you remind anna, if she asks why that a thief stole my heart while she was making up her mind i heard she lives in brooklyn with the cool and goes crazy over that new york scene on 7th avenue There’s this version of the Gaslight Anthem’s “Here’s Looking At You, Kid” that appears on…
Category: words i wish i'd written
giveaway: 33 1/3’s ‘fear of music’ by jonathan lethem
For reasons that don’t need exploring at this junction, I have ended up with two, TWO!, copies of the latest release from the 33 1/3 series, Jonathan Lethem’s book on Talking Heads’ Fear Of Music. I do not need two copies of this book, because I only need to read and write about one, so…
the pull of gravity
This is my favorite Adrienne Rich poem, II from Twenty-One Love Poems. I wake up in your bed. I know I have been dreaming. Much earlier, the alarm broke us from each other, you’ve been at your desk for hours. I know what I dreamed: our friend the poet comes into my room where I’ve…
to anticipate a thaw
Revival (Luci Shaw) March. I am beginning to anticipate a thaw. Early mornings the earth, old unbeliever, is still crusted with frost where the moles have nosed up their cold castings, and the ground cover in shadow under the cedars hasn’t softened for months, fogs layering their slow, complicated ice around foliage and stem night…
february helplessness blues
“I guess it is like an archaeologist, where you’re always wanting to find something you’ve never heard before. And people now are, even at a young age, they’re looking back into the past and trying to make connections. They’re trying to connect ’60s Pakistani pop music to punk rock in Washington, DC in the ’90s….
enough
Rock ‘n’ roll did not need a museum. The fact that it existed was enough. — Dave Thompson writing on Patti Smith in Dancing Barefoot: The Patti Smith Story
shut up and read
Don’t Be Literary, Darling (Sasha Moorsom) Don’t be literary, darling, don’t be literary If you’re James in the morning you’re Hemingway in bed Don’t talk of yourself in the style of your own obituary – For who cares what they say of you after you’re dead. Don’t be always a thought ahead and a move…
grown but not grown up
When I Grow Up (Catherine Wiley) I want to be the waitress snapping gum, who leaves an orange crescent on the thick white cup, calls the six a.m. men sagging at the counter “Hon,” even when I know their names. In the rumpled wallet photos, their kids’ hair moves up, then over, ears; tuxes lead…
ink and skin
First Poem for You (Kim Addonizio) I like to touch your tattoos in complete darkness, when I can’t see them. I’m sure of where they are, know by heart the neat lines of lightning pulsing just above your nipple, can find, as if by instinct, the blue swirls of water on your shoulder where a…
the rest is silence
The Quiet World (Jeffrey McDaniel) In an effort to get people to look into each other’s eyes more, and also to appease the mutes, the government has decided to allot each person exactly one hundred and sixty-seven words, per day. When the phone rings, I put it to my ear without saying hello. In the…
brand new kind of photography 