LONG LIVE THE ROSE THAT GREW FROM CONCRETE

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I Am Not Ready To Die Yet by Aracelis Girmay

A Litany for Survival by Audre Lorde

Snowdrops by Louise Glück

Most Days I Want to Live by Gabrielle Calvocoressi

Insha’Allah by Danusha Laméris

A Good Day by Kait Rokowski

Invitation by Mary Oliver

Instructions on Not Giving Up by Ada Limón

Tommorow is a Place by Sanna Wani

The World Has Need of You by Ellen Bass

Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower by Rainer Maria Rilke

To the Young Who Want to Die by Gwendolyn Brooks

Night Walk by Franz Wright

Sorrow is Not My Name by Ross Gay

Everything Is Waiting For You by David Whyte

The Letter by Linda Greg

Testify by Eve L. Ewing

The train is late and your family is dead

I think grief is like a really ugly couch. It never goes away. You can decorate around it; you can slap a doily on top of it; you can push it to the corner of the room—but eventually, you learn to live with it. ― Jodi Picoult, Leaving Time

 i’m expanding this to talk about poems and collections too because i am That Guy. 

POETRY COLLECTIONS and CHAPBOOKS

NIGHT SKY WITH EXIT WOUNDS by OCEAN VUONG

[INSERT] BOY by DANEZ SMITH

BRIGHT DEAD THINGS BY ADA LIMÓN

UNSKITTISH by DALTON DAY

POEMS 

“wandering around an albuquerque airport terminal” by naomi shihab nye (not everything is lost.)

“good bones” by maggie smith (this place could be beautiful, / right? you could make this place beautiful)

“tim riggins speaks of waterfalls” by nico alvarado (i want to walk into the heart of you / and never walk back out)

“untitled” by daedalians (my brain is moonless)

“when you tell me i’m beautiful i sometimes believe it by tangledghosts aka the light of my life (i say, “these are all the ugly parts that i am trying to hide.” you say, “show me your ugliness and i will show you your beauty.” we are both showing the same card)

“it’s not what it looks like” by exit152 (god or no god? / rhetorical question. / i’ve met the boundary. / i feel something holy in every trick of light)

twenty dollars & the moon by mason shreve (sometimes we float when we try to walk & sometimes, i swear, my hands are made of canyons)

QUOTES

“i myself have lots of repressed skies / but i do not kill stars” || kiki dimoula, “explosive finding”

“like any / unloved thing, i don’t know if i’m real / when i’m not being touched” || natalie wee, “loneliness” 

“i thought / i would be someone else / by now. the rain starts flinging itself / against the pavement. my face / is a lost glove, missing / for days. my face / is on vacation, call back / another time.” || marty mcconnell, “still life with tattoo gun and umbrella”

“god is the night / i must not creep into” || cynthia cruz, “joe the lion ii” 

“how lonely to be something that nothing wants to kill” || jeremy radin, “so i locked myself inside of a star for 20 years”

“you cut up a thing that’s alive and beautiful to find out how it’s alive and why it’s beautiful, and before you know it, it’s neither of those things, and you’re standing there with blood on your face and tears in your sight and only the terrible ache of guilt to show for it.” || clive barker, the damnation game 

“i am sick of haunting myself / from within / like an old house” || erica jong, “bitter herb”

“how strange we are. how different we are from how we think we are. we fall out of love only to fall in love with a duplicate of what we’ve left, never understanding that we love what we love and that it doesn’t change.” || sara majka; saint andrews hotel

“i sit up in the dark drenched in longing. / i am carrying over a thousand names for blue that I didn’t have at dusk.” || joy harjo, “the first day without a mother” 

“the sycamore of loneliness they call it / daydreams while the ax is still afraid / of being alone” || frank stanford, “nobody is going to touch me” 

“you think i can’t tame that? i always come home. always. / ravenous. loaded. you know better than anybody: / i’m bigger than god.” || jeanann verlee, “the mania speaks” 

“i will not / let this river break me just so god / can have something to heal.” || allie long, “self-injury”

“a small catalogue of things i’ve lost: my heart down a sink drain. my voice in the dungeon of language. my body to the great gripping fists of men.” || alicia catt, “when i put bluebeard’s keys in my pocket they stain my dress & i hope you don’t notice 

“nothing knows the sound of abandonment like a highway does, not even God.” || hanif abdurraqib, “when we were 13, jeff’s father left the needle down on a journey record before leaving the house one morning and never coming back 

“the sounds in the air / agreeing not to be birds.“ || alexis almeida, “elegy (figure in light)

“i have wanted / many unfair things. / what is most unfair/ is that the earth is still okay / with me being here / i think, and even / encourages it.” || melissa broder, “satisfy the desolate” 

how long have you been feeling

how long have you been        like this

how long have you been               this

Not that the man is technically gifted. Of course he is not.

But I absolutely get what one reviewer said about The Da Vinci Code:

I’ll start: The Mezzanine by Nicholsen Baker.

I remember reading it when I was 18 and thinking it was the most pretentious, annoying post-modern shit ever. The “fancy” stuff they make you study at college.  I found it boring.