rearranging the disaligned

I have ridden in your cart, driver, waved my nude arms at villages going by, learning the last bright routes, survivor where your flames still bite my thigh and my ribs crack where your wheels wind. 

- From Her Kind by Anne Sexton

salt

via aubreyrd

a truth

If you ever find yourself in the wrong story, leave.
- Mo Willems

wind that whips peaks into his hair

I told it to my sister then, told her I can’t see pain around his face but skin always has a story.  Who was the last one to touch his back while he slept & why does skin have to be such an invisible map? I want the truth before I run too far.  I want to know nothing but what I tell myself.  I want cliffs to yearn for the pieces they lose.  I want breath strong enough to rebuild the island in my chest.  I want to watch him walk away while someone else walks towards me, a gust of bluff grass, a sky untouched.

raise high the roof beam

I have scars on my hands from touching certain people
- J.D. Salinger

Animals

"Animals don't behave like men," he said. "If they have to fight, they fight; and if they have to kill, they kill. But they don't sit down and set their wits to work to devise ways of spoiling other creatures' lives and hurting them. They have dignity and animality."

- Richard Adams, Watership Down

to the island

may the wolves

 I wanted to write “stay”
on your sides, surround
your bed with oceans
of salt. I hope he folds you
into a fox, loves you
like a splintered arrow,
brandishes the kill
of your lips. May the bouquet
of your hips wither.
May the wolves
forget your name.

- J. Bradley 

love wild

Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.
- African proverb

(Image: Lion drawing by JuRo on Etsy)

this is what really happened

I am the one who took you inside & wrote you down.

embroidered twitter 'poetry'

by Iviva Olenick

with memory of taste

but even when sleeping you could feel
him traveling 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
- from For Women who are Difficult to Love by Warsan Shire

an island never sleeps

How like an island we are in love encouraging
moss & like an island we are barely moving Just
to exist takes much concentration & like an island
in love we have a house in our two imaginations &
they intersect It strengthens the house & our feelings
Unlike an island we wake up An island never sleeps
That is its duty & ours to remain in love barely moving
We do not want to disturb the house Do not want it
to fall into the ocean that is always so nearby It surrounds us & is moving Like an island the ocean does not see us or care why though we persist in loving it at one rate or another & are waking close together in the dark

- "How Like An Island" by Heather Christie

the unsayable

Every poem holds the unspeakable inside it. The unsayable... The thing that you can't really say because it's too complicated. It's too complex for us. Every poem has that silence deep in the center of it.

- Marie Howe via Royal Quiet Deluxe