are there any poems you have on home, if its ok to ask? i feel homesick for a home beyond my reach and thought i could come to you.
“I was in a place where nobody knew my heart even a little bit.”
— Carol Rifka Brunt, Tell the Wolves I’m Home
“it’s as if I had to go back home on foot, alone, barefoot not knowing where far away, everybody else went long ago”
— Hélène Cixous, Hyperdream (tr. Beverly Bie Brahic)
“[ON LOSING LOVE]: This is the model I propose. You are arriving home and as you approach the garage you try to work your routine magic. Nothing happens; the doors remain closed. You do it again. Again nothing. At first puzzled, then anxious, then furious with disbelief, you sit in the driveway with the engine running; you sit there for weeks, months, for years, waiting for the doors to open. But you are in the wrong car, in front of the wrong garage, waiting outside the wrong house. One of the troubles is this: the heart isn't heart shaped.”
— Julian Barnes, A History of the World in 10 and 1/2 Chapters
— James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room
“‘I’m homesick all the time,’ she said, still not looking at him. ‘I just don’t know where home is. There’s this promise of happiness out there. I know it. I even feel it sometimes. But it’s like chasing the moon - just when I think I have it, it disappears into the horizon. I grieve and try to move on, but then the damn thing comes back the next night, giving me hope of catching it all over again.”
— Sarah Addison Allen, The Girl Who Chased the Moon
“Wickedness has leaked into the home I made, / and I want to burn it down. Sister, tell me / how you stand the murderous fury. You there / still singing, I crave demolishing, to eat / explosives.”
— Ada Limón, Bright Dead Things; “Home Fires”
“At the core of all sighs is a name, a stone from the body’s last lost home.”
— Karen Solie, from “Days Inn,” Short Haul Engine
“To ask “Where is home?” as if there is one answer. To write home in a poem, like a poem could be a home—is this happy or sad?”
— Chen Chen, from “Craft Capsule: On Becoming a Pop Star, I Mean, a Poet”
“Feeling what we all feel: home is a forgotten recipe, a spice we can find nowhere, a taste we can never reproduce, exactly.”
— Richard Blanco, from “Mexican Almuerzo in New England”
— Ross Gay, from Bringing the Shovel Down; “Because”
“I want to ask was there ever one / moment when all of it relented, / when rain and ocean and their own / sense of home were revealed to them / as one and the same?”
— Eavan Boland, from In a Time of Violence
“I: Why not take the shorter way home. HT: There is no shorter way home.”
— Anne Carson, from Men in the Off Hours; “Interview with Hara Tamiki (1950)”
all time ever does is pass and all i ever do is remember.
sue zhao / sexual devotion, nickie zimov / @ seashellronan / nomad, clairo / annihilation, jeff vandermeer / edward scissorhands (1990) / sky vance / dictionary of obscure sorrows / jonny, faye webster / the madman, kahlil gibran / may (2002) / the lonely city, olivia laing / punch and judy, elliott smith
when kafka said ‘you wouldn’t believe the kind of person I could become if you wanted it’ and when brontë said ‘if you ever looked at me with what I know is in you, I would be your slave’ and when Sartre said ‘if I’ve got to suffer it may as well be at your hands’
Certain words can change your brain forever and ever so you do have to be very careful about it.
—Yiwei Chai, The Jacaranda Years
Nikki Giovanni, from “Adulthood II”
another random epiphany i had on my drive home from the store was that things that are the most obvious often feel the most profound. i was looking at the sunset through my window. i was like “this is beautiful and it changes all the time so every sunset is a little different and also beautiful.” which led me to think “if you look at the earth from space, the clouds are never pink or blue or yellow or orange, they are just white and grey all the time. in space perhaps the sunsets are not very different or very beautiful.” which led me to think “the sunsets are only beautiful because i am so small.” which led me to think “so many things are only beautiful because i am so small, or if not only then they are at least much more beautiful than they might otherwise be, either because my vantage point of smallness allows me to see details that big things wouldn’t see, like when i see the flash of the sun at sunset with my little eyes on this big planet, or because my briefness finds vastness so incredible cuz it’s so much bigger than me, like when i sit under a very very old and very very tall tree.” and this was all somewhat obvious but it didn’t make the feeling of epiphany go away or diminish at all
i spend my days waiting. waiting for the water to boil and my tea to be ready. for spring to come back. for more daylight. the oil in the pan to heat up. a “hey i miss you” or “can you help me out for a second?” or “you want to hang out?” text. for my phone to finish charging. for good news. flowers on the table. the next hug. “hey, you got the job!”. waiting for the sun. to set. to rise. to see both. for summer to be around the corner. a good song. a falling star. a text back. i spend my time waiting to be remembered. i spend my time repeating that tomorrow will be better. tomorrow will be better. i spend my days waiting and waiting and waiting. i spend my days waiting unbearably.
the way ivan aivazovsky looks at the sea…i think…i think that’s what love looks like.
1. bathe by hailaker
2. art by maggie stephenson
3. ocean vuong, night sky with exit wounds
4. art by charlotte ager
5. banana yoshimoto, goodbye tsugumi