you dangle on the leash of your own longing

― Speeches for Dr Frankenstein, Margaret Atwood

hi 💌 here are some:

“Hanging Fire” by Audre Lorde

“Tired” by Langston Hughes

“Having a Coke with You” by Frank O'Hara

“I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” by Emily Dickinson

“When the Pawn…” by Fiona Apple

“Love After Love” by Derek Walcott

“Mayakovsky” by Frank O'Hara

“i like my body when it is with your” by E. E. Cummings

“New Year's Eve Prayer” by Jeff Buckley

“Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver

“In this short Life that only lasts an hour” by Emily Dickinson

“Tulips” by Sylvia Plath

“We Have Not Long to Love” by Tennessee Williams

“A great Hope fell” by Emily Dickinson

“Poem” by Langston Hughes

“Baudelaire” by Delmore Schwartz

“Sometimes I Pretend” by Naomi Shihab Nye

“Yellow” by Anne Sexton

“What Was Once the Largest Shopping Center in Northern Ohio Was Built Where There Had Been a Pond I Used to Visit Every Summer Afternoon” by Mary Oliver

“Lady Lazarus” by Sylvia Plath

“Sapphics” by William Faulkner

“Summer Morning” by Mary Oliver

“You Are Tired (I Think)” by E. E. Cummings

“Sifter” by Naomi Shihab Nye

“Emergency Management” by Camille Rankine

“Thanksgiving 2006” by Ocean Vuong

“Litany” by Langston Hughes

“Suicide in the Trenches” by Siegfried Sassoon

“Richard Cory” by Edwin Arlington Robinson

“I heard a Fly buzz - when I died” by Emily Dickinson

“Warning” by Jenny Joseph

“[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]” by E. E. Cummings

“Love Sorrow” by Mary Oliver

“My Heart” by Frank O'Hara

“Conversations About Home (at the Deportation Centre)” by Warsan Shire

“Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out” by Richard Siken

“Limited but Fertile Possibilities Are Offered by This Brochure” by Marge Piercy

“The Thing Is” by Ellen Bass

“Mad Girl's Love Song” by  Sylvia Plath

“The Century’s Decline” by Wislawa Szymborska

“A Primer For The Small Weird Loves” by Richard Siken

“Unpainted Door” by Louise Glück

“Spring Torrents” by Sara Teasdale

“Spring has come back again” by Rainer Maria Rilke

“Homesickness” by Marina Tsvetaeva

“Don't Hesitate” by Mary Oliver

“There's a certain Slant of light” by Emily Dickinson

“Poem for Haruko” by June Jordan

“Rain” by Roberto Bolaño

“To Be Human Is to Sing Your Own Song” by Mary Oliver

“Toward a City That Sings” by June Jordan

“Edward the Confessor” by Eileen Myles

by Louise Glück

Because you were foolish enough to love one place, now you are homeless, an orphan in a succession of shelters. You did not prepare yourself sufficiently. Before your eyes, two people were becoming old; I could have told you two deaths were coming. There has never been a parent kept alive by a child's love.

Now, of course, it's too late -- you were trapped in the romance of fidelity. You kept going back, clinging to two people you hardly recognized after what they'd endured.

by Angie Sijun Lou

Updated September 26th, 2025

"Anti-Psychotic" -- A person living with schizophrenia reckons with the realization that their delusions may have more basis in reality than they thought. Originally appears in Diet Milk Magazine F/W II.

"Dream Home" -- Not a house that is haunted, but a house that haunts you. Narrated version available through the Creepy podcast Patreon.

"The Happiest Girl in the Whole USA" -- A lonely, isolated alcoholic begins obsessively fantasizing about her two coworkers at their rural country music radio station. [Note: this story is Not Safe For Work] Appears in issue 4 of God's Cruel Joke.

"Watch Where You're Going" -- Two trans people talk about life while one of them finishes her shift at the local video store. Appears in issue 6 of Olit Magazine.

"Maintenance Email Transcripts Sept-Oct 2022" -- A person living in Boston seeks mold remediation for her apartment with increasing desperation. Appears as an online feature from God's Cruel Joke.

"From the Journals of Dr. Arthur Sweetly" -- A Victorian surgeon with an interest in Spiritualism documents his dubious experiments as he seeks to prove the rumored distance communication method of sympathetic writing. Appears in issue 4 of Reader Beware.

"Newshawk's Crawl" -- A turn-of-the-century newspaper writer goes to extreme lengths to get his story, but there are some places you just can't come back from. Appears in issue 1106 of Bewildering Stories.

"Butterfly Stitch" -- Following a conviction for providing illegal abortions, a disgraced transsexual surgeon turns to backalley work offering gender affirming surgeries for those with nowhere else to go. Appears in Speculative Erotics, issue 5 of God's Cruel Joke.