Memorable Stuff I Read This Week

A poem, while it can expose us to our
imagining selves, can also trick us
     into imagining
ourselves as something beyond our behaviors.

— Prageeta Sharma / “Friendment”

I kept a picture of Stalin by our bed.
My wife set it face down when we made love.
I closed my eyes and thought about the dead
gossiping on the long train to Lvov . . .

— Morri Creech / “The Marriage”

There a clock stands in front of a closed shop,
its hour not late, though the moon has come
early to mirror the white coin of its frozen face.

— Suzanne Matson / “January Poem”

Someone, somewhere, is playing 
the violin in the background 
of violence.

Before all of this, we didn’t think
too often of heaven. We wanted to fly
through clouds, not above them.

— Sara Abou Rashed / “Gaza I”

The future / is where I’m going only because / I have no choice, because time / moves in one direction, dragging / a bit of itself behind like meat.

— Maggie Smith / “The Picture Before”

it’s madness
to hate the visitation
of grackles

— Uche Nduka / “A Green Dream”

all my understanding dribbles down the chin
onto the chest & is summarized as:

life is merely

to ovum and sperm

and where those two meet

and how often and how well

and what dies there.

— Renée Nicole Macklin (Renee Nicole Good) / “On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs”

What I’m Listening To:

Like early Abba
I don’t give a fuh
I don’t give a fuh
I don’t give a fuh
I feel resentment in my soul
Maybe it’s time for men to clean for like, five hundred years
I’m not too concerned about that, uh

— Dry Cleaning / “My Soul / Half Pint”