The Best Stuff I Read This Week

“blah blah blah
there was a plague.
again.”

— Samiya Bashir / “Some days of wine and pastry”

I’m not interested in poetry. I don’t know what interests me. Non-dullness, I suppose. Proper poetry is dead poetry even if it looks good.”

— Charles Bukowski / On Writing

“Let it be an unruly one—an unplucked ass hair—not collagen but spite—not to live to
annihilate other living things—just to receive…”

— Wendy Xu / “Notes on Sentence Crossing”

“Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something — anything — down on paper. A friend of mine says that the first draft is the down draft — you just get it down. The second draft is the up draft — you fix it up. You try to say what you have to say more accurately. And the third draft is the dental draft, where you check every tooth, to see if it’s loose or cramped or decayed, or even, God help us, healthy.”

— Anne Lamott / Bird by Bird

“Trees rehearse
the gestures of fire.
“This is how we will burn,”
        say the trees.”

— Robert Carnevale / “Exemplary”

“Earth’s life support systems have been so damaged that the planet is ‘well outside the safe operating space for humanity’, scientists have warned.”

— Damian Carrington / “Climate Crisis” / The Guardian

“so it turns out i’m allergic to society  
as a whole. when in doubt, they say,  
go back in time. when i wanna feel safe  
i figure i should want something else.  
everywhere i go everyone i see could be  
a shooter and my breasts beneath  
bulletproof vests squeeze the breath 
outta me.”

— Samiya Bashir / “Some days of wine and pastry”

What I’m Listening To:

“That’s clean like recycling
My Steve McQueen eats Abilene
That man drinks cultures of lamb
Brined Balkan, bobo yams”

—Brnda / “Beverage of Choice”