@yoursmary

Euripides, from Hekabe, Grief Lessons: Four Plays; translated by Anne Carson

When the day is done, my mind turns to her and I think, why are we to be separated?

“I raise my pelvis to God so that it may know the truth of how flowers smash through the long winter.” – Anne Sexton, excerpt from “The Fierceness of Female” 

“How was God to love me then? My body not a temple but the goat slit up inside it.” – Reyna N.A., excerpt of “III”

“I’ve come to understand that the best one can hope for as a human is to have a relationship with that emptiness where God would be if God were available, but God isn’t.” – Anne Carson, interviewed in The Art of Poetry No. 88  “Whatever God is, something gentle inside something ruined in the mind.” – Allison Benis White, excerpt from Please Bury Me in This

“Even then I will dance in my dire clothes, a crematory flight, blinding my hair and my fingers, wounding God with his blue face, his tyranny, his absolute kingdom, with my aphrodisiac.” — Anne Sexton, excerpt from “The Death King” 

”Interrogator: Why talk to God? Anne: It’s better than playing bridge.” – Anne Sexton, excerpt from “Hurry Up Please It’s Time”

“God who ate everything, did this world feed you?” – Ruth Awad, excerpt from “Amor Fati” “My soul shattered with the strain of trying to belong to earth—What will you do, when it is your turn in the field with the god?” – Louise Glück, excerpt from “Persephone the Wanderer” “Sometimes God will drop a fit on you. Leave you on your bed howling. Don’t take it meanly. Because the outer walls of God are glass. I see a million souls clambering up the walls on the inside to escape God who is burning, untended.” – Anne Carson, excerpt from “The God Fit” “I have a dream-mother. She sang for my thirst, mysterious songs of God [and] ate into my heart violent and religious.” – Anne Sexton, excerpt from “The Fury of Guitars and Sopranos” “She longs to run herself a ground in a sad secret death. Is it a god inside you, girl?” – Anne Carson translating Grief Lessons: Four Plays 

“What’s closer to god: thirst or confession?” – Kristin Chang, excerpt from “Outcall #”

“I’ll remain tender inside like the pulp of some fruit of the desert or like the Devil immobilized in God.” – Nina Cassian, excerpt from “Cast”

“She decides God is no good, but he must exist, he must exist so she can hold him accountable.” — Ada Limón, excerpt from “The Echo Sounder,

“My hair used to be so long, I imagined it was a rope. In dreams I dangled from towers of salt, rising from the sea. Black horses sang to me. God’s favorite girl, dirt and honey, held together with string.” – Nicola Maye Goldberg, excerpt from “La Salpêtrière” “O God, I am not like you In your vacuous black, Stars stuck all over, bright stupid confetti. Eternity bores me, I never wanted it.” – Sylvia Plath, excerpt from “Years”

“Soon I will raise my face for a white flag, and when God enters the fort, I won’t spit or gag on his finger. I will eat it like a white flower.” – Anne Sexton, excerpt from “Flee on Your Donkey” 

“I felt my own terribleness as if the façade of God were all that I had left” — Monica A. Hand, excerpt from “[In the end]”

“I once had a body that wasn’t a body—it was a voice in a god’s mouth. It was the holy vowel.” – Ruth Awad, excerpt from “Moral Inventory“

“And God was bored. He turned on his side like an opium eater and slept.” — Anne Sexton, excerpt from “Letters to Dr. Y.”

“I must be trying to be some god of mankind, I mean not your average destiny moth banging around in the dark, but something like a king! An eternity of angel clothes but better.” – Alice Notley, excerpt from “VOICES” 

“What is God to me but an open-mouthed stranger?” — Erika L. Sanchez

“I stand in the presence of the destroyed god” – Margaret Atwood, excerpt from “Speeches for Doctor Frankenstein”