Alison Rose > Recent Status Updates

It's
the sunlight
so rich you could lift it
in a tin cup--fill it with sky--take a swallow
of glowing and sing.

6.
Winter wheat
stalks bent: red
bows fiddle sky.

7.
Crows
on that telephone line: restless necklace black laughing
pearls.

8.
Magpie
pecking a snowbank:
poemless page &
spilled inkwell.

Their moon peeled a panicked eye, goggled
blind as they ran. Headlights froze them, twin moonbeams
ran them down, tufts of their dreams tangled in thickets
of border tumbleweeds.

'Where--are we?' I coughed, blinking my watering eyes.
'The great cesspool into which all loungers and idlers are irresistibly drained,' said the Librarian, coming to a halt at the nearest corner.
'Florida?' I guessed.

[LOL been there, can confirm]

...in her head blossoms a vision of the peninsula--field-boundary walls that undulate over every bluff & hollow, the water lilies that crowd into wet ditches in early summer, the surface of the lough that quilts itself in a breeze, the cows that turn their large eyes upon you, the darkness that rises up from the hills at dusk. The music she plays is the land: it summons it, it conjures it here, to this street corner.

[hot damn, this is wonderful]

He watches as an arm—which must be his b/c there is his jersey sleeve, his shirt cuff—extends over the pool as the fingers uncurl. The medallion drops, turning&turning, flashing gold in the remaining light, the face of the saint w/halo of stars appearing&disappearing. There is a discreet gulping sound as the well receives it, & Liam watches it tumble into obscurity, swallowed by the depths, never to be seen again

As she watches the arc of the ball, hears the shouts and exhortations of the boys, the knowledge that something unusual, something unaccountable is happening in her house spreads through her, like damp through a wall, leaving a trail of blackened spores in its wake.

It is stirring, it is stretching wide its fanged jaws. Tomás knows this atrocious creature and he wants nothing more than to grab it by the neck and throttle it with his bare hands if it dares come any nearer.

It is, of course, hunger.

But imagine the conflict of feeling that kept him silent. She was bent on confession, and he dreaded hearing her confession. Against his better will, he shrank from the task that was laid on him: he wished, and yet rebuked the wish as cowardly, that she could bury her secrets in her own bosom. He was not a priest. He dreaded the weight of this woman's soul flung upon his own with imploring dependence.

That his wife should have more inclination to another man's society than to his own would not pain him; what he required was that she should be as fully aware as she would have been of a locked hand-cuff, that her inclination was helpless to decide anything in contradiction with his resolve.

[men have been trash since the dawn of time]

'I said, let my body dwell in poverty, and my hands be as the hands of the toiler; but let my soul be as a temple of remembrance where the treasures of knowledge enter and the inner sanctuary is hope.'

No chemical process shows a more wonderful activity than the transforming influence of the thoughts we imagine to be going on in another.

Was it alone the closeness of this fulfillment which made her heart flutter? Or was it some dim forecast, the insistent penetration of suppressed experience, mixing the expectation of a triumph with the dread of a crisis? Hers was one of the natures in which exultation inevitably carries an infusion of dread ready to curdle and declare itself.

[Gwendolen, girly pop -- you've got an anxiety disorder]

There is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms.

Who cannot imagine the bitterness of a first suspicion that something in this object of complete love was not quite right? Children demand that their heroes should be fleckless, and easily believe them so; perhaps a first discovery to the contrary is hardly a less revolutionary shock to a passionate child than the threatened downfall of habitual beliefs which makes the world seem to totter for us in maturer life.

...but--heaven help us all!--we are often unable to act on our certainties; our objection to a contrary issue (were it possible) is so strong that it rises like a spectral illusion between us and our certainty; we are rationally sure that the blind-worm cannot bite us mortally, but it would be so intolerable to be bitten, and the creature has a biting look--we decline to handle it.

And thinking of them in these moments, one is tempted to that futile sort of wishing--if only things could have been a little otherwise then, so as to have been greatly otherwise after!

Who supposes that it is an impossible contradiction to be superstitious and rationalizing at the same time?

'It's about my sister,' she whispered. 'It seems her labor has started.'
She had never seen the earl look so utterly taken aback. 'It's too early,' he said.
'Apparently the baby doesn't think so.'
'But...this is off-schedule.' The earl seemed genuinely baffled that his child would have failed to consult the calendar before arriving.

[men have always been thus]

Matthew groaned inwardly. He hated games that served no purpose other than to make fools out of the participants.

[SAME, Matthew. Same.]

Books, books...the mere sight of one had come to represent his daughter's embarrassing failure on the marriage market.

[hell yeah]

Adults didn't believe in her bad moods or her sarcasm. All her weapons, which I so admired, hardly produced the effect their sharp points deserved. This insensibility disappointed Eleanor, though it likewise permitted her to wield those weapons more brazenly.

We walked home from dinner inefficiently, unwilling to acquiesce to the universe's disinterest in our pleasure. It was such a lusciously golden evening, only a week before the summer solstice, the boundaries of daylight near their loosest of the year. The sun wouldn't set until after nine, the sidewalk still warm to the palm I laid on its dimpled surface to check.

[dang, giving me teenage summertime nostalgia]

I was aware that I greatly enjoyed looking at Eleanor, but the nature of that looking was then still obscure to me.

[replace Eleanor with Suyen, Adrienne, Emma, and tag me next time, jeez]

Does it matter if the money comes from a hand soaked in pity, just as long as it comes?

[dang, I really hope Wayne gets dead at some point]

[Whyyyyyyy didn't this dumb cop question why Wayne would have brought his supposed daughter's birth certificate and Social Security card with them to the cabin??? They're only going to be there for a few weeks, what on Earth would be the reason to bring all of your personal ID docs with you? The moment Wayne first mentioned them, I was like WHAT WHY but this idiot cop is just like, okay cool.]

[I'm enjoying this but FFS can we get one damn novel where a character who doesn't wanna be pregnant and says she's getting an abortion actually GETS THE DAMN ABORTION why does every book seem to be either subtly or overtly anti-choice? Maybe she changes her mind again and does get one but right now I'm irritated AF. My bet is she ends up miscarrying which in this context bolsters the anti-choice vibe.]