6peaches

[6peaches]

Louise Glück - First Memory

Long ago, I was wounded. I lived to revenge myself against my father, not for what he was— for what I was: from the beginning of time, in childhood, I thought that pain meant I was not loved. It meant I loved.

[6peaches]

Andrea Gibson - every time i ever said i wanted to die

A difficult life is not less worth living than a gentle one. Joy is simply easier to carry than sorrow. And your heart could lift a city from how long you've spent holding what's been nearly impossible to hold.

This world needs those who know how to do that. Those who could find a tunnel that has no light at the end of it, and hold it up like a telescope to know the darkness also contains truths that could bring the light to its knees.

Grief astronomer, adjust the lens, look close, tell us what you see.

[6peaches]

Izumi Shikibu - “Although the wind ...”

Although the wind blows terribly here, the moonlight also leaks between the roof planks of this ruined house.

tr. Jane Hirshfield

[6peaches]

Winniebell Xinyu Zong - sundress: a burning haibun

“As in contemporary legal practice, were the heroine unchaste, there could be no violation, and rape would have no meaning. Virtue is a necessary precondition to both the definition and the representation of rape.” —From “Rape, Voyeurism, and the Restoration Stage” by  Jean I. Marsden  

一：sundress: a burning

mama, the sundress i should have worn at the tail of summer was torn before. by a button in the washer, a twig by the river, or a dog i adored. i felt something. i refused to deem it broken; i refused it to be a dry linen upon which there was no violation to kneel between the legs of a woman. mama, my body wanted to sew itself shut. if only i’d known my body was a prophet, had listened to you when you told me we bit our tongues for an evanescent hunger for meat. did you know, mama, i read it somewhere, neurons in our brains coordinate our jaws & tongues to prevent us  from making a meal of ourselves?  listen, there are 57 reasons why one would burn their lover. no. 1: i never loved anyone that much i didn’t know how. no. 9: maybe i wouldn’t have if you listened & stopped fighting. no. 23: stop fighting & we’ll have a good time. he tucked me in & left the door open: don’t let no bruises tell on me. at night, i cradled my bruises in shivers that lasted until morning. his laughs when i said no. his last text: who has a problem? he doesn’t remember touching me. mama, i believed him until i believed me. he drove me to the train station in the morning. he kissed my forehead: have a good time, sweetie. i had no hymen left. i hate to count casualties, to savor loss, to puncture things. i hate to have no hymns in me, but mama, god’s people hurt me. no. 33: if i was burning you, why wasn’t i burning, too? no. 57: you didn’t know why you deserved it—that’s why you deserved it. mama, i’m not okay. inside me is a burning twig & my ashen breaths only speak sound when they call your name, mama. i was touched so feverishly my dress was torn, mama. i was mistaken—i almost left. mama, i wanted to be loved.

[6peaches]

Ada Limón - The End of Poetry

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 the dresser, enough of the longing and the ego and the obliteration of ego, enough of the mother and the child and the father and the child and enough of the pointing to the world, weary and desperate, enough of the brutal and the border, enough of can you see me, can you hear me, enough I am human, enough I am alone and I am desperate, enough of the animal saving me, enough of the high water, enough sorrow, enough of the air and its ease, I am asking you to touch me.

[6peaches]

Arne Weingart - Exiles

We have been practicing how to disappear

so successfully that no one knows we are gone

or even pretends to mind meanwhile we have

in our heads the next place the place like the first place

which was not perfect not perfect but getting better

the farther away we get we have been getting so good

at arriving setting up camp setting up shop laying down

the rules which we will soon forget and the earth

barely notices how inconvenient we have become

barely can be bothered to fling us away like

flies on a horse’s tail when there were still horses

[6peaches]

The Cat has its Heart on the Outside

Available as a fanzine in Swedish with a translation note  here.

[6peaches]

Linda Pastan - July

Tonight the fireflies  light their brief  candles  in all the trees

of summer— color of moonflakes,  color of fluorescent  lace

where the ocean drags  its torn hem  over the dark  sand.

[6peaches]

oh man. oh jeez

[6peaches]

Shelley Wong - Pride Month

It is June & I read about having grace to forgive those who would condemn us. It is June & a man reads a poem where the father becomes a dying stag & the son says there is something I need to tell you. It was June when I was in bed past 1:00 a.m. gathering news about the Orlando nightclub shooting. I fell asleep knowing I would wake to walk against grief in waves. It is June & I am happy that, at some point, Tegan & Sara will appear in San Francisco or Oakland. It is June & I have never prayed to any god. It was June in the 2000s when my ex-partner ran the New York City pier dance. We slid through a sea of men with shaved chests. The songs hardly had words & the bass shuddered into our bodies. Orgasms of glitter spilled over the Hudson & New York rocked & roared back. I stood in the VIP section in a tropical sundress surrounded by so many barely dressed people double- kissing my face, saying happy Pride & where is your wife

[6peaches]

Nood Hindi - Fuck Your Lecture on Craft, My People Are Dying

Colonizers write about flowers. I tell you about children throwing rocks at Israeli tanks seconds before becoming daisies. I want to be like those poets who care about the moon. Palestinians don’t see the moon from jail cells and prisons. It’s so beautiful, the moon. They’re so beautiful, the flowers. I pick flowers for my dead father when I’m sad. He watches Al Jazeera all day. I wish Jessica would stop texting me Happy Ramadan. I know I’m American because when I walk into a room something dies. Metaphors about death are for poets who think ghosts care about sound. When I die, I promise to haunt you forever. One day, I’ll write about the flowers like we own them.

[6peaches]

Molly Brodak - Molly Brodak

I am a good man. The amount of fear I am ok with is insane. I love many people who don't love me. I don't actually know if that is true. This is love. It is a mass of ice melting. I can't hold it and I have nowhere to put it down.

[6peaches]

Sonia Sanchez - Sonku

i collect wings what are you bird or animal? something that lights on trees breasts pawnshops i have seen another path to this rendezvous.

[6peaches]

Sonia Sanchez - Haiku

i turn westward in shadows hoping my river will cross yours in passing.

[6peaches]

David Romtvedt - Sunday Morning Early

My daughter and I paddle red kayaks across the lake. Pulling hard, we slip easily through the water. Far from either shore, it hits me that my daughter is a young woman and suddenly everything is a metaphor for how short a time we are granted:

the red boats on the blue-black water, the russet and gold of late summer’s grasses, the empty sky. We stop and listen to the stillness. I say, “It’s Sunday, and here we are in the church of the out of doors,” then wish I’d kept quiet. That’s the trick in life— learning to leave well enough alone.

Our boats drift to where the chirring of grasshoppers reaches us from the rocky hills. A clap of thunder. I want to say something truer than I love you. I want my daughter to know that, through her, I live a life that was closed to me. I paddle up, lean out, and touch her hand. I start to speak then stop.

[6peaches]

“Well I hate America, Louis. I hate this country. It’s just big ideas, and stories, and people dying, and people like you. The white cracker who wrote the national anthem knew what he was doing. He set the word “free” to a note so high nobody can reach it. That was deliberate. Nothing on earth sounds less like freedom to me. […] I live in America, Louis, that’s hard enough, I don’t have to love it.”

— Angels In America, Tony Kushner. (via the-library-and-step-on-it)

[6peaches]

Thomas Lux - A Little Tooth

Your baby grows a tooth, then two, and four, and five, then she wants some meat directly from the bone. It's all

over: she'll learn some words, she'll fall in love with cretins, dolts, a sweet talker on his way to jail. And you,

your wife, get old, flyblown, and rue nothing. You did, you loved, your feet are sore. It's dusk. Your daughter's tall.