Emmeline

“I am listening in that fine space between desire and always the grave stillness before choice.”
― Audre Lorde, The Marvelous Arithmetics of Distance: Poems, 1987-1992

“When I think of finishing the work, when I think of the finished work, a great sadness overtakes me, a sadness paradoxically like joy. The circumstances of doing put away, the being of it takes possession, like a tenant in a rented house. Where are you now, homeless heart? Caught in a hinge, or secreted behind drywall, like your nameless predecessors now that they have been given names? Best not to dwell on our situation, but to dwell in it is deeply refreshing. Like a sideboard covered with decanters and fruit. As a box kite is to a kite. The inside of stumbling. The way to breath. The caricature on the blackboard.”
― John Ashbery, Quick Question: New Poems

“One need not smoke
to inhale. The air
in bars holds its
load of tars in stale suspension.
Also jails. Jails
are a prison for
the person who
abhors smoke.
But happily
gorgeous thought
also hangs around
like that: you can
walk through a mist
of Brodsky and contact-
exist.”
― Kay Ryan, Erratic Facts

“Stationary"

The moon did not become the sun.
It just fell on the desert
in great sheets, reams
of silver handmade by you.
The night is your cottage industry now,
the day is your brisk emporium.
The world is full of paper.

Write to me.”
― Agha Shahid Ali, The Veiled Suite: The Collected Poems