(Late) Hiatus Note
On retrogrades, Saturn returns & the need for time away from the screen
Love, if you are where I am. Even your smallest of errors. Your most wrecked door. The rock faces are opened. The genres are all up for aerial eradication. To the forty-yr-old fish. To the abundant bufflehead and ring-necked ducks drifting south across the sunset. I love you. - from "Dearth-light" by Saretta Morgan
I’m sorry I can’t answer your request right now. As per above, the genres are all up for aerial eradication & I’m worried any conversation would be met with dissolution, picked apart in 3D-printed teeth. There isn’t much to say these days except the revolution will not be institutionalized. Everyone’s looking for a miracle but I’m out chasing squirrels who can’t get enough of my bolita azul varieties, watching eastern white pines get struck by lightning and curbing the urge to follow it. I’m tasting juicy blackberries, anticipating mulberry season, it’s short-lived clusters too delicate for storage. I’m craving stains. Something that sticks. I’m reading a lot of books about apocalypse and they’re all boring me. I’m reading a lot of books about world-building and they all end with a question I’m not sure we’re ready to answer. I’m handling it like I’m handling my gray hairs. I’m accidentally scaring spiders off their webs. I’m resting and looking for bodies of water that aren’t plagued by algal blooms. I’m finding legless frogs instead. I’m sweating, like, really sweating, like, this isn’t funny anymore you made your point kind of sweating but isn’t that the point kind of sweating. So I’m drinking coconut water & cold brew in hopes I can maintain. I’m gathering resources, saving seeds, dusting off my resume just in case. I’m trying to be smarter about my sins. I’m trying not to take things so seriously and therein lies the tension. I’m observing fireflies for the first time in three years and wondering if I missed my chance. I like the ephemerality of things because it takes the pressure off. I’m soaked with long lineages dyed indigo but even that will dissolve eventually. What is the work of apathy? When beauty calls me every single hour, buzzes at my ear like a hummingbird eager for nectar? I’m pruning vines, I’m chasing wonder, I’m digging around the wound, I’m setting my eyes on tomorrow, I’m memorizing the contour of cotton-candy clouds at sunset, I’m twirling the horizon on my tongue, I’m going on hikes, I’m pulling up wild radish but leaving the root, I’m making teas out of hoja santa, looking up field guides trying to memorize all this wonder before it or I disappear trying to see under the seeing sweeping the front of my door drenching my soles in salt water coloring my toes ochre embracing my messy desire, I’m wearing white more these days I’m letting my curiosity be a salve I’m running I’m cussing I’m stretching I’m counting to 10 I’m writing I’m researching I’m editing I’m praying I’m praying I’m praying I’m praying !!
Personal Announcements:
New writing in Muzzle Magazine (“concerning water”), Orion Magazine (“Reincarnated: Indigo Milky Cap”), Art Review Oxford (“Genealogy of a Vacant Lot”)
On July 26th at I’ll be reading poems with Camille Dungy and Aniya Butler at the U.C. Botanical Gardens.
What I’m currently reading (and re-reading, you decide which is which…):
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
Reprise by Golden
