Shadows

I received the grace of shadows. The grace of remaining in the dark.

Anna Kamienska
A Nest of Quiet: A Notebook
translated by Clare Cavanagh

crumble into silver dust

Very startling — pixie-like, otherworldly — small, finely-built, dark hair — large eyes — her speech is overprecise — she shines and polishes each syllable with the very tip of her tongue — one feels that if one were to touch her, she would crumble into silver dust.

Susan Sontag,
(Description of Anaïs Nin)
As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks 1964-1980

Snakes

Must have been so many brute
snakes the King slurped up —
but what tender servant wouldn’t
be smitten with concealed strings,
enlarged worms? We have all
indulged in a little tight snake
from time to time, and I have heard
the animals howl only in the night.

So the servant nibbled, found his ring-like hole
after hours
and left the castle with a stallion
who, amazingly, rode mute and sour.
Yet the ants, the fish, the birds — all callous —
chattered unconditionally their love in dour spurts,
the dead horse clinging to his own bones and thick skin.

Then the contest raged, roared like a salty sea
and the prince tested himself for gravity, trying
to remain of this world by being told his prize.
Those lies demand a fortune of the soul, the withering
of those animals curled around the snake, made curses
uncompromising and sure. But always the fruit
grows in the womb and makes the princess come
to lost senses.

Cheryl Chambers

joy-riding the narrative bus

My favourite Burgess is A Clockwork Orange , which he was very dismissive of. It’s fuelled by rage and fear. If Burgess has a fault, it’s that his intellect sometimes over-controls the work. In his best books, he has clearly lost control of the material, and his unconscious is joy-riding the narrative bus. A Clockwork Orange has the deep ambiguity of great art. I suspect Burgess dismissed it because he was scared of it. It’s beyond morality. It’s primal, very human. It says things the author’s conscious mind would never agree with.

Julian Gough
Quoted in: Anthony Burgess: a mind like clockwork and a fearless pen by Darragh MacManus

My First Lover Speaks to Me as I Sleep With Her

This is what it feels like to split the shell of a woman.
Shards of her everywhere. Animal light spread across

the walls. For a second, I feel like a boy entering
a woman for the first time. My skin shivering as if pulled

from the banks of a river. Clothes shapeless on the floor. When she moves
beneath me, I wonder how someone could enter her like a hook

thick as ropes. Tear her into two. And he comes to me as if I’ve closed my eyes.
The braided scar above his lip. The clench

of teeth on my ear. Like this, he says, showing me how to peel her back
like husks.Like this.

Raven Jackson

Wet

Some people feel the rain, others just get wet…

The Final Truth

intense and pleasurable

Fucking you is fine. It’s intense and pleasurable. But I love the moments afterwards, you know? Breathing heavily and laying on each other. The smiles and little laughs while holding one another. I really like that too…

From where…?

inbetween

Antigone:  For I am a strange new kind of inbetween aren’t I, not at home with the dead nor with the living.

Sophocles
Antigone
Trans. Anne Carson