alyssawaking

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and its just like this every day

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[yeah they’ve gone a little overboard]

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“The hurt coming out, from your open mouth, could / open a grave.”

— Vievee Francis, from “Canzone in Blue, Then Bluer,” The Best American Poetry 2019

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“I would like to be able to gently drift in and out of existence when I wanted to.”

— Henry Rollins, Solipsist (via books-n-quotes)

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The only reason we don’t open our hearts and minds to other people is that they trigger confusion in us that we don’t feel brave enough or sane enough to deal with. To the degree that we look clearly and compassionately at ourselves, we feel confident and fearless about looking into someone else’s eye.

Pema Chödrön (via philosophyquotes)

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If Elizabeth Warren's wealth tax had been in place from 1982, Jeff Bezos would still have had a net worth of 49 billion dollars, and Bill Gates would have had 14 billion dollars.

In exchange for that, all Americans would have been granted universal child- and healthcare. Student debt would be regularly relieved, and the federal education budget would be 4 times larger.

Vote as if lives depend on it. Because they do.

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the world is a village / alyssa hanna

my country’s flag is no longer a statement of dreams but a declaration of war, the innate animal instinct to claim and eat and digest all surrounding herds. pause: the murmurs of huddled masses yearning sound like a robin’s dying screech, an eagle’s last flight, the shots in the schoolyard echoing by a baby’s grave, and what pride i have! the four leaf clover of being born in this sour corn field. the privilege to apologize, say the inn is full to the child in a cage, declaring justice for all with a mouth full of ketchup. my sweet land of liberty: the exit strategy should the supermarket be a battleground. ⁂ alyssa hanna’s poems have appeared in Reed Magazine, The Mid-American Review, The Naugatuck River Review, Arc Poetry Magazine, Rust + Moth, Pidgeonholes, and others. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and for Best of the Net, was a finalist in the 2017 James Wright Poetry Competition, and a semi-finalist for The Hellebore scholarship. alyssa is a Contributing Editor at Barren Magazine and works as a copywriter by day. She lives in New York with her three lizards. follow her @alyssawaking on twitter, instagram, ko-fi, tumblr, and patreon.

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From Andrea Gibson’s book, LORD OF THE BUTTERFLIES.

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poems about my meds, ptsd, bipolar, etc, all that fun stuff

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“i’m told i need blood tests”

a poem about when my doctor told me i should be tested for STDs and HIV since we don’t know if my rapist had anything, and me realizing that i should hav worried about that sooner, not just worrying if he had impregnated with a baby nazi

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“the knowledge of walls”

my shitposting fish orgy poem about the aquarium industry