Roses of Yesteryear by Lucien Pissarro (1863 - 1944)

deux face the two-headed calf, born february 28th 2024 at breaux farm in louisiana. as of march 12th, she's two weeks old and starting to be able to lift her head up and stand for a few seconds at a time!

Two-Headed Calf by Laura Gilpin


Tomorrow when the farm boys find this
freak of nature, they will wrap his body
in newspaper and carry him to the museum.

But tonight he is alive and in the north
field with his mother. It is a perfect
summer evening: the moon rising over
the orchard, the wind in the grass. And
as he stares into the sky, there are
twice as many stars as usual.*

* all four of deux face's eyes are functional, so there really are twice as many stars for her :)

"We people have enough trouble from the state without establishing another one and becoming like the old bandits. You want to come up with a new, Jewish state. No, I think that the task of the Jews [...] is to demolish and make a furnace of the states." -emma goldman, 1907

[I who am highly homosexual…]


by Hans Lodeizen (1924-1950)

I who am highly homosexual
(Or so they say) will show
What truly is natural
And live like a hand caressing
The water in a bathtub.

Because who cares if I’m good
Or evil as long as
I can give everyone my wrist
And say feel this, I’m alive.

If I can be the small
Thunder with the
Hidden bolts of lightning
That send the swimmers running
From the beach to the guesthouse —
It is five o’clock in the afternoon.

If I can be the satin
Between the symbols
Of skyscrapers
A wise smile that says
Better than not yet is
Not ever.
If I can greet the rain
In his car

If I can wash myself
In the shower
If I can say
I am Hans Lodeizen good
Or evil I am in love
Without blushing a cherry orchard
For all the people.

january
even though your suffering feels eternal, unrelenting, the new year is full of promise, and it is coming fast.

(carmen maria machado, in the dream house)

mel2173 on tumblr [deactivated], "Alaska trip 12"
And because you are one of a kind, the house knows
you. When you cry out,
the lights flicker, ghostly blue and ragged.
When she says you are shut off,
the light switches nod their white tiny
heads. Tiles creak yes beneath her
edicts — something bad must have happened
to make you this way, the way
where you don't want her. But the windows
rattle, disagree. In their honeyed,
blindless light, they see it — something bad
is happening.

— Leah Horlick, "Ghost House"

(re-) read this month: in the dream house by carmen maria machado

* edit march '24: moved the quotes from this section to /log/florilegium!

december

top tracks of 2023:

Eat Your Young by Hozier

Headfirst Slide Into Cooperstown On A Bad Bet by Fall Out Boy

DESTROYA by My Chemical Romance

Why I Am Not Coming In To Work Today
Jess Zimmerman, December 17 2013

Dear employers,

I will have to take the day off today because:

☐ It’s December and the streets are papier-mached with wet bronze leaves and it’s so dark outside that the cars have their headlights on at 3pm

☐ I have recently been through a breakup, or I have been through a breakup at any time in my life really, and I woke up today with the absolute conviction that I will never be loved again

☐ A dog looked at me

☐ I got a text from someone for whom I feel a mix of concern and frustration and recognition and longing that is both more and less than romance

☐ Someone made a joke about dead pets meeting you in heaven

☐ Daylight savings time

☐ I passed a knot of flowers that were so bright they glowed through the dim grey water of the day and when was anything in my life last that luminous?

☐ Girls are too pretty

☐ For the first time I genuinely comprehend that there is not enough time to have all the lives I wanted

☐ I accidentally listened to Leonard Cohen

 

I am submitting the following documentation:

☐ A scrap of an old lover’s favorite flannel shirt

☐ Trembling cupped hands full of rainwater

☐ Light angling over the face of a brownstone at 4 on a winter afternoon

☐ A blunt-edged ticket stub from a movie of which I remember nothing except how soft her hands were

☐ A crumbling copy of my favorite novel from childhood

☐ The universe

☐ The peachy glow of a sodium lamp far ahead down an icy pitch-dark path

 

I think I just need to:

☐ Stare at a cup of tea held in nerveless fingers and slowly leaching heat

☐ Watch the sun glow ruby through the dogwood leaves until I regain some capacity to be comforted by beauty

☐ Read old emails from someone who loved me because he knew nothing

☐ Move to Omaha without telling anyone and find work as a sympathetic bartender named Roxy

☐ Learn to live alongside the fundamental meaningless of existence, not just mine but everyone’s

☐ Get a drastic haircut

☐ Listen to Tegan and Sara’s “Heartthrob” on repeat for 24 hours

☐ Scream into a pillow until my throat feels like it’s going to split

 

I will be back to work once:

☐ I can get out of this empty bathtub

☐ It is spring

☐ Someone gorgeous has brought me warm milk

☐ The consequences of being terribly drunk start to seem more grim than the consequences of not being terribly drunk

☐ I have watched every episode of Key & Peele

 

Sincerely,

________

 

podcast recommendation: behind the bastards' holiday non-bastard episodes on aaron swartz

podcast recommendation: cool people who did cool stuff's episodes on israeli and international solidarity with palestinian struggle

november
note / trigger warning: this month's scrapbook has some things dealing with the ongoing genocide in palestine; it feels impossible to discuss about anything at all without discussing that, right now.

Anne Boyer, in her resignation as poetry editor of The New York Times Magazine:

"I have resigned as poetry editor of the New York Times Magazine.

The Israeli state’s U.S.-backed war against the people of Gaza is not a war for anyone. There is no safety in it or from it, not for Israel, not for the United States or Europe, and especially not for the many Jewish people slandered by those who claim falsely to fight in their names. Its only profit is the deadly profit of oil interests and weapon manufacturers. The world, the future, our hearts—everything grows smaller and harder from it. This is not only a war of missiles and land invasions. It is the ongoing devastation of the people of Palestine, people who have resisted throughout decades of occupation, forced dislocation, deprivation, surveillance, siege, imprisonment, and torture.

Because our status quo is self-expression, sometimes all artists have left is to refuse. So I refuse. I won’t write about poetry amidst the ‘reasonable’ tones of those who aim to acclimatize us to this unreasonable suffering. No more ghoulish euphemisms. No more sanitized hell-words. No more warmongering lies.

If this resignation leaves a hole in the news the size of poetry, then that is the true shape of the present."

You have to fill the tank. You have to move your body and get out and look at things. You have to talk to people and eat strange food, travel if you can, watch movies with subtitles, listen to music outside of your habits, go to art galleries and concerts, do things you're bad at. You have to challenge yourself, keep learning new things, participate. And all of these things fall under the umbrella of 'Stay curious.' And you have to have fun. My housemate is being fussy with me today because I am talking to the dogs in Spanish about how my father fought in the clone wars. Sometimes I am ridiculous, but sometimes he is joyless.

-Richard Siken, in conversation with Thomas Hobohm

Antizionist Abecedarian


Sam Sax

after you've finished 
building your missiles & after your borders  
collapse under the weight of their own split   
databases 
every worm in this
fertile & cursed
ground will be its own country. 
home never was a place in dirt or even
inside the skin but rather 
just exists in language. let me explain. my people 
kiss books as a form of prayer. if dropped we 
lift them to our lips & 
mouth an honest & uncomplicated apology—
nowhere on earth belongs to us.
once a man welcomed me home as i entered the old city so i
pulled out a book of poems to show him my papers—my  
queer city of paper—my people's ink 
running through my blood. 
settlers believe land can be possessed—
they carve their names into firearms &
use this to impersonate the dead—we are
visitors here on earth. 
who but men blame the angels for the wild 
exceptionalism of men?
yesterday a bird flew through an airport & i watched that border
zone collapse under its basic wings.

[source]
this aligns with a lot of thoughts i've been having recently about my own jewish identity. just before the pandemic, i was taking an antifascist yiddish class, and that's the part of my heritage i treasure: the wealth of music, art, theater, etc that have come from jewish diaspora, when we choose to hang onto our jewishness and not assimilate into imperialism, standard-european-whiteness, nationalism, etc.

sunset in boston, on the way to the art book fair.

loveliness is... the sustenance of life! (from witch hat atelier)