Mystery Smudges Extra

Monday, March 19, 2012

“Despite its long affiliation with loss, love also accrues: steady accumulation of boxes no longer reserved for shoes; strange tinctures & hollow rings, powdered with sugar or stronger; Kewpie dolls won in dart games & a dozen Trivial Pursuits, series of subsequent editions. And the luggage & the passports & the key-chain souvenirs, all figurative of course: also fashionable & futuristic & fact. You don’t journey alone anymore. There is someone else to think of, to offer the window seat to—or perhaps she prefers the aisle. A twin bed looks suddenly lonely, & moreso the large bed, bereft of multiple bodies. Your pillow adopts her scent; your blankets no longer yours. The whole world pluraled, this second pulse shadowing your own. Old companions less companionable: radio, television—mere background noise. You begin to hear her voice reciting the grocery list or answering the phone. There is an attention to content but also to form. You form your syllables with her presence in mind, tailored to the shape of her body. You anticipate her wishes, her kisses, the warm place she has been sitting, wrapped in one of her sweaters with burly wood buttons & in-folded sleeves. You wonder if you are becoming transparent, if she can always see through you to the seed of your truest intention. Will she warm her hands on the low fire you always keep burning, clandestine & solely for her? Will you remain astonished by her luminous capacities: for pleasure, for penance & pardon? There is with her & without her but never beyond. She has altered your constitution. You find her in miniature & metonym: pretty crescents of her thumb nails, velveteen lobes of her ears. You can no longer watch Jeopardy! in solitude. Marlboro lights & lucky bamboo trigger visceral reminiscences. And the tatters on your map, torn together: Rapid City, South Dakota, Niagara Falls, Mount Shasta’s elaborate & surreal setting sun. You remember bookcases in Nancy Drew stories, how they almost always hid the mystery stairs. She has passed through those passageways now; she has found your counterfeit copy of Great Expectations & tipped it just so, exposing the secret threshold. And the safe behind the picture with the traveling eyes, & the skeleton key sequestered in the flower pot, & all that spare change lining the sofa cushions. Not piracy or bribery, but a deep & unencumbered knowing. You have climbed into the hold together. You have sifted through the treasure. And each day past, & every day forward, you have crossed your hearts & murmured something about honor. You have ridden bicycles with cross-hatched baskets stuffed full to brimming with roses, all figurative of course: also tender & romantic & accurate beyond accounting. There have been no altars, nor will there be, but extraordinary kindnesses & tokens whose meanings exceed the scope of words. You have handled handkerchiefs & checkbooks & gold pocket-watches, meting out an uncertain number of hours. You have made public parables & private apologies. You have swept chimneys & taken out the ash. You have stood together on the fire escape of a condemned building. You have crossed your hearts & promised not to die.” Julie Marie Wade, “There’s no hole on earth where the heart drops through without bringing something with it.” (via holdonmagnolia)

Sunday, March 18, 2012

“

You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.

And at one point you’d hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her eyes, that those photons created within her constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.

And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives.

And you’ll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed, they should not have faith. Let them know that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time. You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they’ll be comforted to know your energy’s still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you’re just less orderly. Amen.

” Aaron Freeman, You Want A Physicist To Speak at your Funeral (via pratfall)

Thursday, March 15, 2012

“She waited for the train to pass. Then she said, ‘I sometimes think that people’s hearts are like deep wells. Nobody knows what’s at the bottom. All you can do is imagine by what comes floating to the surface every once in a while.’” Airplane, Haruki Murakami (via lifeinpoetry)

Saturday, February 25, 2012

“I know a boy who called his girlfriend’s body a “crime scene.” Dad, my body is a crime scene. My body is lint and gasoline and matchstick. My body is a brush fire. It’s ticking, Dad, a slow alarm. I have rain boots. Lots of them. It isn’t raining anymore. The words are coming back, Dad. The way they fit and jump in the mouth. I want ice cream and long letters. I want to read long love letters but I don’t think he loves me. I think I’m used up. I think I’m the grit under his nails, the girl who looks good in pictures. I don’t think he loves me. I think they broke me, Dad. I think I drink too much and it’s because they broke me. I heard about two girls recently, two women crushed like cherries in a boy’s jaw. It opened me, Dad. My body is melted wax, it is ripe and stink and bent. It is a mistake. I walk like an apology. I don’t hate men, Dad, I don’t. I want a washing machine. I want someone else to do the dishes, someone to walk the dog. I have a hornet in my head, Dad. A hornet. She’s an angry bitch — she hurls herself against my skull. She stings. And stings. I know I don’t make sense, Dad. This is the problem. I’m a sick girl, a crazy wishbone. I have razors under my tongue. I’m sorry I cut you, Dad, I’m so—so sorry. I gave you a card for Father’s Day once, it said you were my hero. You are. Your laugh is a thunderclap, you love like surgery. I think they broke me, Dad. I can’t erase their faces. I want to swim, Dad. Remember when I used to hopscotch? I used to make you laugh. My feet are hot. The bottoms of my feet are scorched sand, August asphalt. My body is a slug, a mob of sticky wet rot. No one touches me anymore because I’m rot. Because my body is a spill no one wants to clean up. They cracked me open, Dad, I know you don’t want to hear about it. You don’t want to hear how they scissored me, how they gnawed me like raw meat. No one wants to hear how they made me drink lemon juice, how they kicked the dog, how they upturned the furniture, no one wants to hear how my skin turned to a dark thick of purple and black and lead. I watch the homeless a lot, Dad. I watched a man with a cup of coins and chips of skin carved out of his face. He had freckles. He needs medicine, Dad. He needs to stop the hornet. My body is a hive. I am red ants and jellyfish. A yellow sickness. My body is a used condom in an alley in Jersey City. I don’t think he loves me, Dad. My body is a fetus in biohazard tank. A Polaroid pinned to a cork board in Brooklyn. I think I’m hurt, Dad. I think I was the tough girl for too long. My body is a wafer, a thin, soft melt on a choir boy’s tongue.” “Communion,” Jeanann Verlee (via clavicola)

“When your mother hits you, do not strike back. When the boys call asking your cup size, say A, hang up. When he says you give him blue balls, say you’re welcome. When a girl with thick black curls who smells like bubble gum stops you in a stairwell to ask if you’re a boy, explain that you keep your hair short so she won’t have anything to grab when you head-butt her. Then head-butt her. When a guidance counselor teases you for handed-down jeans, do not turn red. When you have sex for the second time and there is no condom, do not convince yourself that screwing between layers of underwear will soak up the semen. When your geometry teacher posts a banner reading: “Learn math or go home and learn how to be a Momma,” do not take your first feminist stand by leaving the classroom. When the boy you have a crush on is sent to detention, go home. When your mother hits you, do not strike back. When the boy with the blue mohawk swallows your heart and opens his wrists, hide the knives, bleach the bathtub, pour out the vodka. Every time. When the skinhead girls jump you in the bathroom stall, swing, curse, kick, do not turn red. When a boy you think you love delivers the first black eye, use a screw driver, a beer bottle, your two good hands. When your father locks the door, break the window. When a college professor writes you poetry and whispers about your tight little ass, do not take it as a compliment, do not wait, call the Dean, call his wife. When a boy with good manners and a thirst for Budweiser proposes, say no. When your mother hits you, do not strike back. When the boys tell you how good you smell, do not doubt them, do not turn red. When your brother tells you he is gay, pretend you already know. When the girl on the subway curses you because your tee shirt reads: “I fucked your boyfriend,” assure her that it is not true. When your dog pees the rug, kiss her, apologize for being late. When he refuses to stay the night because you lived in Jersey City, do not move. When he refuses to stay the night because you live in Harlem, do not move. When he refuses to stay the night because your air conditioner is broken, leave him. When he refuses to keep a toothbrush at your apartment, leave him. When you find the toothbrush you keep at his apartment hidden in the closet, leave him. Do not regret this. Do not turn red. When your mother hits you, do not strike back.” “Unsolicited Advice to Adolescent Girls With Crooked Teeth and Pink Hair,” Jeanann Verlee (via clavicola)

Sunday, January 22, 2012

antelucan:

Revised; my special thank you to J.

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

5. Why did you choose to hide your poems in the skin of prose?

Interesting, I never really thought of the poems hiding. I believe in confusing the distinctions between what makes poetry and what doesn’t. I feel like poetry is everywhere, you just have to have the lenses on. As far as why I chose prose I think it goes back to my long-running preoccupation with surface level representations and the silent movies that run inside of our heads. I stare at people in the subways and think about the pivotal moments, memories, and private indulgences that shape them. I basically want to know everything everyone doesn’t know about everyone. (I also imagine resting my head on every subway rider’s shoulder and wondering what would happen, but that is a different set of questions). Prose looks unassuming, it’s conventional, it’s the surface level. Prose lets the reader walk right in while serial killers and unsettling narrators can wander freely inside.

— Tess Patalano, interviewed by J. Bradley for PANK Blog.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

then what’s left to show?

(Source: repose)

Sunday, July 11, 2010

“Emotions, in my experience, aren’t covered by single words. I don’t believe in “sadness,” “joy,” or “regret.” Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I’d like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, “the happiness that attends disaster.” Or: “the disappointment of sleeping with one’s fantasy.” I’d like to show how “intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members” connects with “the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age.” I’d like to have a word for “the sadness inspired by failing restaurants” as well as for “the excitement of getting a room with a minibar.” Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex (via supcakes & mutations)

Thursday, May 27, 2010

“I loved you like a man loves a woman he never touches, only writes to, keeps little photographs of. I would have loved you more if I had sat in a small room rolling a cigarette and listened to you piss in the bathroom, but that didn’t happen. Your letters got sadder. Your lovers betrayed you. Kid, I wrote back, all lovers betray. It didn’t help. You said you had a crying bench and it was by a bridge and the bridge was over a river and you sat on the crying bench every night and wept for the lovers who had hurt and forgotten you. I wrote back but never heard again. A friend wrote me of your suicide 3 or 4 months after it happened. If I had met you I would probably have been unfair to you or you to me. It was best like this.” Charles Bukowski (via lovers-spit & electricityscape & unicornology)

Etc.

5. Why did you choose to hide your poems in the skin of prose?

Colophon