(via writingsforwinter)
(via movelightly)
Kristina Hayes (via oofpoetry)
While in graduate school at the University of Houston, I supplemented my income by working as a writer in residence for Writers in the Schools (WITS). I was with WITS for three years, during which I visited third, fourth, and fifth grade classrooms, and worked with groups of students visiting the…
5420 Each time I’m asked to tell about myself, I find myself starting the same way: “My name is Kelsey and I’m nineteen..”
but what I’d really like to say is:
“My name means island of the ships but once
I found a translation that said I’m a burning shipwreck-
not a burning ship but a ship that has caught fire
after the wreckage and well, I’d say that’s more fitting.”
I’ve learned that people don’t have time for about me’s.
They need two things: a name and an indication you’re someone special.
The doctors, they want facts not details.
“I broke my leg when I was three, it’s a funny story actually-“
The right or the left?
Conversation over.
The teachers, they want interests, hobbies.
You’re sad, yes, but what do you like to do?
The adults are a spew of questions.
What school do you go to? What classes are you taking?
What do you plan on becoming? Got a boyfriend?
No, stop.
People my own age are the worst.
“I’m planning on an English degree with a concentration in creative writing.”
Yeah, aren’t we all. So how many times have you, you know,
done it?
I’m pulled apart, my interests travelling highway 2
my goals at a stop light at traffic hour,
my medical history on a billboard for the world to see.
But what about me?
Where’s the chance to say,
“I hang on to fistfuls of poetry like loose change in my pockets,
and I keep waiting for the day that the world turns upside down
so I can swim with the stars.
I’m not afraid of darkness, it’s a loneliness I can empathize with it.
It’s the blackholes like cigarette burns inside of me that get troublesome.
I walk through graveyards and read the dashes between years,
each a story I’ll never know. Sometimes I create my own.”
No one none of us know who we are anymore.
Kelsey Danielle, “I Was Told to Write and About Me and This is What Happened” (via pigmenting)
(via goldensutures)
Sonia Sanchez, from “Ballad” (via growing-orbits)
Dorothy Parker’s telegram to her editor.
This are my thoughts at almost every deadline, but especially with this novel. The story is finally where I want it, but there are still so many rough edges I want to cry. I want every syllable to be brilliant.
Never have done such hard night and day work never have so wanted anything to be good and all I have is a pile of paper covered with wrong words.
David gets turned in tomorrow, wrong words and all.
(PS: Thank God for copyedits.)
(Source: litquake, via printed-ink)
(via midnightlunacy)
Stanley Kunitz (via align)
(Source: theparisreview, via align)
Clementine von Radics (via commovente)
(via commovente)
