… you fill me with terrible wonder … like the onset of madness.
Walter Benton (1904-1976), “This is My Beloved” (Entry November 15), published in 1943
Etikett: him with a capital h
“There’s nothing you can do to me I wouldn’t do to myself.”
— Nicole Dollanganger, Mean
i wear your homemade tattoos
all over my skin
you put your cigarettes out on me
they’re still sinking in
oh no , oh no. this wasn’t supposed to be a problem. i was supposed to stop feeling this about three months ago when it started. i was supposed to wake up and realize it was just a crush and i wasn’t falling. i was supposed to cut it out or slow it down or ignore it into silence.
oh no. oh no. pardon my appearance i’m trying to remodel. we’re in the back scrambling around trying to dump feelings out of windows. we’re in crisis. the water level’s rising.
you laugh and get close. and we got a problem.
they wanna break your heart
but it’s made of blood and tar
you carry all that suffering
like a gun between your arms
“I will angelize you
when I die.”— Velimir Khlebnikov, tr. by Gary Kern, from “Numbers,” written c. July 1912
My hunger for you…it is you, it is you at last, this is your hair, this is your mouth, this breath comes from your nostrils, the arms that I know are around me, this is your body’s warmth,
Thomas Mann, tr. by Willard R. Trask, from “The Black Swan,” wr. c. 1954
My heart will not deliver me from my memories…
Aimé Césaire, from “And The Dogs Were Silent,”
The Complete Poetry of Aimé Césaire
The Complete Poetry of Aimé Césaire
(Wesleyan University Press, 2017
beberequin 