Lori Morgan

“Beauty is a problem in that it imparts a kind of hope.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Min kamp 6

“You’re an animal, Sibling Dex. You are not separate or other. You’re an animal. And animals have no purpose. Nothing has a purpose. The world simply is.”
― Becky Chambers, A Psalm for the Wild-Built

“Writing a poem is like trying to halt a supertanker by holding a dandelion up to it. You can laugh at the frivolity of it. You can ridicule the person for doing such a thing. But—and I’m not saying this makes you one of them—when you laugh at poets, you laugh alongside tyrants. You are standing next to the powerful and the angry and the rich, and you might as well be a bully too, laughing at the weak person cutting snowflakes out of tissue paper. Yes, you are right. But is right everything you want to be?”
― Nick Jaina, Hitomi

“You Reading This, Be Ready

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?

Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect that you carry
wherever you go right now? Are you waiting
for time to show you some better thoughts?

When you turn around, starting here, lift this
new glimpse that you found; carry into evening
all that you want from this day. This interval you spent
reading or hearing this, keep it for life—

Whatever can anyone give you greater than now,
starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?”
― William Stafford, Ask Me: 100 Essential Poems of William Stafford