Author: dig

Ignorance, he thought, and vanity. He hadn’t been alert early enough, hadn’t seen the signs jutting out everywhere around him. (TM)

it was the truest thing to say that there
are things in life that can’t be renounced
because renouncing them is to surrender
who we are and surrendering has never
been an option this is life this is life
this is our truest life

lo nuestro, ire’ne lara silva

I used to want to be a saint but I only became a poet.
I try not to do what I don’t want to do because of the love
That creeps into things even in their misery. I try to fly
Over what I feel and see it but sometimes I have no choice
And can only be it like an animal. I try to be honestly
Outside what does not include me and honestly inside
What does. I think a lot about what a dandelion in a junk heap
Does compared to a dandelion in a tender garden whose every
Leaf is beloved, and what such flowers which are weeds feel.
Things like that
Are what I think a lot about. Sometimes I think there isn’t any feeling
I like quite so much as the one I get
From having written a poem, a poem that I like. It’s a peaceful
Feeling that I can’t find any other way. Loving you doesn’t give
Me a peaceful feeling at all. Or writing to you. Or writing
At all, mostly. There is the panicking feeling I like of being about
To blow my brains out. Genocidal shame that makes me dream
Of stuffing my own organs in my mouth for sweetness when the opacity
Of certain people gives me a nauseating whiff of their dead
Souls. The worlds I had to cross to see this. The things I had to do
To myself to write this. The breeze on the fine white
Hairs of my typing forearms, the lupine flopped over
Out my window, another one bites the dust, another
Surrender to spring. It’s the new moon, and according
To all the art people who are into astrology lately it’s gonna
Be a good one. And it isn’t my window
At all. In two days it’ll be somebody else’s. But we’re
Together right now, like you and me, and right now
I love you completely

A Poem, Ariana Reines. Miami Rail, 2012.

The Rose, Ariana Reines. Graywolf Press, 2025. On the design of the cover.

Mix-up of self and other is much more easily achieved in language than in life,

Like eros, puns flout the edges of things.

(AC)