Hello, lovely humans.
To start, two excerpts from the literary genius of Audre Lorde and Toni Morrison to honor that their birthdays were yesterday.
“And when the sun rises we are afraid
it might not remain
when the sun sets we are afraid
it might not rise in the morning”
from “A Litany for Survival” by Audre Lorde
“Let me be earth bound; star fixed
Mixed with sun and smacking air.”
from “I Am Not Seaworthy” by Toni Morrison
Another week has inched by — and that means more reading to be had! Here’s a few notables:
Poetry
Ross Gay’s “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude” x Bon Iver in Jagjaguwar
Keith Leonard’s “Statement of Teaching Philosophy” in Waxwing Magazine
“I have eulogies for all my loved ones prepared,
but cannot include this fact in my lesson plans.”
Ashley M. Jones’ “IT IS ENTIRELY POSSIBLE FOR A BLACK GIRL TO BE LOVED” in Honey Literary
Katie Farris’ “Woman with Amputated Breast Awaits PET Scan Results”
“Without the waiting, who can know when spring will come, or snow?
Heading South, the geese all beat
the waiting with their wings.”
Alexis Orgera’s “The Art of Making” in Passages North
“born ancestor, born to ancestor, bank of bricks making
a wall, the echolocation of two bats in a canyon,
roots entwined”I.S. Jones’ “Prayer of Acquiescence” in Shade Literary Arts
“for granting
the hands of the shepherd
her greatest ability to baptize
a nation, to keep bellies full
until hunger comes to my altar
again.”
Matt Michell’s “Ars Poetica” in Peach Magazine
“There are five vital organs in the average human body. There are six in mine, if you count the tepid faucet of slow-glow lantern light queering through my bellybutton.”
Fatima Malik’s “In Which the Living Make Lists” in Dear Poetry Journal
“The only time pain recedes is when I am
in communion with a piece of art.”Joy Priest’s “Ghosts in Schools” in The Atlantic
“Sometimes my lungs feel like stones
in the hypnagogic hour—that watery room
between wakefulness & sleep”Nada Faris’ “Aubade” in No Contact
“Your mother bore you in order
not to take life so seriously.”
Fiction
Jake Wolff’s “The Orphan Disease” in the Kenyon Review
My favorite story I’ve ever written is up now at a bucket-list journal: @kenyonreview! I’ve been submitting this story since 2015, over 100 rejections, but I really believed in it so here we are. The story is about grief & bodies & a robot pls read! 🙏 kenyonreview.org/kr-online-issu…“She looked small and pretty and weak, like a bird. As the doctor inserted her breathing tube, I remembered the morning, when I was barely five years old, that I found a baby sparrow drowned in a small puddle of rain, and in the trees, its pale-gray mother, crying from the nest.”
Lucy Zhang’s “Swan Garden” in Contrary Magazine
“I can make out the unfeathered patch of skin between eyes and bill. They wear their faces like they aren’t afraid of the bareness.”
Kosiso Ugwueze’s “Down South” in Gulf Coast
“I remember that I often found him on the sofa in the early mornings, that I walked past him on my way out the door, listening as he snored, as he fidgeted in his sleep. Sometimes, he would wake screaming, his voice hoarse in his throat. He would glare at me with bloodshot eyes. Then, he would turn away on the sofa and return to sleep.”
Madeline Stevens’ “Coyote Smith” in Joyland
“Elmer had seen a skull once, as a child, by the Zigzag river. There’d been moss growing over the bone as if it were another river rock, trilliums climbing up out of the mouth. He’d turned it over in his little palms, picked off the moss with his nubby fingernails and found the cracks where the pieces of the cranium fit together like a puzzle.”
May Hathaway’s “My Mother and I Watch The Social Network (2010)” Pollux Journal
“The Social Network (2010) is, at its core, about men. It fails the Bechdel test. The women present are either terrible or invisible.”
Nonfiction
Emily Lake Hansen’s “Ambivalence” in Hobart
“You have been tied to the same tree for half your life now. You bloom on the right side and curl into its shade on the left. You have never been uncomfortable.”
Ahmed Naji’s “Reading and Writing in an Egyptian Prison” in The Believer
“What they really want is to look at themselves, so they make the writer a mirror; they want to see their experience represented in a grand and unique portrait.”
Lori Jakiela’s “We Will Write Your Name on a Grain of Rice” in the Offing
“The doctor shows me cross-sections of my breasts on her computer screen. The images look like something from the Weather Channel, a satellite tracking a monochrome storm.”
Meghana Mysore’s “Language Lessons” in The Audacity
“My ajji knitted her way out of pain. I can’t prove this theory about my grandmother; I’ve never quite found the words in Kannada to ask her. But she tells me over the phone about the rhythms, about the joy of consistency when her fingers move through yarn and I imagine the craft like a pied piper, enticing her fingers to unfurl from around her own neck.”
Stephen Foster Smith’s “In Bermuda …” in Vagabond City Lit
“In Bermuda, there are hibiscus plants blooming roadside under the uninterrupted sun; their petals are soft, blood-red bijous, pinpricks of bloodletting yielding forth from a small forest of dark green leaves; their harmless pistils strikingly clear; their stigmas and styles sitting a short distance ahead of their golden stamens. It is a miniscule, unassuming detail slipped inside of a fairytale to distract the reader from looming danger. Just over the cliffs, waves swell and rise, cresting against the reefs; their crashes explosions of white and blue crystal sheets that burst skyward, falling back into the receding tide with relief. “
and finally,
this thread:
have a lovely weekend <3