1. An amazing poem: Cat Moving Kittens by Austin Smith. That last line!

2. Very poetic, very haunting short story: Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnabar Island by Nibedita Sen.

3. Another amazing poem: Punic War IV by Sonya Taaffe.

4. A sem-serious article on broken legs in Anglo-Saxon England.

5. My favorite movie review blog just did a look back at 1997's Starship Troopers, and I really want to rewatch it now. Especially if anywhere was showing it on the big screen; it's absolutely a movie that requires popcorn and possibly also alcoholic milkshakes.

On Loving a Saudi Girl by Carina Yun

After your beloved leaves, you will take
a ten-hour red-eye flight back to America.
At baggage claim, you will wait for your bag
to drop onto the conveyer belt, then drag
the weight of Sultan Ahmed across the terminal–
the soumak rug, candlesticks, and pashmina scarves.
In Istanbul, muezzin will call out five
times a day from the minaret. It's heard
on loudspeaker in every house, and every storefront.
You will wake to morning adhan, not knowing
whether to repent for those moments spent with her.
What is it called when you are wrong to love?
In front of the airport, your mother will find you
soaked with rain. "What happened?" she will ask.
You won't speak. She will spring open your
father's green umbrella and hover.

Apotropaic Magic by Margaret Wack

I am the king's daughter slaughtered.

I am a thrall, enthralled, I charm the ocean

into calmness and surcease. I am

a witchwood, hazel woman

smooth as flesh, woven and crafted

and cast from the cliff.

I am a carven queen, a saint,

a pretty thing to bless the ship

with good luck and swift passage.

What do you hope to turn away?

You know that blood must bless the sea,

you people of the shores and crags

and salt-strewn settlements forget slowly:

the ceremony stands: I go before you as a sacrifice

and sink through brine and black water

and plant my feet upon a field

of blue-faced girls who bloom and snarl:

we are your legacy, your lineage, your litany,

the faces that will eat you when you drown.

Church Going by Philip Larkin

Once I am sure there's nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats, and stone,
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;
And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence.

Move forward, run my hand around the font.
From where I stand, the roof looks almost new -
Cleaned, or restored? Someone would know: I don't.
Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few
Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce
'Here endeth' much more loudly than I'd meant.
The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door
I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,
Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.

Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,
And always end much at a loss like this,
Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,
When churches will fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show,
Their parchment, plate and pyx in locked cases,
And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.
Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?

Or, after dark, will dubious women come
To make their children touch a particular stone;
Pick simples for a cancer; or on some
Advised night see walking a dead one?
Power of some sort will go on
In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;
But superstition, like belief, must die,
And what remains when disbelief has gone?
Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,

A shape less recognisable each week,
A purpose more obscure. I wonder who
Will be the last, the very last, to seek
This place for what it was; one of the crew
That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?
Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,
Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff
Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?
Or will he be my representative,

Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt
Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground
Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt
So long and equably what since is found
Only in separation - marriage, and birth,
And death, and thoughts of these - for which was built
This special shell? For, though I've no idea
What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,
It pleases me to stand in silence here;

A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognized, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.

Not With Flowers by Deepthi Gopal

The honeysuckle that you did not love

will twine its tourniquet around your grave, engrave

its own story in the space where yours belongs, seep

through every crack and crevice till even the stone

forgets your name; the hummingbirds will visit

but they will not care for you. I write this to you

because when I'm done I will be carried out to sea,

poured into the river’s mouth in a torrent of benedictions,

and you, buried weed-choked, will never hold me.

I write this to you in defence of the green growing things.

I write this to you to fill the spaces you left in your wake

where the honeysuckle once grew.

Inland by Edna St Vincent Millay

People that build their houses inland,
   People that buy a plot of ground
Shaped like a house, and build a house there,
   Far from the sea-board, far from the sound

Of water sucking the hollow ledges,
   Tons of water striking the shore,—
What do they long for, as I long for
   One salt smell of the sea once more?

People the waves have not awakened,
   Spanking the boats at the harbour’s head,
What do they long for, as I long for,—
   Starting up in my inland bed,

Beating the narrow walls, and finding
   Neither a window nor a door,
Screaming to God for death by drowning,—
   One salt taste of the sea once more?

Storm by Ellen Bryant Voigt

one minute a slender pine indistinguishable from the others

the next its trunk horizontal still green the jagged stump

a nest for the flickers


one minute high wind and rain the skies

lit up the next a few bright winking stars the lashing of the brook

one minute an exaltation in the apple trees the shadblow trees

the next white trash on the ground new birds

or the same birds crowding the feeder

one minute the children were sleeping in their beds

you got sick you got well you got sick

the lilac bush we planted is a tree the cat creeps past

with something in her mouth she’s hurrying down to where

the culvert overflowed one minute bright yellow

marsh marigolds springing up the next

the farmer sweeps them into his bales of hay

Winter by Kahlil Gibran

Come close to me, oh companion of my full life;
Come close to me and let not Winter’s touch
Enter between us. Sit by me before the hearth,
For fire is the only fruit of Winter.

Speak to me of the glory of your heart, for
That is greater than the shrieking elements
Beyond our door.
Bind the door and seal the transoms, for the
Angry countenance of the heaven depresses my
Spirit, and the face of our snow-laden fields
Makes my soul cry.

Feed the lamp with oil and let it not dim, and
Place it by you, so I can read with tears what
Your life with me has written upon your face.

Bring Autumn’s wine. Let us drink and sing the
Song of remembrance to Spring’s carefree sowing,
And Summer’s watchful tending, and Autumn’s
Reward in harvest.

Come close to me, oh beloved of my soul; the
Fire is cooling and fleeing under the ashes.
Embrace me, for I fear loneliness; the lamp is
Dim, and the wine which we pressed is closing
Our eyes. Let us look upon each other before
They are shut.
Find me with your arms and embrace me; let
Slumber then embrace our souls as one.
Kiss me, my beloved, for Winter has stolen
All but our moving lips.

You are close by me, My Forever.
How deep and wide will be the ocean of Slumber,
And how recent was the dawn!

Written by Himself by Gregory Pardlo

I was born in minutes in a roadside kitchen a skillet

whispering my name. I was born to rainwater and lye;

I was born across the river where I

was borrowed with clothespins, a harrow tooth,

broadsides sewn in my shoes. I returned, though

it please you, through no fault of my own,

pockets filled with coffee grounds and eggshells.

I was born still and superstitious; I bore an unexpected burden.

I gave birth, I gave blessing, I gave rise to suspicion.

I was born abandoned outdoors in the heat-shaped air,

air drifting like spirits and old windows.

I was born a fraction and a cipher and a ledger entry;

I was an index of first lines when I was born.

I was born waist-deep stubborn in the water crying

ain’t I a woman and a brother I was born

to this hall of mirrors, this horror story I was

born with a prologue of references, pursued

by mosquitoes and thieves, I was born passing

off the problem of the twentieth century: I was born.

I read minds before I could read fishes and loaves;

I walked a piece of the way alone before I was born.

Over and Over Stitch by Jorie Graham

Late in the season the world digs in, the fat blossoms
hold still for just a moment longer.   
Nothing looks satisfied,
but there is no real reason to move on much further:
this isn’t a bad place;   
why not pretend

we wished for it?
The bushes have learned to live with their haunches.   
The hydrangea is resigned
to its pale and inconclusive utterances.
Towards the end of the season
it is not bad

to have the body. To have experienced joy
as the mere lifting of hunger   
is not to have known it   
less. The tobacco leaves   
don’t mind being removed
to the long racks—all uses are astounding

to the used.
There are moments in our lives which, threaded, give us heaven—
noon, for instance, or all the single victories
of gravity, or the kudzu vine,
most delicate of manias,
which has pressed its luck

this far this season.
It shines a gloating green.
Its edges darken with impatience, a kind of wind.
Nothing again will ever be this easy, lives
being snatched up like dropped stitches, the dry stalks of daylilies   
marking a stillness we can’t keep.