For women who are difficult to love

you are a horse running alone
and he tries to tame you
compares you to an impossible highway
to a burning house
says you are blinding him
that he could never leave you
forget you
want anything but you
you dizzy him, you are unbearable
every woman before or after you
is doused in your name
you fill his mouth
his teeth ache with memory of taste
his body just a long shadow seeking yours
but you are always too intense
frightening in the way you want him
unashamed and sacrificial
he tells you that no man can live up to the one who
lives in your head
and you tried to change didn’t you?
closed your mouth more
tried to be softer
prettier
less volatile, less awake
but even when sleeping you could feel
him travelling away from you in his dreams
so what did you want to do, love
split his head open?
you can’t make homes out of human beings
someone should have already told you that
and if he wants to leave
then let him leave
you are terrifying
and strange and beautiful
something not everyone knows how to love.

Warsan Shire

This is how you keep her

Kiss her. Slowly, take your time, there’s no place you’d rather be.

Kiss her but not like you’re waiting for something else, like your hands beneath her shirt or her skirt or tangled up in her bra straps. Nothing like that.

Kiss her like you’ve forgotten any other mouth that your mouth has ever touched.

Kiss her with a curious childish delight. Laugh into her mouth, inhale her sighs. Kiss her until she moans.

Kiss her with her face in your hands. Or your hands in her hair. Or pulling her closer at the waist.

Kiss her like you want to take her dancing. Like you want to spin her into an open arena and watch her look at you like you’re the brightest thing she’s ever seen.

Kiss her like she’s the brightest thing you’ve ever seen. Take your time.

Kiss her like the first and only piece of chocolate you’re ever going to taste. Kiss her until she forgets how to count.

Kiss her stupid.

Kiss her silent. Come away, ask her what 2+2 is and listen to her say your name in answer.

Azra Tabassum

dreams

I dreamed all sorts of funny dreams – dreams with you in them all the time, and terrible ticking clocks, and vampires, and ladies with long arms putting out the light, and intimate black dogs just sitting on us. I love you. I love you more than anybody in the world. I love you for millions and millions of things, clocks and vampires and lovely hair and being dizzy and falling dreams. I want you to be with me; you can teach me to walk in the air and I’ll teach you to make nice noises on the piano without any music; and we shan’t have any money at all and we’ll live on other people’s, which they won’t like a bit. I don’t care. I don’t care for anybody. I only want to tell you all the time and over and over again that I love you.

Dylan Thomas

July 1936 letter to Caitlin Macnamara

 

What makes weird fiction “Weird”

One has to remember, though, that all these names are but artificial constructs created to examine and categorize fiction after it’s been written in order to study or sell it. Authors (good ones, at least) don’t tend to worry about such categorizations while writing. What makes weird fiction “Weird” is the author’s desire to tell stories in a different way or with different tools than have been traditionally used. But that’s the same for all leading movements of art, I’d think. I don’t argue that Weird fiction is an interesting and distinct place, I just argue from the perspective that it’s not far enough from its precedents that it can be branched. The Weird is simply new Horror.

Simon Strantzas
Interview with David Davis for Weird Review 27th September 2016

shamanic anatomy

To me a good poem is like a sacred mind-altering substance: you take it into your system, and it carries you beyond your ordinary ways of understanding. I call the nonconceptual elements of a poem — the rhythm, the sound, the images — the “shamanic anatomy.” Like a shaman’s drum, the beat of a poem can literally entrain the rhythms of your body: your heartbeat, your breath, even your brain waves, altering consciousness. Most poems are working on all these levels at once, not just through the rational mind

Kim Rosen
Written On The Bones
Interview with Alison Luterman, December 2010

How to talk to the wind

1. If the wind falls silent, she is listening to you. Speak.
2. Always whisper.
3. In case there is a wind swirl carrying autumn leaves, step back. Let her dance.
4. Don’t go outside if the wind is howling. The ghosts are passing through.
5. She already knows everything about you. Never lie.
6. You may play the flute.
7. Listen to storms. Don’t talk.
8. She gives life to your words. Make them meaningful. Especially when you talk to her.
9. If she whispers in your ear, listen closely. It means she trusts you enough to share her secrets.
10. Words travel far and fast. Don’t say anything that could awake the spirits.
11. She has a strong temperament and gets angry easily. Make sure to always be nice to her, you don’t want to be on her bad side.
12. If she is talking to thunder, leave them alone. They don’t want you to hear.
13. When she greets you with a breeze the following morning, pretend you didn’t hear them.
14. A sudden draft is always a bad omen.
15. Never, ever, complain about her. She will remember.

HGK477