Goodreads helps you follow your favorite authors. Be the first to learn about new releases!
Start by following Mark Leidner.
Showing 1-10 of 10
“Writing is beautiful, like putting on a gold suit and going to sleep in it.”
― The Angel in the Dream of Our Hangover
― The Angel in the Dream of Our Hangover
“Lovers are the coolest their hearts beat the best & they kiss magic as hell”
―
―
“So I told her that I loved her, not for telling me the thing she had told me, but for the courage involved in telling something like it, something that sad.”
― Beauty Was the Case That They Gave Me
― Beauty Was the Case That They Gave Me
“sometimes there is too much irony all piled up in the barn, and you have to / pitchfork another steaming pile of irony on top of it all, and you have to / pitchfork another, and another, and another / when the world is shit-streaked with irony that is when beauty will emerge / love is irony / purists sure hate farce / but pushing against things is the only possible way to live”
―
―
“A fortune teller long ago warned him he would die in Egypt, and she walks like an Egyptian.”
― Beauty Was the Case That They Gave Me
― Beauty Was the Case That They Gave Me
“The amount of muffin left stuck to the wrapper / when you open it / is the percent of your childhood / that was the way you remember it.”
― Returning the Sword to the Stone
― Returning the Sword to the Stone
“Having “Having a Coke with You” with You
You asked me if I knew the poem “Having a Coke with You”
I said I vaguely remembered it but didn’t really
so you recited it in its entirety. We were walking
from somewhere up by City Hall down toward South Street
and the whole time you were reciting it I was wondering
“Was that the last line of the poem?” after each line
and each time I thought that, I thought it even more
because as the poem got longer the fact that you were reciting it
from memory became incrementally harder to believe
until about two-thirds of the way through the poem
I stopped thinking about how long it was and just started listening
which I had been, but only a little, because of all that. Anyway
then I started listening to it completely, believing
the poem itself to be the sole reason you were reciting it
but as soon as you finished you started to talk about how
you used to think that that poem was just about how
liberatingly banal being in love with someone was
but then you said you’d started to think more recently
it was more about the idiocy of caring about art at all
when you could spend all that energy caring about someone
you loved instead, and you said you were wondering where
I stood on that question now that I had heard the poem
and I was as struck by the question as I was stunned
that you could so casually recite such a long good poem
and that you hadn't even recited it primarily to solicit
appreciation for your recitation so much as to ask
what I thought about what you had thought about it
then, versus how you thought about it now, and this was
when I knew I wanted to be with you forever.”
― Returning the Sword to the Stone
You asked me if I knew the poem “Having a Coke with You”
I said I vaguely remembered it but didn’t really
so you recited it in its entirety. We were walking
from somewhere up by City Hall down toward South Street
and the whole time you were reciting it I was wondering
“Was that the last line of the poem?” after each line
and each time I thought that, I thought it even more
because as the poem got longer the fact that you were reciting it
from memory became incrementally harder to believe
until about two-thirds of the way through the poem
I stopped thinking about how long it was and just started listening
which I had been, but only a little, because of all that. Anyway
then I started listening to it completely, believing
the poem itself to be the sole reason you were reciting it
but as soon as you finished you started to talk about how
you used to think that that poem was just about how
liberatingly banal being in love with someone was
but then you said you’d started to think more recently
it was more about the idiocy of caring about art at all
when you could spend all that energy caring about someone
you loved instead, and you said you were wondering where
I stood on that question now that I had heard the poem
and I was as struck by the question as I was stunned
that you could so casually recite such a long good poem
and that you hadn't even recited it primarily to solicit
appreciation for your recitation so much as to ask
what I thought about what you had thought about it
then, versus how you thought about it now, and this was
when I knew I wanted to be with you forever.”
― Returning the Sword to the Stone
“Love remains a fine wine / I'm always wasting by never drinking / or drinking way too much of way too quickly / so I can prove I'm dumb enough / to mean the stupid things I love to say.”
― Beauty Was the Case That They Gave Me
― Beauty Was the Case That They Gave Me
“Love castrates ambition / and I'm so stupid I'd rather be great than happy.”
― Beauty Was the Case That They Gave Me
― Beauty Was the Case That They Gave Me
“He is widespread poverty, sweeping corruption, and violence institutionalized to a degree unseen elsewhere in the western world, and she is a tiny Latin American nation.”
―
―
