Jess Rizkallah wrote this after rereading Ocean Vuong's Night Sky With Exit Wounds. Copy Of 9.9 Notebook Fragments Jess Rizkallah you know, i’m scared of everything but you can’t tell b/c i never!!! joke about it on the internet new rule: if you don’t write a luv poem abt it then it doesn’t exist & it’s probably just gas i am always searching for the moon. maybe instead of blood, i am full of moths. أنت القمر في حياتي TO DO:
summer solstice - when the sun yawns for a long time but its breath smells good summer solstice - when fireflies hatch from the empty wombs of bullet cases everything is softer unfolding from the tree trunk dusk of the throat / i wonder how many times arabic has had to let a lover down easy look at all the rooms i am look at all the windows opening and closing wind and wind and wind last night i had tears in my eyes about my jido afif but for the first time in months they were because of laughter jido wrote ghazals & still lives in the meter of them somewhere on the wind & wind & wind & i don’t agree that non brown folks approaching ghazals is an appropriation. i’m told by other brown folks that this is what i should believe, but i don’t. i want everyone to be so honest about their love. about their longing, to face it where it lives in the space between loss & the sun sometimes this is the only place love can live. i don’t know if this makes me complicit with the colonizers i don’t know if i care this is my privilege one day i will write a ghazal when it stops feeling like a windtunnel my love can’t write itself out of. الزهور تتفتح على لسانك * out of the corner of my eye, my arm keeps tricking me into thinking it’s on fire. i think it’s because of my new eyeliner but lately i always feel like my eyes were just crying even when i haven’t been crying the last few people i cried about will never know it. will never suspect. this makes me feel sneaky this makes me feel clever. this makes me feel sad. this makes me feel better than the alternative would. the alternative: my heart is two paper cranes i go to hand you one of them you smile but do not extend your hand the alternative: you do not water my plants when i am gone the alternative: all the windows closed the alternative: وفاة اسمي في فمك - - - - new rule: there should only be one month of summer & winter the rest should be fall & spring. i could never live on the west coast or any coast that keeps reminding my body that it’s a body & not an oak tree birch tree cedar dear massachusetts dept. of revenue: why is ur office in new york
please do not arrest me over 47 dollars. your money is on its way abdelhalim taught me that “tobah” means never again never again will i love you (that’s not guaranteed) never again will i call your name into the night (i never did that) instead i sing like grackles do under the high notes of bulbuls i ride the coattails of their stories at dusk when the fireflies distract from my ankles & no one watches that closely anyway is there anything scarier than that to finally stop to take a breath to find yourself alone a room with no wind forgive me for navel-gazing i just / want you / to know / that i love you so i keep singing. so i just keep singing.
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I struggled not to make my interaction "Someday, I Will Learn To Love Adam Stone" because I feel that is most of my poems these days. Instead, I took a different concept from Ocean Vuong's Night Sky With Exit Wounds. He has a poem called "Notebook Fragments" which contains a series of stanzas that might be from different poems he was working on an collaged together. This poem contains stanzas from interactions with Ocean's book, as well as other drafts of interactions that I ended up not using. The title is not related to Ocean's book, but from a story about adjective order in English writing and, specifically, JRR Tolkien's work, that keeps popping up in my Facebook feed this week. The Green Great Dragon
Adam Stone No more writing about speaking or silence Nothing that has disappeared was stolen Yes -- skin is an organ Yes -- an organ is also an instrument Yes nerves Yes chords Yes -- tickling is not just for keys Yes -- laughter is music Sure if the events we forget of order in they happened No which absolved we will not be The frequency beneath breath is common in the language where i was raised It's not about what you owe but how often you owe still Yes -- there is accidental consent No -- it does not lead to forgiveness an omission of yes )here is a list of all the dead celebrities you were sure would outlive you( Stop always writing about what you want to forget Burying your loss too close to the surface attracts predators |
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