#105 - If you knew...
Photograph by Larry Sultan
If You Knew by Ellen Bass
What if you knew you’d be the last
to touch someone?
If you were taking tickets, for example,
at the theater, tearing them,
giving back the ragged stubs,
you might take care to touch that palm,
brush your fingertips
along the life line’s crease.
When a man pulls his wheeled suitcase
too slowly through the airport, when
the car in front of me doesn’t signal,
when the clerk at the pharmacy
won’t say Thank you, I don’t remember
they’re going to die.
A friend told me she’d been with her aunt.
They’d just had lunch and the waiter,
a young gay man with plum black eyes,
joked as he served the coffee, kissed
her aunt’s powdered cheek when they left.
Then they walked half a block and her aunt
dropped dead on the sidewalk.
How close does the dragon’s spume
have to come? How wide does the crack
in heaven have to split?
What would people look like
if we could see them as they are,
soaked in honey, stung and swollen,
reckless, pinned against time?
Other poems I enjoyed reading:
"Starting here, what do you want to remember?
How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?
What scent of old wood hovers, what softened
sound from outside fills the air?"
-from You reading this, be ready by William Stafford
"Now's a good time, before the night comes on,
To praise the loyalty of the vase of flowers
Gracing the parlor table, and the bowl of oranges,
And the book with freckled pages resting on the tablecloth.
To remark how these items aren't conspiring
To pack their bags and move to a place
Where stillness appears to more advantage."
-from Still Life by Carl Dennis
"The bee is not afraid of me,
I know the butterfly;
The pretty people in the woods
Receive me cordially.
The brooks laugh louder when I come,
The breezes madder play.
Wherefore, mine eyes, thy silver mists?
Wherefore, O summer's day?"
-The bee is not afraid of me by Emily Dickinson
Recommended Listening:
I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry - Yo La Tengo
Coldest Night Of The Year - Vashti Bunyan feat. Twice As Much
(David Bowie I Love You) Since I Was Six - Brian Jonestown Massacre
Links of the Week:
Chonky animals series by Annada Menon
Let it Out (Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh)
Heritage on the Edge (a collaboration between UNESCO and Google that highlights the problems posed by climate change to World Heritage sites)
15 Free Documentaries to Soothe the Mind
"Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants,"
-from Walt Whitman's Advice for a Kind and Authentic Life
Still Ill by Monique Jackson: a powerful visual diary about contracting Covid-19
Sign up: Chitthi Exchange (I'm amazed by the response to the penpal project I started a week ago, which already has over 900 participants! You can fill the form if you'd like to experience to joy of letter writing over the next few months! We don't have AI to ensure compatibility, but I've spent hours personally pairing the penpals friendships over the last week. :) )
Instagram Finds:
Wantshowasyoung (cutest models ever)
This is my newsletter #1
The first of many quarantine newsletters by different guest curators has been dispatched. I decided to send out the first one, and went a completely different route from this newsletter. You can check it out here.
Subscribe to the weekly newsletter at https://tinyletter.com/thisismynewsletter
Sleep tight, everybody!
-Rohini