January 2011
41 posts
66 Years Later, Nabokov's Theory of Butterfly... →
“When his father was imprisoned by the Russian authorities for his political activities, the 8-year-old Vladimir brought a butterfly to his cell as a gift.”
WHAT ODES ARE LEFT TO FIND
I couldn’t find a word for your fingernails (the coy almond-glint of them) in my quietness I could not find a word that fit. So I went searching for other tongues to say, felt around in the mouths of strangers wringing the foolish muscle. My hands they...
EXERCISES IN LONELINESS/OTHER PEOPLE
I once read that operators cannot hang up on a caller. So I dialed zero. The woman’s voice asked How Could She Help Me. I didn’t know. Maybe she could help me with this whole Beauty thing, which had been doing funny things with my head for so long. I would like to read you a poem. Can’t remember what the poem was, only that it was about telephones. What I do remember is the delay...
…we discussed the Old Man of the Sea, who might well be a myth, except...
– John Steinbeck, The Log from the Sea of Cortez
feeling sick
arrested twice in eleven days. my family is leaving it up to me to decide whether we bail her out or not. i know what is best but i don’t know what i can live with. she’d have to spend her birthday in jail. my friends searched for her mugshot with the usual eyerolls and jokes. but when her picture came up everyone went silent. i had to leave because i felt like i was going to vomit. i...