syphoning-gasoline

[syphoning-gasoline]

Black Bucket

You've gone finite

bottom of the bucket

oil rising to the top.

I feel something

rising to the top.

I was asked mockingly

if I was crying

in the bathroom.

I said I

wish (I knew grief

so sincerely.

That

the little deaths

graced my cheeks

with such ease.)

[syphoning-gasoline]

Swimming, One Day in August by Mary Oliver

[syphoning-gasoline]

“Gender is a shell game. What is a man? Whatever a woman isn’t. What is a woman? Whatever a man is not. Tap on it and it’s hollow. Look under the shells: it’s not there”

— Naomi Alderman, The Power  (via sonnywortzik)

[syphoning-gasoline]

oh man. oh jeez

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Jelly Cap

I broke away, for a moment,

from the laughter, from the living.

I looked out at the dottings of

jelly capped mushrooms

among the sodden leaves of the brook.

I put you there, with my eyes, as I cried.

I've forgotten the color

of yours,

so long they've been

plucked out of their sockets.

I like to think that

I kept one.

That you're here in these views-

in these

little peculiarities.

[syphoning-gasoline]

Mercy Kill, Gabrielle

Do you remember when we made a pillow fort in our bedroom?

I read you Shel Silverstein until Nami toppled it over,

as I pushed aside an ending

I'd practiced putting off.

There was a night we had left the grocery store;

you were driving us home,

we hadn't fought,

but as I looked at you I thought

I need to end this

but what will we do about

all of these groceries in the fridge?

You had a dream that you hit a deer,

it wasn't going to make it, and it was in pain.

You were overwhelmed and crying.

I got out of the passenger seat

and snapped it's neck.

You saw that as your weakness

and my strength.

When things were bad, I could stay level headed and help you through it,

but you know,

when things were good,

most of the time you

were the one who had gotten us there.

Did you know that I always struggled to do that?

To kill something with love, before it dragged on painfully-

a mercy kill, Gabrielle.

Cheebah's twin taught me that.

I couldn't do it, so someone else had to.

At that time it was a cruel boy with a rock.

I grew from watching that,

I was able to kill the pickerel after I'd choked down that lesson.

I can't recall those memories, though, like other memories.

Did you know that?

I can't see her face, distorted and looking past me

as she breathed bloody bubbles,

or how the pickerel looked like the intent of a dull knife.

I can only feel the adrenaline from a terrible choice to be made,

and the rotten guilt of witnessing the cruelest part of life;

prolonged agony.

In spite of this, I could never put us down.

You did, and I'm grateful,

just like how I'm grateful to

that psychopath with the rock.

I'm grateful for you and your...

infidelity.

And you,

can you still see our faces?

[syphoning-gasoline]

The Glass In Between

We sat on the steps;

you, and me, so close

to the glass in between.

Was it a mirror, or a window?

I dared not raise a hand and see.

The procession marched inside,

the hard liquor babied

Irish-atrophied emotion.

Parting words were held

in abeyance,

it is well known

we are lacking in our goodbyes.

Did we watch the crows,

or did I just think that a murder

fit the motif?

Was that a tear on your cheek

or did I just long for you

to be human

for a moment?

[syphoning-gasoline]

are you listening, death?

the rabbit - mary oliver

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Missed Time, Ha Jin

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Warsan Shire, from “Backwards”, Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head

[syphoning-gasoline]

The Rabbit Catcher

It was a place of force— The wind gagging my mouth with my own blown hair, Tearing off my voice, and the sea Blinding me with its lights, the lives of the dead Unreeling in it, spreading like oil.

I tasted the malignity of the gorse, Its black spikes, The extreme unction of its yellow candle-flowers. They had an efficiency, a great beauty, And were extravagant, like torture.

There was only one place to get to. Simmering, perfumed, The paths narrowed into the hollow. And the snares almost effaced themselves— Zeroes, shutting on nothing.

Set close, like birth pangs. The absence of shrieks Made a hole in the hot day, a vacancy. The glassy light was a clear wall, The thickets quiet.

I felt a still busyness, an intent. I felt hands round a tea mug, dull, blunt, Ringing the white china. How they awaited him, those little deaths! They waited like sweethearts. They excited him.

And we, too, had a relationship— Tight wires between us, Pegs too deep to uproot, and a mind like a ring Sliding shut on some quick thing, The constriction killing me also.

Sylvia Plath, Ariel: The Restored Edition: A Facsimile of Plath’s Manuscript, Reinstating Her Original Selection and Arrangement (HarperCollins, 2004)

[syphoning-gasoline]

This book is blowing my mind.

[syphoning-gasoline]

Rhododendron

I will mold the shape

of what was

cradle it

in the company of my

adoration

I will pour into

that lamb hymn

hold you in lilac, in the snapping turtle, in reishi on the hemlocke

in the sun-

lapping beneath my eyelids

and in the periphery of every awe

I will pour, I will pour

and kiss the granite

by rhododendron

by callouses

I'll marry your absence

I do, I do

[syphoning-gasoline]

“Love is so embarrassing. I bled in your bed. I’m sorry. I have built you a shore with all my best words & still, the waves.”

— Claire Schwartz, from Bound

[syphoning-gasoline]

Charles Wright, from "The Southern Cross", The World of Ten Thousand Things: Poems 1980-1990 [ID'd]

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Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, from a letter featured in The Life & Letters of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

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Ilya Kaminsky, from “A City Like a Guillotine Shivers on Its Way to the Neck”, Deaf Republic