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Andjelka Jankovic's avatar

LOVED THIS!

"You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and he won’t tell you that he loves you, but he loves you. And you feel like you’ve done something terrible, like robbed a liquor store, or swallowed pills, or shoveled yourself a grave in the dirt, and you’re tired. You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and you’re trying not to tell him that you love him, and you’re trying to choke down the feeling, and you’re trembling, but he reaches over and he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist, and you feel your heart taking root in your body, like you’ve discovered something you don’t even have a name for." - Richard Siken

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Anna nelson's avatar

How to fly (in ten thousand easy lessons)

“Behold your body as water

and mineral worth, the selfsame

water that soon (from a tree’s

way of thinking, soon) will be

lifted through the elevator hearts

of a forest, returned to the sun

in a leaf-eyed gaze. And the rest!

All wordless leavings, the perfect

bonewhite ash of you: light

as snowflakes, falling on updrafts

toward the unbodied breath of a bird.

Behold your elements reassembled

as pieces of sky, ascending

without regret, for you’ve been lucky

enough. Fallen for the last time into

a slump, the wrong crowd, love.

You’ve made the best deal.

You summitted the mountain

or you didn’t. Anything left undone

you can slip like a cloth bag of marbles

into the hands of a child

who will be none the wiser.

Imagine your joy on rising.

Repeat as necessary.”

Excerpt From

How to Fly (In Ten Thousand Easy Lessons)

Barbara Kingsolver

https://books.apple.com/us/book/how-to-fly-in-ten-thousand-easy-lessons/id1492726405

This material may be protected by copyright.

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Frances Beatty's avatar

A Poem in which I Try to Express My Glee at the Music My Friend Has Given Me

By Ross Gay

Because I must not

get up to throw down in a café in the Midwest,

I hold something like a clownfaced herd

of bareback and winged elephants

stomping in my chest,

I hold a thousand

kites in a field loosed from their tethers

at once, I feel

my skeleton losing track

somewhat of the science I’ve made of tamp,

feel it rising up shriek and groove,

rising up a river guzzling a monsoon,

not to mention the butterflies

of the loins, the hummingbirds

of the loins, the thousand

dromedaries of the loins, oh body

of sunburst, body

of larkspur and honeysuckle and honeysuccor

bloom, body of treetop holler,

oh lightspeed body

of gasp and systole, the mandible’s ramble,

the clavicle swoon, the spine’s

trillion teeth oh, drift

of hip oh, trill of ribs,

oh synaptic clamor and juggernaut

swell oh gutracket

blastoff and sugartongue

syntax oh throb and pulse and rivulet

swing and glottal thing

and kick-start heart and heel-toe heart

ooh ooh ooh a bullfight

where the bull might

take flight and win!

...

love you, dear Yan.

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