“The most important thing we learn at school is the fact that the most important things can’t be learned at school.”
— Haruki Murakami / What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
“Someone forgot to whisper your death to the bees And so all the bees have left And the fruit trees have died.”
— Ansel Elkins / “Someone Forgot to Whisper Your Death to the Bees”
“You’re stepping on your father, my mother said, and indeed I was standing exactly in the center of a bed of grass, mown so neatly it could have been my father’s grave, although there was no stone saying so.”
— Louise Glück / “Aborigonal Landscape”
“This raises the inevitable question: What’s your policy on fog? When it gets in bed with you, who’s on top? Dances with you, who leads?”
— Bob Hicok / “Elements”
“If you touch it between the legs, the splendid body will quicken like bubbles in a just-on teakettle.”
— Rebecca Lindenberg / “The Splendid Body”
“… AS YOU STAND THERE AND GRILL HALAL
NOT JUST A REFUGEE WITH A BIG BEARD AND TRACKSUIT
NOW A DRAGONFLY LANDS ON YOUR ARM”
— Yahya Hassan / “Ramadan”
“Wonder is where it starts, and though wonder is also where it ends, this is no futile path.”
— Herman Hesse / Butterflies: Reflections, Tales, and Verse
What I’m Listening To:
“He grew up in a trailer, by the time he was nine Rolled off to join the circus, telling fortunes on the side Hail, hail, the Eyeball Kid”
“Four wheels swerve to avoid a sheer cliff, southbound on the 101. The fat sun slides its yolk into the glass ocean. Slow down, see an empty nest of woven round sticks in the praying tree.”
“To be an oppressor is dehumanizing and anti-human in nature, as it is to be a victim.”
— bell hooks / Ain’t I a Woman?
“Some humans say trees are not sentient beings, But they do not understand poetry—“
— Joy Harjo / “Speaking Tree”
“To me feminism is not simply a struggle to end male chauvinism or a movement to ensure that women will have equal rights with men; it is a commitment to eradicating the ideology of domination that permeates Western culture on various levels—sex, race, and class, to name a few—and a commitment to reorganizing U.S. society so that the self-development of people can take precedence over imperialism, economic expansion, and material desires.”
— bell hooks / Ain’t I a Woman?
“In Japan, there is a white phone Booth overlooking the sea & Inside is an old black rotary phone Not hooked up to anything. People go there & call their dead. There is always a line to get in.”
— Sylvie Baumgartel / “Saving”
“No matter how much I write, though, I never reach a conclusion. And no matter how much I rewrite, I never reach the destination.”
— Haruki Murakami / What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
“But what I am left with is the wish that inside is a piece of the creator who will weave me a great dream catcher to snare the nightmares this world is braiding.”
— Julene Waffle / “Without Consent”
“For how does one overthrow, change or even challenge a system that you have been taught to admire, to love, to believe in?”
— bell hooks / Ain’t I a Woman?
What I’m Listening To:
“I fray like worn-out threads The more I fret, the less I mend I’ve lost faith in everything Everything, everything”
