Reputation3ra - All Our Yesterdays

“Somebody says draw a map. Populate it with the incidents of your childhood. Mark the spot where the lake receded after a winter of light snow. The stairs on which someone slapped you. The place where the family dog hung itself by jumping over the back fence while still on the dog run, hours later its body like a limp flag on a windless day. Draw a map, someone says. Let yourself remember. In the refugee camp a hundred thousand strong draw the stony outcrop from which you could no longer see the plume of smoke that was your village. Draw a square for the bathroom stall where Grandpa hid each day in order to eat his one egg free from the starving eyes of his classmates, an X for the courthouse where you and he were naturalized, a broken line for the journey. Draw a map, Jon says. Let it be your way into the poem. Here is where that plane filled with babies crashed that I was not on. Here is where I was ashamed. On the second floor at Pranash University the people wait their turn. Have you drawn your map, Jon asks. He has rolled up his sleeves. Forty-five minutes to noon the Prince stands up and says that the monks must be excused. We watch them file out, saffron robes as if their bodies have burst into blossom. Draw a map. Fly halfway around the globe. Here is the room next to the library where you realize how poor your tradition is, the local people with poetic forms still in use that date back to the time of Christ. Tell us about your map. Explain how these wavy lines represent the river, this rectangle the school-turned-prison where only seven escaped with their lives. This is my map. This star the place where I sat in a roomful of people among whom not one was not touched by genocide. Every last map resplendent with death though nobody knows where their loved ones lie buried. How many times can I appropriate a story that is not mine to tell? The woman stands up and says she is not a poet, that she doesn’t have the words. She points to a triangle on a piece of paper. Here is the spot where she found human bones in the well of her childhood home, and how her mother told her don’t be afraid because it was not the work of wild animals.”

— “Loose Strife,” by Quan Barry

i smell so good you gonna moan a little when u hug me

succession is a great show

“walking down your authentic path can be one of the loneliest roads to travel on because the longer you’re on it, the more you realize that only a select few will be compatible with who you are with no mask on.”

— billy chapata

– Emily Dickinson, from Manuscript #842

Logan telling Shiv "You're marrying a man fathoms beneath you because you don't want to risk being betrayed" except Tom does betray her precisely because he know she thinks he's beneath her, ending the season with a hand on her shoulder and his face out of frame exactly like the picture of Shiv and Logan in the opening credits. I'm throwing myself into the sun.

can you even tell this is one of my favourite poems

“In My Place”. Amandine Guihard by Noémi Ottilia Szabo for Blanc Magazine April 2020

Megan talking about the reaction to W.A.P in her documentary

season one episode twelve, “later” / francis forever by mitski / boot theory by richard siken / three women by sylvia plath / making amends by @holly-warbs / the cart by mary ruefle / love as depicted by subwayhands on instagram / season six episode sixteen, “nice while it lasted”