language – Page 3

AG2026_1530292a2 or slopes & peaks

March 10, 2026March 10, 2026 digLeave a comment

I love how it swells
into a temple where it is
held prisoner, where the god
of blame resides. I love
slopes & peaks, the secret
paths that make me selfish.
I love my crooked feet
shaped by vanity & work
shoes made to outlast
belief. The hardness
coupling milk it can’t
fashion. I love the lips,
salt & honeycomb on the tongue.
The hair holding off rain
& snow. The white moons
on my fingernails. I love
how everything begs
blood into song & prayer
inside an egg. A ghost
hums through my bones
like Pan’s midnight flute
shaping internal laws
beside a troubled river.
I love this body
made to weather the storm
in the brain, raised
out of the deep smell
of fish & water hyacinth,
out of rapture & the first
regret. I love my big hands.
I love it clear down to the soft
quick motor of each breath,
the liver’s ten kinds of desire
& the kidney’s lust for sugar.
This skin, this sac of dung
& joy, this spleen floating
like a compass needle inside
nighttime, always divining
West Africa’s dusty horizon.
I love the birthmark
posed like a fighting cock
on my right shoulder blade.
I love this body, this
solo & ragtime jubilee
behind the left nipple,
because I know I was born
to wear out at least
one hundred angels.

Anodyne, Yusef Komunyakaa

La survie en attendant

March 9, 2026March 9, 2026 digLeave a comment

Rebecca Solnit Says the Left’s Next Hero Is Already Here. (NYTimes) The Beginning Comes After the End (Haymarket Books)

“I remain hopeful partly as defiance. But what you’re addressing is narrative itself. Most stories are: Something goes wrong, and then we have to address it. When nothing goes wrong, there’s no story. But also, a lot of what’s right are stories of incremental change.

The wonder and horror for climate is that the great majority of people on Earth support climate action. The obstacles are not technological. They’re political.“

The light retreats and is generous again.
No you to speak of, anywhere—neither in vicinity nor distance,

so I look at the blue water, the snowy egret, the lace of its feathers
shaking in the wind, the lake—no, I am lying.

There are no egrets here, no water. Most of the time,
my mind gnaws on such ridiculous fictions.

My phone notes littered with lines like Beauty will not save you.
Or: mouthwash, yogurt, cilantro.

A hummingbird zips past me, its luminescent plumage
disturbing my vision like a tiny dorsal fin.

But what I want does not appear. Instead, I find the redwoods and pines,
figs that have fallen and burst open on the pavement,

announcing that sickly sweet smell,
the sweetness of grief, my prayer for what is gone.

You are so dramatic, I say to the reflection on my phone,
then order the collected novels of Jean Rhys.

She, too, was humiliated by her body, that it wanted
such stupid, simple things: food and cherry wine, to touch someone.

On my daily walk, I steal Meyer lemons from my neighbors’ yard,
a small pomegranate. Instead of eating them,

I observe their casual rot on the kitchen counter,
this theatre of good things turning into something else.

Waiting for Your Call, Aria Aber

https://www.tumblr.com/triumph-of-adaptation/810497907105087488/boghz-persian

Boghz. Grief, anger, and humiliation accumulate without release.

Sunny Shokrae.

La survie en attendant la libération.

AG2026_1530270a or richesse left, not got with pain

March 8, 2026March 8, 2026 digLeave a comment

Martial, the things that do attain
The happy life be these, I find:—
The richesse left, not got with pain,
The fruitful ground; the quiet mind;

The equal friend; no grudge, no strife;
No charge of rule nor governance;
Without disease the healthful life;
The household of continuance;

The mean diet, no delicate fare;
True wisdom join’d with simpleness;
The night dischargèd of all care,
Where wine the wit may not oppress;

The faithful wife, without debate;
Such sleeps as may beguile the night:
Contented with thine own estate,
Ne wish for death, ne fear his might.

The Means to Attain Happy Life, Martial, born Marcus Valerius Martialis, translated from the Latin by Henry Howard

AG2026_1520972b or there

March 7, 2026March 7, 2026 digLeave a comment

There, there’s only order, beauty: abundant, calm, voluptuous.

Invitation to a Voyage, Charles Baudelaire

Go through this sad non-identity

March 6, 2026March 6, 2026 digLeave a comment

Wilt thou go with me sweet maid
Say maiden wilt thou go with me
Through the valley-depths of shade,
Of night and dark obscurity,
Where the path has lost its way
Where the sun forgets the day
Where there’s nor life nor light to see
Sweet maiden, wilt thou go with me?

Where stones will turn to flooding streams
Where plains will rise like ocean waves
Where life will fade like visioned dreams
And mountains darken into caves
Say maiden wilt thou go with me
Through this sad non-identity
Where parents live and are forgot
And sisters live and know us not?

Say maiden wilt thou go with me
In this strange death of life to be
To live in death and be the same
Without this life, or home, or name
At once to be, and not to be
That was, and is not—yet to see
Things pass like shadows—and the sky
Above, below, around us lie?

The land of shadows wilt thou trace
And look—nor know each other’s face,
The present mixed with reasons gone
And past, and present all as one.
Say, maiden can thy life be led
To join the living to the dead?
Then trace thy footsteps on with me
We’re wed to one eternity.

An Invite to Eternity, John Clare