“I Ask Myself What I Will Do Here On Earth With This Worthless, Defiant Body. And I Hear My Body Answer:

the handmaiden, (Unnamed) by me, moonlight, come into the water by mitski, the handmaiden, once more to see you by mitski

Nizar Qabbani

“I have grown weary of talking about life as if it is deserved, or earned, or gifted, or wasted. I’m going to be honest about my scorecard and just say that the math on me being here and the people who have kept me here doesn’t add up when weighed against the person I’ve been and the person I can still be sometimes. But isn’t that the entire point of gratitude? To have a relentless understanding of all the ways you could have vanished, but haven’t? The possibilities for my exits have been endless, and so the gratitude for my staying must be equally endless.”

— Hanif Abdurraqib, from “On Times I Have Forced Myself Not to Dance,” in A Little Devil in America

From the National Geographic cover on IRAN, July 1999 (Volume 196, No. 1)

polynesians: have oral history that references a faraway land of andes-like mountains in the east, cultivated sweet potato (a plant native to central america, not the pacific), literally call sweet potato by the same word used by the quechua and aymara people indigenous to the andes, left physical remains on islands a few km off the coast of chile, have genetic links with native south americans

white academics: hmmm it’s very doubtful polynesians contacted south america.. they probably just stopped permanently at easter island for some reason after systematically navigating the entire south pacific. the sweet potatos floated to them across the ocean

To be loved is to be known; to be seen.

Excerpts Sources:

Is it okay to say this? - Trista Masteer // Blasted - Sarah Kane // Reassurances to Hades - Kristina Haynes // The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo - T.J. Reid // My Mother/Madame Edwarda/The Dead Man - Georges Bataille //"The Last Poem in the Book," These Days (Alfred A. Knopf, 1989); Over and over again - Frederick Seidel // My Mother/Madame Edwarda/The Dead Man - Georges Bataille // Adult Children of Emotionaly Immature Parents - Lindsay C. Gibson // She Satisfies A Fear with the Rhetoric of Tears - Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz // My Life Is Pathetic! - Heather Havrilesky

“No wonder I am mesmerized by your tongues’ small fires glowing with desire.”

— M.J. Iuppa, from “Marigolds,” Amethyst Review (2022)

I’ll stay in Today by Chukwu Adaeze

Matthew Dickman, from “Montpelier” [ID in ALT]