#abdurraqib

The Prestige (pg iii)

“The poem begins with pain as a mirror / inside of which I adjust a tie the way my father taught me / before my first funeral & so the poem begins / with old grief again at my neck.”

“A person only gets to be walled a widow once, / and then they are simply lonely.”

“Gratitude, not for love itself, but for the way it can end / without a house on fire.”

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It is Once Again the Summer of My Discontent & This is How We Do It

“is creeping out of some open window same way it was in the summer of ‘95 when my heartbreak was a different animal howling at the same clouds"

“i tell my boys there is a reason songs from the ‘90s are having a revival & it’s because the heart & tongue are the muscles with the most irresistible histories & i’m kind of buzzed. i’m kind of buzzing. i’m kind of a hive with no begging & hollow cavities. there is intimacy in the moment where the eyes of two enemies meet. there is a tenderness in knowing what desire ties you to a person"

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Watching a Fight at the New Haven Dog Park, First Two Dogs and Then Their Owners

“I, too, dress for the hell I want & not the hell that is most likely coming"

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Welcome to the Heartbreak

“no one asks me to smile these days & so here is my mouth, again a straight line. border between an ocean & thirst.”

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It’s Not Like Nikola Tesla Knew All of Those People Were Going to Die

“No one wants to imagine their god // as the knuckles cracking on a father watching his son / picking a good switch from the tree and certainly // no one wants to imagine their god as the tree.”

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You About to Tell Her You Love Her, We Off That

“& the funny thing about the boy who cries wolf is that he eventually becomes one”

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One Side of an Interview with the Ghost of Marvin Gaye

“I think what I’m saying is that I prayed to any sound I could tempt out of a body.”

“hunger is whatever shape the moonlight pulls your shadow into.”

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It is Maybe Time to Admit that Michael Jordan Definitely Pushed Off

“there is an ocean between us the length of my arm & I have built nothing for you that can survive it”

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How Can Black People Write About Flowers at a Time Like This (pg. 80)

“Forgive me, for I have been nurturing / my well-worn grudges against beauty.”

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How Can Black People Write About Flowers at a Time Like This (pg. 89)

“& to adorn yourself in the tools of your eventual undoing is not by itself / romance & to wear your demise across your own shoulders is not romance. // but, like the poppy, I have become something more dangerous than I was once / & this is how I have learned my heart’s worst fears.”

thanks hanif. cool and normal as always!