Helen, you look like a new wound tonight. Your lips rubbed raw by one thirsty for your skin. Helen, the red you wear begs you for mercy. Your cloak of blood brings even the night to shame. I cannot speak the language that asks for you to take it in its mouth. I know […]
Tag: love story
Your name is zikr
“Shy goddess, My love, my one. Your name is zikr – My chest tightens.” Love replies, “It tightens. You should open quietly, to let the birds out. Hear yourself.”
My body sends you letters
I miss you. From the rumble inside my gut I miss you. From the wince and gasping ache for your heat, I miss you. From between my tendons, from the twitch of my muscle, from the creak of my aging bones, I miss you. From the soft dark of my hot heart, the steady rise […]
Postcards from Istanbul /6
“She inspired you, you loved her and sang of her; her task was done.” – Franz Liszt in a letter to Hector Berlioz, 1854 The give of a soft pear surrendering to my teeth. The burst of plum in my mouth; juice dribbling down my chin onto my helpless blue shirt. The tickle of […]
Postcards from Istanbul /5
“Or give me back one shred from our hundreds of days – a forgotten word, or look – that I might lie here counting them, like sheep, waiting out the dark.” – Greg Johnson, Insomnia Dear, sweet one. Gratitude today for the precious few moments I received to see you. Your face that I […]
Postcards from Istanbul /4
“When I met you, you were both for me: the sensual and the spiritual. The two can never separate…” – Paul Celan to Ingeborg Bachmann Paris, 31 Oct 1957 Precious, precious one. The day closes on me again. I am left wondering just how little life is and how fleeting our time on earth. […]
Postcards from Istanbul /3
“When I feel like being with her I almost prefer not being with her So as not to have to leave her afterwards.” – Fernando Pessoa My precious one, Today my heart has been with only you. I miss you more. All this beauty I see fades before the way your face glows in my […]
Postcards from Istanbul /2
“To write words I put a symbol in place of an absent sound. To write the words ‘I love you’ requires a further, analogous replacement, one that is much more painful in its implication. Your absence from the syntax of my life is not a fact to be changed by written words.” – Anne Carson […]
Book Review: As Meat Loves Salt by Maria McCann
As Meat Loves Salt by Maria McCann My rating: 5 of 5 stars How do you write about a book like this? Wait. Let me take a breath. Then a step back. Then another. We begin again. When I read Hanya Yanagihara’s, “A Little Life”, I scarcely believed, I would find another book that moved […]
Book Review: Pages for You by Sylvia Brownrigg
Pages for You by Sylvia Brownrigg My rating: 4 of 5 stars A lover told me to read this. A lover just like Anne. Sophisticated. Unattainable. Impossibly beautiful. I desisted for a while. Months. Read it, she said. “Read it. You’re all over it.” Now I have read it and I understand why this book […]
