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Enough of osseous and chickadee and sunflower and snowshoes, maple and seeds, samara and shoot, enough chiaroscuro, enough of thus and prophecy and the stoic farmer and faith and our father and ’tis of thee, enough of bosom and bud, skin and god not forgetting and star bodies and frozen birds, enough of the will to go on and not go on or how a certain light does a certain thing, enough of the kneeling and the rising and the looking inward and the looking up, enough of the gun, the drama, and the acquaintance’s suicide, the long-lost letter on…
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The last time I visited here, I was worshipped; the people birthed and married and fought and died in my honor; they donated the finest scraps from their tables, even when those tables neared empty; they built temples and destroyed monuments for the sake of my glory, and when I finally fled I did so knowing that my names, of which there were many, would not be forgotten. And they have not forgotten me, although the names that were once whispered in pleading prayers are now found more frequently in their square-bound scrolls and their talking pictures and the neon…
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4/5 I haven’t read books in the self-help genre in a long time, and to be honest, I’m not sure I would have picked this one up in the first place if I’d realized that’s how it was classified. Love in a F*cked Up World addresses the flaws within the self-help genre head-on, specifically calling out the damage that’s been done by the self-help books in regards to relationships and sex. The subtitle and back cover description are ambiguous to the point of being misleading, and, shockingly, I actually like that. Whether intentional or not, focusing the book’s description on…
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your therapist wants to know where in your body you most feel your anxiety. you tell her in the bones behind your face. they have their own music, like ptolemy’s universe, and chirp like shuriken dancing in the road. your therapist says you hurt because there are things you’ve never been taught to do: how to hold yourself in sleep. how to drive. how to live with men. back when you were five—or maybe four— your father knelt before you for the last time, close enough that you could smell him, a zephyr of kool’s filter kings and leaving. he…
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90 pounds when she left himmy mother says I amtoo young to know the significance of weight old enoughonly to think that 90 poundssounds like the feminine ideal Wasted to perfection At the first sight of my own bloodI screamed so they sayI like to imagine I remember drops of red on shattered glassat the first sight of my own bloodI understood something not right in my bones There was no money thenfor nursing students all womenthey used each other’s bodies like mannequins phlebotomy practice in dorm room bunk bedsbright young women atomic futurescovered in bruises like heroin addicts Bruises…
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5/5 Autobiography of Red was my first ever Anne Carson read–I’ve never even read any of her standalone poems until now! I thought this book was gorgeous and completely different from anything else I’ve read. Carson’s epic poem tells the magical, and at times, haunting story of Geryon. As he grows, he experiences trauma, infatuation, and heartbreak as he comes to terms with what it means to be red. I feel like I should have more to say about a book I loved so much, but there’s just nothing else to be said. It was perfect.
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I have loved. I have Loved like someone leaving All the lights on All night long. Like even the white cotton Sun was stuck at its crux Above the houses, perpetually Swabbing the iodine sky, And no one the whole world over Slept for four years. I have loved Like being very small, swimming In a saucer of warm milk, with no eyes. I have loved like a glass Of water on the bedside table With no water in it. I have loved like a ghost Wearing a bedsheet Ghost costume, as a disguise. Last week There was still a buoyant…
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Answer the phone; assign a call number; refer to case management; refer to counseling; most often, refer to both. Open an intake file, close another one. Ask a client if they’ve been here before—nod politely, like you don’t know they’re lying, when they say no. Re-open their sealed file. Paulina, the receptionist, buzzes the room with a message: Sarah is on Line 1 and she’s crying again. (Sarah’s always crying). They can hear her sobs echoing through the office over Amira’s soothing voice saying “deep breaths, in and out.” Her tears, leaking through the end of the receiver, leave a…
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4/5 As the last book I read in 2025, The Book of Form and Emptiness perfectly tied up my year in literature. I’ve been interested in exploring magical realism more, and while I’m not sure this novel would technically fall under this description, it was certainly magical, and a few times more realistic than I was emotionally prepared for. The book’s narrator is the book itself, that is to say, Book, as a sentient character. I loved the ambiguity between magic, psychic powers, and psychosis, and I especially loved the fact that distinguishing between the three is irrelevant to the…
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A man walks into a bar and says: Take my wife–please. So you do. You take her out into the rain and you fall in love with her and she leaves you and you’re desolate.You’re on your back in your undershirt, a broken man on an ugly bedspread, staring at the water stains on the ceiling. And you can hear the man in the apartment above you taking off his shoes.You hear the first boot hit the floor and you’re looking up, you’re waiting because you thought it would follow, you thought there would be some logic, perhaps, something to pull it all together but here we are in the weeds again, here…
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