''Horror can steal into the mind via all the senses. There’s the sound of the little meaningful chuckle in the locked dark room, the sight of half a caterpillar in your forkful of salad, the curious smell from the lodger’s bedroom, the taste of slug in the cauliflower cheese. Touch doesn’t normally get a look-in.''
— Terry Pratchett
“The Italian philosopher Vico had this theory that time moves more in a spiral than it does in a line. He believes that’s why we repeat ourselves, including our tragedies, and that if we are more faithful to this movement, we can move away from the epicenter through distance and time, but we have to confront it every time. I’ve been thinking about trauma—how it’s repetitive, and how we recreate it, and how memory is fashioned by creation. Every time we remember, we create new neurons, which is why memory is so unreliable. I thought, “Well if the Greek root for ‘poet’ is ‘creator,’ then to remember is to create, and, therefore, to remember is to be a poet.” I thought it was so neat. Everyone’s a poet, as long as they remember.”
— Ocean Vuong
For when I found the throneroom
festooned with pelvis bones,
the twin-fingered god on whose nether lip I hung
a kiss, a crape-gartered barb,
was you — you the pursued, yours
the bull’s head draped with fragrant lash-black hair.
— Peter Kline, from Minotaur
…but blushes well became him; like the bloom
of rosy apples hanging in the sun,
or painted ivory, or when the moon
glows red beneath her pallor and the gongs
resound in vain to rescue her eclipse.
— Ovid, from Metamorphoses (Salmacis and Hermaphroditus)
I fell toward the pulse in your thighs,
toward the cool flamingo of your slip
fluttering past your knees–
Out of God’s mouth I fell
like a piece of ripe fruit
toward your deepening shadow.
— Mary Szybist, from Incarnadine
They asked: How would you like your death?
Blue, like stars pouring from a window. Would you like more wine?
-Mahmoud Darwish
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