sarah. washington, dc. (south jersey).
a random list of things i love:
would rather be at the barn, the beach or the trapeze rig.
cilantro, dark chocolate peanut butter cups, framed photographs, black tank tops, flying on the outdoor rig at night with fireworks overhead, the smell of new books, pitchers getting hits, kneehang sit ups, regal's peppermint breath.
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
DECEMBER 21ST, 2002
It’s said it takes seven years
to grow completely new skin cells.
To think, this year I will grow
into a body you never will
have touched.
Holy shit.
The Trapeze Artist’s Dear John Letter
I recede like a vanishing point on my ribboned trapeze
and trust hamstring and calf’s steady marriage
when I hang from my knees.Physics can name the force that pushes the bar away again.
I’d call it Fortune’s wheel or Tantalus’s fruit,
but then I’m the company tragedienne —all good trapeze artists are. I no sooner arrive than leave.
I love you, I’m quitting you. I live my life between
the two meanings of cleave.Carrie Etter
(Source: versedaily.org)
(Source: megmess)
You’re wondering if I’m lonely:
OK then, yes, I’m lonely
as a plane rides lonely and level
on its radio beam, aiming
across the Rockies
for the blue-strung aisles
of an airfield on the ocean
You want to ask, am I lonely?
Well, of course, lonely
as a woman driving across country
day after day, leaving behind
mile after mile
little towns she might have stopped
and lived and died in, lonely
If I’m lonely
it must be the loneliness
of waking first, of breathing
dawn’s first cold breath on the city
of being the one awake
in a house wrapped in sleep
If I’m lonely
it’s with the rowboat ice-fast on the shore
in the last red light of the year
that knows what it is, that knows it’s neither
ice nor mud nor winter light
but wood, with a gift for burning
Adrienne Rich, Song (via holdonmagnolia)
(Source: theoryoflostthings)
When I said I wasn’t with another girl
the January after we fell in love for the 3rd time,
it’s because it wasn’t actual sex.
In the February that began our radio silence,
it was actual sex. I hate the tight shirts
that go below your waistline.
Not only do they make you look too young,
but then your torso is a giraffe’s neck attached to tiny legs.
I screamed at myself in the subway
for writing poems about you still.
I made a scene. I think about you almost
each morning, and roughly every five days, I still
believe you’re there.
I still masturbate to you.
When we got really bad,
I would put another coat of mop water on the floor of the bar
to make sure you were asleep when I got to my side of the bed.
You are the only person to whom I’ve lied, knowing
I was telling the truth. I miss the way your neck
wraps around my face like a cave we are both lost in.
I remember when you said being with me
is like being alone with company.
My friend Sarah wrote a poem about pink ponies.
I’m scared you’re my pink pony.
Hers is dead. It is really sad. You’re not dead.
You live in Ohio, or Washington, or Wherever.
You are a shadow my body leaves on other girls.
I have a growing queue of things I know
will make you laugh and I don’t know where to put them.
I mourn like you’re dead. If you had asked me to stay,
I would not have said no.
It would never mean yes.
Jon Sands, A Working List of Things I Will Never Tell You (via holdonmagnolia)
(Source: theoryoflostthings)
Trapeze - by Deborah Digges
See how the first dark takes the city in its arms
and carries it into what yesterday we called the future.
O, the dying are such acrobats.
Here you must take a boat from one day to the next,
or clutch the girders of the bridge, hand over hand.
But they are sailing like a pendulum between eternity and evening,
diving, recovering, balancing the air.
Who can tell at this hour seabirds from starlings,
wind from revolving doors or currents off the river.
Some are as children on swings pumping higher and higher.
Don't call them back, don't call them in for supper.
See, they leave scuff marks like jet trails on the sky.
Adrienne Rich, “II” from 21 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 been writing for days,
drafts, carbons, poems are scattered everywhere,
and I want to show her one poem
which is the poem of my life. But I hesitate,
and wake. You’ve kissed my hair
to wake me. I dreamed you were a poem,
I say, a poem I wanted to show someone…
and I laugh and fall dreaming again
of the desire to show you to everyone I love,
to move openly together
in the pull of gravity, which is not simple,
which carries the feathered grass a long way down the upbreathing air.
I have loved Adrienne Rich since I was about 15… 21 Love Poems is part of the first book of hers I ever read “The Dream of A Common Language”.
Sideshow | Lauren Wheeler
For a nickel, you can take a picture of me
standing just so in front of a wooden board
with a heart painted on it.
For a dime, you can take a picture with me,
you squatting behind and peeking through
like I’m one of those cardboard cut-outs
of an “Indian Chief” or a unicorn or some other
supposedly mythical creature.
When you offer a quarter, we move to the tent,
dim-lit and dusty, where I sit on the low
quilt-covered bed and pat the space beside me.
You are nervous. “Will it hurt? I mean, will it hurt you?”
I shake my head. “It never hurts. Not anymore.”
And then I take your hand and guide it up towards
the hole in my chest. You tremble for a second
as you reach through me, wiggle your fingers
around behind my back, disbelieving.
“Where is your heart?” you ask.
“How do you live without your heart?”
I don’t know how to answer, so I say,
“It’s amazing the things you can learn to live without.”
The Spirit Says, You Are Nothing (Larry Levis)
But you were young, and you had
Plenty of time:
Going west,
You slept on the train and did not smile.
Under you the plains widened, turned silver.
You slept with your mouth open.
You were nothing,
You were snow falling through the ribs
Of the dead.
You were all I had
RSVP Regrets Only (Linda Pastan)
I regret the moment we met
and the way you pretended.
I regret the sun that day,
its warmth so artificial,
and I regret the way pain
has taught me nothing.
