February 2012
17 posts
1 tag
When I Am an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple
by Jenny Joseph
When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple
with a red hat that doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
and satin candles, and say we’ve no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I am tired
and gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
and run my stick along the public railings
and make up...
“You followin me.” He grinned. And she felt herself swimming through the gap in his teeth. And now she would have to tell him. ‘Cause she had lost three times to the coin flipped on yesterday morning. Had lost to the icepick pitched in the afternoon in the dare-I-don’t-I boxes her toe had sketched in the yard. Had lost at supper to the shadow slanting across the...
1 tag
WatchDaisy Bates: First Lady of Little Rock
1 tag
“Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and...”
There’s no pink left in her mouth. You couldn’t reach down and swallow no mint if you tried and everything on her frame is called dressing down. Torn and brown, pale, too loose. She ain’t even gotta narrow smile, a half moon, somethin to grab when you turn the bend. There’s no pink left in her mouth. She’s got nothin sweet hiding or pullin at her sides.
rising deep
flaneur-:
let’s be silent. let’s swallow whole these absences that separate our conversations into delicious ripples. and we will be over taken. be overjoyed. let these words, these feelings move mountains beneath us. between us. let it shake the distance in half.
how about a crumbling over precipice?
how about a shattering? a breaking of barriers.
how close would we be- closer than sand and...
Linebreak: The Mail Order Bride Attempts a Letter...
Mother he is A gentleman of honor he is A builder of ships My hands have gone Coarse, upholstered in Orchard, mending, churn My corset has Collapsed, spider heap I freckle, I lengthen, I watch Other wives, the sweep Of their skirts, their flocking I am compassless, astir, A map trembling Mother I’ve grown Taller I’ve let down my hems I am fruit-stained Mornings, my harvest: golden ...
January 2012
2 posts
1 tag
sugar on the floor (sing, etta)
edible sweetness i will hit your tongue & disappear before you are able to define raw before the bud is ready the grains slip past “hello” and “i love you” while your lips are burning and still i am not sure your lips are burning enough to make me over into slow moving jaggery that is able to steady the salt in the palm of your hand and stay there but i fall i fall...
December 2011
16 posts
You remember thinking while braiding your hair that you look a lot like your mother. Your mother who looked like your grandmother and her grandmother before her. Your mother had two rules for living. Always use your ten fingers, which in her parlance meant that you should be the best little cook and housekeeper who ever lived.
Your mother’s second rule went along with the first. Never...
REBLOG:... i saw Pariah. →
tionam:
Reblogging this from when i had the chance to see Pariah at the New Director/New Films fest at the Lincoln Center earlier this year in March. please support this film if it happens to be playing in your city or a city near you!!!
TAKE ACTION!
Here’s what YOU can do:
1) BUY movie tickets opening week! Bring your friends & family to watch PARIAH or buy tickets for friends &...
Anonymous asked: some time ago you said writing had become your escape and that you had things you needed to face. did you?
in, jim's addiction.: I Can Be Nice →
jimsaddiction:
i can be nice.
gentle, with a conductor’s touch of aggression, so
your voice composes only impolite whispers and airless breaths.
and now, i starve for it—
that bitter chocolate whisper.
feed me and i’ll consume your whole
deep, dark dripping cavern.
your skin is now my favorite color
and…
i usually don't give explanations.
I don’t believe I have to do anything I don’t want to do. Yes, I’m one of those people. I quit things I don’t like (which can be disruptive and foolish). I need to understand the purpose before I dive right in. I care about my feelings first (care is probably not the best word as I’ve always neglected my own healing due to discomfort) and I may seem selfish or...
dear universe, maybe the list of wants is too long and too tough to work through. maybe a list of what i don’t want will be easier to manage?
p.s. this is incomplete. i think.
sincerely,
I don’t want to deal with money. I don’t want to live in any place I don’t have room to plant something, a windowsill, a back porch, a field. something. I don’t want a car...
randomness: before the new year shows up
In a perfect world…
I’d live in a brownstone (big enough to throw fabulous dinner parties) summer and fall and in a farmhouse (with a wrap-around porch and a horse named Otis) for winter and spring.
No little children would go missing.
Poems would edit themselves.
I’d always let the love overpower the fear.
There’d be no shitty music.
I’d have a place for all...
i wrote you a letter i sat on my hands and wrote you a letter with the only words i knew i sat on a balcony too small for drunken fits and began to sweat cuz i’m so used to pen and paper and not the echo of my voice off your chest when you play with questions in the softness of my hair my hands began to sweat but the letter was long and longer when i pulled my feet beneath me and rested on the...
“To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used...”
– Arundhati Roy (via enumerate)
1 tag
Breakthrough by Carolyn M. Rodgers
I’ve had tangled feelings lately About ev’rything Bout writing poetry, and otha forms Bout talkin and dreamin with a Special man (who says he needs me) Uh huh And my mouth has been open Most of the time but I ain’t been saying nothin but Thinking about ev’rything And the partial pain has been How do I put my self on paper The way I want to be or am and be Not like any one...
1 tag
“Here,” she said, “In this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh...”
– Baby Suggs, Beloved (via eyeofsoul)
November 2011
31 posts
“I never asked Tolstoy to write for me, a little colored girl in Lorain, Ohio. I...”
– work&sweat cry&sweat pray&sweat: From my perspective there are only black people.
“Like hell. You give em as rough a time as your mouth can muster. If you could shut up for half a second and give a man a chance to…”
“If one kissable man would bite my tongue,” said Patsy Mother real slow, “I’d be silent for days to come.” She said it real clear and serious like somethin important was being put down. Like the old folks clear...
“To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger. In this case,...”
– James Baldwin (The Fire Next Time)
breaking down.
there’s the slipping, the gasp of air as your feet reach up from beneath you. & the waiting, wondering what the fall will sound like.
but there is also the shock of finding out you are already on the ground.
did you know snakes go through color changes prior to a shed?
what color are you now?
I want to be in a place already made for me, both snug and wide open. With...
I sewed a quilt double ring wasn’t born with everything was young and cold and needed something to cover all of my bed something heavy like soft velvet so I took pieces from all my mothers aprons and slips the wedding dresses that were falling slowly apart I had to cover them with grandfather’s things a poor man’s shooting jacket to keep the needle from tearing the weight of what...
“the wilmington 10 are still in jail. there’s only one woman’s...”
– from “who is setting these priorities?” by ntozake shange
people keep tellin me these are hard times/ what are you gonna be doin ten years from now/ what in the hell do you think/ i am gonna be writin poems/ i will have poems/ inchin up the walls of the lincoln tunnel/ i am gonna feed my children poems on rye bread with horseradish/ i am gonna send my mailman off with a poem for his wagon/ give my doctor a poem for his heart/ i am a poet/ i am not a...
Me: Wait, why am I not moving to NY right now?
Her: Because you can't run away from emotions.
“Sometimes, my dreams have legs. Big, strapping things that tangle themselves...”
“I want to live the rest of my life, however long or short, with as much...”
– Audre Lorde (via monamade)
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (via thistr3reads)
