The Best Stuff I Read This Week

“Poetry is not only dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundations for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been before.”

— Audre Lorde / “Poetry Is Not A Luxury”

“With words at your disposal, you can see more clearly. Finding the words is another step in learning to see.”

— Robin Wall Kimmerer / Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses

“We will sit and watch the body of water
That we once called a sort of death
You know even in my dreams
You say I’ll never get it right
This is not a dream
We are burning here with no escape”

— Dorothea Lasky / “This Beautiful Planet”

“Sentimentality, the ostentatious parading of excessive and spurious emotion, is the mark of dishonesty, the inability to feel; the wet eyes of the sentimentalist betray his aversion to experience, his fear of life, his arid heart; and it is always, therefore, the signal of secret and violent inhumanity, the mask of cruelty.”

— James Baldwin / Notes of a Native Son

“in the wind / an inky air

in the air / finchness

in the ink / a stone”

— Elizabeth Willis / “In Strength Sweetness”

“the windows are open
but butterflies don’t fly in
to display a sense of love”

— Jesús Papoleto Meléndez / “spring again”

“I saw my name in print the other day
with 1932 and then a blank
and knew that even now some grassy bank
just waited for my grave.”

— Linda Pastan / “1932”

What I’m Listening To:

Old, old, old, old
Old never looked so good
Lumps, bumps, deaf, grumps
Punk is a full-time job

— Mhaol / “Kim Is a Punk – Type Dog”