The Best Stuff I Read This Week

“She weeps because she can see our dead uterus lying sadly on a pillow—mura gyud ug pagod na tocino looking very much like the burnt pork belly at breakfast no one wants to touch”

— Therese Estacion / “The White Lady of the Philippines”

“You’re old, and suspect you’re senile,
but there’s one thing you’re sure you remember
correctly: that since you were born
the basement has been deepening,
at a rate that is always increasing,
and at the bottom there’s something you want,
though you don’t remember what.”

— Robert Louthan / “Something You Want”

“a pretty girl
in a floral dress
asks me how
many books
i will have to write
to account for all the
US war crimes”

— Andrea Abi-Karam / “Standing

“Man hands on misery to man. / It deepens like a coastal shelf. / Get out as early as you can, / And don’t have any kids yourself.”

— Philip Larkin / “This Be The Verse”

“We are all carrying our mothers, and we are / all better / daughters with the dead.”

— Diannely Antigua / “We Never Stop Talking About Our Mothers”

“The earth is really quite sick right now … And this, today, is as good as it will ever get within our lifetimes: every day that we step out into the uncanny weather, we experience a better and more stable climate than any we will ever experience again.”

— Joyeeta Gupta / the co-chair of the Earth Commission & contributor to the reports of the IPCC, which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007

“I should have stayed in that coma
Why did you wake me?
Death is possible”

— Therese Estacion / “Coma Dreams”

What I’m Listening To:

“All the beautiful things are opaque”

— The Clientele / “Lady Grey”