June 2012
9 posts
16 tags
Old Year
you pry a strip of wood from the coffin: this is where it happened. N.L. wheezes, folds like a yoga instructor: can we stop now? you think you see a man in there, a shadowy impression. you squint, muffling white sunbeams: you can stop any time you want.
4 tags
“I have murdered the lovely and the helpless; I have strangled the innocent as...”
– Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
14 tags
Psi
/ He closes his eyes in an effort to see the mirror—not to translate it as an object in the dust, but to embrace the apparitions inside. He curls his fingers into his palms. He becomes conscious of his heart rate. Conscious of inhalation. He reads it as a symbol. A pivotal device in this moment, this scene. He remembers what they’ve told him about scrying. He regresses, remembering the first time...
4 tags
“So here you are now, ready to attack the first lines of the first page. You...”
– Italo Calvino, If on a winter’s night a traveler
4 tags
“What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a...”
– Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep
ssemblage: Tumblr, title this poem: (in a comment... →
ssemblage:
1. I go to confession not to absolve my sins, but to read them; to participate in ritual, to kneel, to give myself in utterance 2. I gesture the cross in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost 3. The priest and I—that is, the little father and I—have once met outside that dark…
22 tags
Fast and Low
He’s as good a conversationalist as any. He’s oblivious to mercy and in no mood to talk. Well-dressed. Wearing a fedora and pulling it off. A Bogart kind of guy. Eyes forward, reading bottle labels or remembering heartbreak. He orders two shots and a beer. “Put it on my tab,” you say. “I’m not going home with you tonight, friend,” he says. “Too bad. I could use some love.” “You could use a...
4 tags
“Naked, exposed to the frost of this most unhappy era, with an earthly carriage...”
– Franz Kafka, “A Country Doctor”
4 tags
“Any magazine-cover hack can splash paint around wildly and call it a nightmare...”
– H.P. Lovecraft, “Pickman’s Model” 