what my cat reads

Enomoto Seifu (榎本 星布, 1732-1815) 

Margaret Atwood, from “Late Poems”, Dearly

— Ilya Kaminsky, excerpt of “Traveling Musicians”, in Dancing in Odessa

Tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lake                                       and dress them in warm clothes again.          How it was late, and no one could sleep, the horses running until they forget that they are horses.                    It’s not like a tree where the roots have to end somewhere,          it’s more like a song on a policeman’s radio,                  how we rolled up the carpet so we could dance, and the days were bright red, and every time we kissed there was another apple                                                              to slice into pieces. Look at the light through the windowpane. That means it’s noon, that means          we’re inconsolable.                                Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us. These, our bodies, possessed by light.                                                                 Tell me we’ll never get used to it.

— Lola Ridge, from To The Many; The Collected Poems of L. R.; “Jaguar”

— Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous: A Novel

Poetry of the Sea

Jeanette Winterson, from Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

Jeanette Winterson, Lighthousekeeping

Ada Limón, What I Didn’t Know Before

— Jeanette Winterson, Lighthousekeeping

— Christa Wolf, Cassandra: A Novel and Four Essays (tr. Jan van Heurck)