gennsoup

[gennsoup]

I think it's one of the hardest things in the world to somehow make sure that the ones you love receive your care for them as physical information, as definite as--raindrops hitting your palm. Like when you hold out your hand to check if it's raining and it is. But with you, it's that definite every time I hold out my hand to check.

Helen Oyeyemi, Gingerbread

[gennsoup]

To the night, I am a body without a past or a future, a pillar that bends light. The night doesn't know my name.

Zeyn Joukhadar, The Thirty Names of Night

[gennsoup]

"Seems what all lands do share are gods so petty and jealous that they would rather destroy all the worlds than have one that moves on without them."

Marlon James, Black Leopard, Red Wolf

[gennsoup]

It's hard for me to imagine curiosity as anything more than a pretext for colonialism

Tommy Pico, Nature Poem

[gennsoup]

What am I ready to lose in this advancing summer? As the days that seemed long grow shorter and shorter I want to chew up time until every moment expands in an emotional mathematic that includes the smell and texture of every similar instant since I was born.

Audre Lorde, Seasoning

[gennsoup]

I love a man I know could die And not by way of illness And not by his own hand But because of the color of that hand and all His flawless skin.

Jericho Brown, Of My Fury

[gennsoup]

"Strike me down. You've won. I've lived my whole wretched life at your mercy, yours alone, and God knows I deserve to die at your hand. You are my only friend. I am undone without you."

Tamsyn Muir, Gideon the Ninth

[gennsoup]

Maybe just living together, loving people makes them look like you, I said. You know how much some old married people look alike.

Alice Walker, The Color Purple

[gennsoup]

Sometimes I feel like an ampersand. I wake up waiting for the crush. Maybe the body is the only question an answer can't extinguish. How many kisses have we crushed to our lips in prayer--only to pick up the pieces?

Ocean Vuong, Immigrant Haibun

[gennsoup]

She laughed and asked me to define a father. I said it was someone who didn't have the strength to carry his own name and had to employ others to do it.

K-Ming Chang, Bestiary

[gennsoup]

"You want to know about anybody? See what books they read, and how they've been read…"

Keri Hulme, The Bone People

[gennsoup]

If I'm writing and directing and producing and acting and editing and funding and creating the damn thing, no one can tell me where I fit into the narrative. I am the motherfucking narrative.

Anna Akana, So Much I Want to Tell You: Letters to My Little Sister

[gennsoup]

It's home because it has to be--routine satiates these pangs. And, given time, it becomes mobile--you can take those rituals with you, uproot your home as if it were a flower. Yeah, maybe home is like a flower, a sunflower whose big bright head follows the sun.

Joshua Whitehead, Jonny Appleseed

[gennsoup]

How lucky we are to have the moon. It seemed that hardly anyone ever saw the sky anymore. Had we all forgotten it was there? All this time below it, we forget. Maybe the sky will leave us someday, then we will be able to realize what it was.

Catherine Lacey, Pew

[gennsoup]

"It is noble to be gentle, to save others from pain. But it is also dangerous. Sometimes you have to make life difficult for others before they make it impossible for you."

Costanza Casati, Clytemnetra

[gennsoup]

"If you feel that strongly about your truth, then there is no reason to worry about your existence, is there?"

Ryka Aoki, Light from Uncommon Stars

[gennsoup]

My art is my revenge.

Frank Bidart, The Third Hour of the Night