let me stay tender-hearted, despite despite despite

“the enormous / hocus of your trembling pocus” — Chen Chen . . . This poem appeared in Split This Rock, 2023. Shared here with deep gratitude.

https://t.co/R53eDcyQCo

(Flirting) Can i see your receipts? The items in your trashcan? Your search history? The fragments of the life you’ve lived when not performing?

full poem ::

Sometimes living feels like this. You live your life, but the context is missing. You think it’s the context that you need. But when it arrives, there’s too much story and violence. —Victoria Chang, from "No. 21"

maybe it’s bc i had an awful experience, but it annoys me when a show/movie is all, look how easy it is to come out now, everyone’s so accepting, why is the queer person worried lol. i mean, while some things have improved (for some people), homophobia is still very much a thing

thinking again about this astonishing Mary Ruefle erasure of Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"

the weirdness of Nouns

people places and things are being real weird to me rn

true happiness is found in an used book of strange poems

for christmas i’d like to be understood

You’re only as cool as the largest tree you’ve seen

i like feeling lonely, then newly in the world through my solitude. i like listening to and looking at the world in my own ways. i like finding out what i'm really thinking & feeling

i like my alone time. my listen to sad music time. my read sad poems time. my weep time and private giggle time. my writing mornings. my longing, dreaming, and thinking afternoons. my hello interior world nights

There is no one way to. Love be nimble with your. Desire love as big as you. —Michelle Peñaloza, from “To My Little One (and Their Little One and Their Little One) Long After I Am Gone”

time to cultivate an aura of mystery about myself to myself, i know too much

... these songs I've built from things too difficult to speak of —Carl Phillips, from "Fist and Palm"

saw a man today… a beautiful man… running through the swirling snow… to chipotle

time to pen my magnum opus, Loaves of Ass

Why did I flinch? I loved you. —James Merrill, from "The Mad Scene"