stacie cassarino zero at the bone: "snowshow to otter creek" \\ secret garden
kofi
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midwest eclogue by Stacie Cassarino
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Stacie Cassarino, “Midwest Eclogue” [ID in ALT]
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Summer Solstice
by Stacie Cassarino
I wanted to see where beauty comes from
without you in the world, hauling my heart
across sixty acres of northeast meadow,
my pockets filling with flowers.
Then I remembered,
it’s you I miss in the brightness
and body of every living name:
rattlebox, yarrow, wild vetch.
You are the green wonder of June,
root and quasar, the thirst for salt.
When I finally understand that people fail
at love, what is left but cinquefoil, thistle,
the paper wings of the dragonfly
aeroplaning the soul with a sudden blue hilarity?
If I get the story right, desire is continuous,
equatorial. There is still so much
I want to know: what you believe
can never be removed from us,
what you dreamed on Walnut Street in
the unanswerable dark of your childhood,
learning pleasure on your own.
Tell me our story: are we impetuous,
are we kind to each other, do we surrender
to what the mind cannot think past?
Where is the evidence I will learn
to be good at loving?
The black dog orbits the horseshoe pond
for treefrogs in their plangent emergencies.
There are violet hills,
there is the covenant of duskbirds.
The moon comes over the mountain
like a big peach, and I want to tell you
what I couldn’t say the night we rushed
North, how I love the seriousness of your fingers
and the way you go into yourself,
calling my half-name like a secret.
I stand between taproot and treespire.
Here is the compass rose
to help me live through this.
Here are twelve ways of knowing
what blooms even in the blindness
of such longing. Yellow oxeye,
viper’s bugloss with its set of pink arms
pleading do not forget me.
We hunger for eloquence.
We measure the isopleths.
I am visiting my life with reckless plenitude.
The air is fragrant with tiny strawberries.
Fireflies turn on their electric wills:
an effulgence. Let me come back
whole, let me remember how to touch you
before it is too late.
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It’s right before you drive away:
our limbs still warm with sleep,
coffee sputtering out, the north
wind, your hips pressing me
hard against the table. I like it hard
because I need to remember this.
Stacie Cassarino, opening lines to In the kitchen
from here
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Dumb heart, come down from the walnut tree. / All the distance is ultimately a lie.
Stacie Cassarino, from "Northwest"
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“The Living at Dead Creek” - Stacie Cassarino
We are either too early or too late
when we set out across the cattail marsh-
lands looking for the Snow geese
I have promised you. It is colder
than I prepared for, wind gusts
pushing our bodies from behind,
and the sun does not warm us
enough. There are days I categorize
as failed. When I lie down
on the floor among dinosaurs
and dolls, close my eyes and
pretend I'm dead, while my children
go about their lives, then
come pouncing on the raft
of my open heart. There I am
at forty-five, and all I can hear
is my daughter saying I'm making you
alive. And here we are, on a morning
when the clouds seem sketched against
the blue to save us from the idea
that it could be perfect, still-
flowering jewelweed along the banks,
an inflorescence of woolgrass and
bristly sedge, the creek wending
northward, all the way to the city,
flowing into the lake that separates us
from another country where I once danced
at the gay bar until morning
because I could. Migration,
I tell my daughter, is like going home.
It is a mystery to me, what comes
into focus for her, or does not.
The nature poem embellishes.
It takes the memory of this picture
and turns it outward so that we are
the only disruption in a world of hard
data: orange mountain lit
from within, godforsaken field and the
machinery of human defeat. Once,
this place was an ocean. Can't you feel it,
I want to ask her, but when I scan
the scene, she is already drifting.
How many other promises
won't I be able to keep? When
will she want to know where
she came from? Three geese take refuge.
There were supposed to be thousands
of them. They were supposed to put on
a show for us.
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It’s right before you drive away:
our limbs still warm with sleep,
coffee sputtering out, the north
wind, your hips pressing me
hard against the table. I like it hard
because I need to remember this.
I want to say harder. How we must
look to the road that’s gone,
to the splayed morning of cold
butter and inveterate greed.
Light comes and goes in the field.
Oranges in a bowl, garlic, radio.
In the story of us, no one wins.
Isolation is a new theme
someone says. By now
I’ve invented you. Most people
don’t like to touch dead things.
That’s what my friend tells me
when I find my fish on the floor.
It must have wanted an out.
Sometimes my desire scares me.
Sometimes I watch football
and think: four chances is enough to get there. But
we don’t have helmets.
I want to say harder,
I can take it, but
there’s no proof I can.
Stacie Cassarino, 'In the Kitchen'
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national poetry month, day 25
Summer Solstice
I wanted to see where beauty comes from
without you in the world, hauling my heart
across sixty acres of northeast meadow,
my pockets filling with flowers.
Then I remembered,
it’s you I miss in the brightness
and body of every living name:
rattlebox, yarrow, wild vetch.
You are the green wonder of June,
root and quasar, the thirst for salt.
When I finally understand that people fail
at love, what is left but cinquefoil, thistle,
the paper wings of the dragonfly
aeroplaning the soul with a sudden blue hilarity?
If I get the story right, desire is continuous,
equatorial. There is still so much
I want to know: what you believe
can never be removed from us,
what you dreamed on Walnut Street
in the unanswerable dark of your childhood,
learning pleasure on your own.
Tell me our story: are we impetuous,
are we kind to each other, do we surrender
to what the mind cannot think past?
Where is the evidence I will learn
to be good at loving?
The black dog orbits the horseshoe pond
for treefrogs in their plangent emergencies.
There are violet hills,
there is the covenant of duskbirds.
The moon comes over the mountain
like a big peach, and I want to tell you
what I couldn’t say the night we rushed
North, how I love the seriousness of your fingers
and the way you go into yourself,
calling my half-name like a secret.
I stand between taproot and treespire.
Here is the compass rose
to help me live through this.
Here are twelve ways of knowing
what blooms even in the blindness
of such longing. Yellow oxeye,
viper’s bugloss with its set of pink arms
pleading do not forget me.
We hunger for eloquence.
We measure the isopleths.
I am visiting my life with reckless plenitude.
The air is fragrant with tiny strawberries.
Fireflies turn on their electric wills:
an effulgence. Let me come back
whole, let me remember how to touch you
before it is too late.
—Stacie Cassarino
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Firework - Stacie Cassarino
The day my body caught fire
the woodland darkened. The horizon
was a sea of maids, rushing to piece me
back into a girl. Out of the girl came yellow
flowers, came stem & sepal.
You never happened, they said.
The meadow was a narration of lessness.
Inside the corral, horses fell
from the impact of lightning. They broke
down. I heard gunshots in my sleep.
I was a keeper of breath,
of hay. I walked a field, collecting bones.
You can build a house out of bones.
You can stand at the doorway
quarrelling with your legs to enter
or run until you turn to ash.
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So Much to Know: Give Me Time to Be Whole
Stacie Cassarino, a Maxim for Nostalgists, et al.: 'So Much to Know: Give Me Time to Be Whole'
[Image: “I Work Better,” by John E. Simpson. During our road trip, we became intimately, excruciatingly familiar with the stubborn and unpredictable personalities of hotel luggage carts — the resistance to movement forward and back, the eccentric swiveling. At this hotel in Hannibal, Missouri, the luggage carts at least included helpful steering instructions.]
From whiskey river (italicized…
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favourite poems of january
tony hoagland note to reality
henri cole middle earth: “myself and cats”
minerva s.m. kamra chronic
stacie cassarino zero at the bone: “in the kitchen”
bonnie jo stufflebeam barking dog nocturnal
ron silliman the alphabet: “you, part i”
sara borjas a heart can only be broken once, like a window
karen an-hwei lee song of the oyamel
louise glück afterword
kai nham follow the moon
elisabeth houston standard american english: “re-peat! re-verse! re-hearse!”
victoria stitt the carolina quarterly: “autumn convalescence”
noor ibn najam you smelled like an animal
ben still concept pest control
ray dipalma obediant laughter: “after midnight”
sasha pimentel cats
thanh-tam nguyen a lit match to burn what your country doesn’t remember
sarah abbas collecting words in attempt to keep them the same
julia wong kcomt (tr. jennifer shyue) woman eaten by cats
lisa jarnot ring of fire: “the bridge”
torrin a. greathouse i am beginning to mistake the locust’s song for silence
siaara freeman when i speak of hunger
vandana khanna train to agra: “evening prayer”
ouyang jianghe (tr. austin woerner) mother, kitchen
kayleb rae candrilli sand & silt
antony hecht an offering for patricia
sara ellen fowler shed project notes, august 30, 2019 - la madera, nm
vincent hiscock voice in the air: afterthought
margie piercy mars & her children: “the cat’s song”
eva chen how to bleed a ghost
sayuri ayers cordella magazine: “in the season of pink ladies”
buy me a coffee
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Heaven on No Man’s Land
(A VashWood, Trigun fanmix)
~
Bury those skeletons deep beneath the sand.
(Vash and Nicholas carve out a piece of happiness for themselves. Forget the world and all it's burdens for a moment.)
LISTEN: [SPOTIFY] / [YOUTUBE]
Art credit: oniro_ro. Thank you!
~
Tell me our story: are we impetuous, are we kind to each other, do we surrender to what the mind cannot think past? Where is the evidence I will learn to be good at loving?
Let me come back whole, let me remember how to touch you before it is too late. (Summer solstice, by Stacie Cassarino)
Track list under the cut!
"I will not ask you where you came from. I will not ask, and neither would you."
Like real people do - Hozier
Sleep on the floor - The Lumineers
Hold you in my arms - Ray Lamontagne
My lover - Birdtalker
Call it dreaming - Iron & Wine
Real love baby - Father John Misty
Mystery - Tom Odell
London's song - Matt Hartke
Aging out of the 20th century - Trash Panda
What do it mean - Lord Huron
Lyric selections: here.
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Stacie Cassarino, “The Living at Dead Creek” [ID in ALT]
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poems below the cut! inspired by x
🚂 - the underground by seamus heaney
☀️ - summer solstice by stacie cassarino
💌 - the illiterate by william meredith
❄️ - love at thirty-two degrees by katherine larson
🏳️⚧️ - theory by miller oberman
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Stacie Cassarino, "Apple Orchard", Zero at the Bone
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