a quick survey on the future of these posts, if you have a moment. (Mega thanks to those who've replied!)

Today in:

2023: from Burial, Ross Gay 2022: Ode to Tortillas, José Olivarez 2021: Say Thank You Say I’m Sorry, Jericho Brown 2020: The Restoration, Gary Jackson 2019: The Termite, Ogden Nash 2018: Elegy, W.S. Merwin 2017: Young Wife’s Lament, Brigit Pegeen Kelly 2016: For the Confederate Dead, Kevin Young 2015: Awaking in New York, Maya Angelou 2014: when you have forgotten Sunday: the love story, Gwendolyn Brooks 2013: Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey, Hayden Carruth 2012: My Place, Franz Wright 2011: from The Wild Geese, Wendell Berry 2010: Love After Love, Derek Walcott 2009: To This May, W.S. Merwin 2008: Father, Ted Kooser 2007: from Little Sleep’s-Head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight, Galway Kinnell 2006: Crusoe in England, Elizabeth Bishop 2005: Dream Song 1, John Berryman

my dreams, my works, must wait till after hell

by Gwendolyn Brooks

I hold my honey and I store my bread  In little jars and cabinets of my will.  I label clearly, and each latch and lid  I bid, Be firm till I return from hell.  I am very hungry. I am incomplete. And none can tell when I may dine again.  No man can give me any word but Wait,  The puny light. I keep eyes pointed in;  Hoping that, when the devil days of my hurt  Drag out to their last dregs and I resume  On such legs as are left me, in such heart  As I can manage, remember to go home, My taste will not have turned insensitive  To honey and bread old purity could love.

before you can have sex with me you have to present to me a 30+ minute video essay where you talk in front of a camera about an extremely niche topic . this is foreplay to me

Coiled bracelet by the side of my bed Still-open lipstick, red like nothing I've really ever touched

Come down here

With me, let me Unwind you, against the soft old sheets More sun in them than I've washed away.

Come here and let me tell you Nothing, nothing but

The ice is melting in the glass,

And scattering the light

via schulzmuseum

I like being with you all night with closed eyes.

What luck—here you are

coming

along the stars!

I did a road trip

all over my mind and heart

and

there you were

kneeling by the roadside

with your little toolkit

fixing something.

Give me a world, you have taken the world I was.

— O Small Sad Ecstasy of Love, Anne Carson

e.e. cummings, “since feeling is first,” from A Selection of Poems

Hi stephanie,

I hope this email finds you, as the search and rescue team is otherwise completely out of ideas

Made an animatic summarising the entire book as a tribute to Dracula Daily and @re-dracula ! English subtitles provided, with translation by me and @ignitingthesky.

Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories; from ‘The Snow Child’

being plagued by thoughts of "she opened her heart and if you let her she could engulf you. the woman was a city"

your life is not meaningless, you just haven't seen the sea in a while

In Bed by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1892)