Bookmarks List/Bedside Table

Currently reading and enjoying:

• A Cartoonist’s Diary, over at The Comics Journal.
   
• This great article by Alyssa Rosenberg: “‘The Bling Ring’, White Privilege, and the Appropriation of Hip-Hop” at Think Progress. Such a smart analysis of this film! I love  Rosenberg’s point that “The Bling Ring is a movie about anesthetizing yourself through repetition...” It's an interesting, disturbing movie.
   
• The Tiger’s Wife, by Téa Obreht. An entrancing, mysterious, beautifully-written story. I loved how the book looked at the collision of folklore and personal belief...

Don’t forget about the #kettleshriek contest. I’m accepting entries until the July 12th, so make sure to submit your images/Vine videos. I want to give away some copies of the book!



Have a wonderful weekend...

Letting It Get to You

Letting It Get to You

The clearing could have been an orchard,
this fence could be a road. Standing along it,

the people who didn’t own what was not
the orchard, that clearing belonging to no one.

Maybe a family for the orchard, girl wanting
out ever since she was small, climber of trees

in the orchard, a few apples falling each time
she jumped down, small shadows thudding

behind her heels, an echo. There she is, running
along the road, her house just beyond those

trees if trees would have grown here. Sometimes,
the clearing is the orchard. You can see one

shimmer in the other, can smell the apples,
the orchard is getting braver, showing itself

for seconds at a time, waiting for a woman
who feels she certain she has been here before.

Potting Soil

Potting Soil

The tenderness with which
a singer handles the quiet
even before the song

will slay you if you let it
into your ears, if you remind
yourself that what we hear

the song emerge from does
not count as silence.
Can true silence be heard,

what would that sound like.
We follow sound, watch
the voice sparrowing

through the song, each
breath a branch. Lift
us, we want to be carried

by a song, to be slayed,
to be taken above life, no
cumbersome dartboard ear.

Distance Is Distance

Distance Is Distance

How long does it take to invent
new nostalgia, do we measure
the distance in years, one year,

five years, twelve, or in miles,
thousands of them. Distance
is distance, either will work.

Train the eyes to settle over
the brick and stone of a place,
and the muscles behind your

eyes remember: here, an arch,
a 24-hour library, a bench, pale
tile of a lobby flecked with green

and black, a tree exactly where
you expect a tree to be though
you didn’t recall the tree itself,

explicitly. You know this place,
meaning, your body knows
where to go, and for that, you

feel grateful. All the things that
had not happened to you when
you were last here, oceans

yet unvisited, heart missing the
more recent dents. That distance,
that difference, you feel it,

it travels with you, back to now,
aims its lamp over the ordinary
to inoculate you with prenostalgia,

saying, you will dream of this
one day, the chipped windowsill,
the gate’s yelp in closing.

Pledge

Pledge

Dusty shelf, your sin is in
how you tell everyone

you’ve gone untouched
for so long. The invisible

world was here today, again,
and I stood still while it

swirled around me, maybe
this is what you mean,

but it’s hard to get past
your skin, filmed with time

itself. It’s not that we
want to kill the dust, just

hide it, move it from
one surface to another,

there will be no aging today,
not under my roof.