Love is patient, love is kind It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud
Love is taking the entire winter to prepare for
the winter Love is making plans for your plants when you go
away Love is coming home
Love is Justin and Selena getting back together not caring that everyone knows it’s cuffing
season
It’s like rain on your wedding day that’s not love,
that’s just ironic
Love is the feeling you get after scrolling all
of Yoko Ono’s tweets in the year of the devil, 2017
Love is when she said, “Time is a concept made by
men.”
Love is your mother and the 17 times Yoko tweeted about celebrating
Mother’s Day in different countries
Love is self-care by following Yoko’s
instructions, which she tweeted on April 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7:
Apr 3 First thing in the morning stretch
Apr 4 First thing in the morning breathe out all the sadness and
pain you accumulated overnight
Apr 5 First thing in the morning breathe in deeply as if you are breathing the whole Universe into you
Apr 6 First thing in the morning smile with your whole body
Apr 7 First thing in the morning thank the Universe for another magical day
Love is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs
Love is Lower Dens at the Ottobar, chanting I will treat you
better I will treat you
better I will treat you
better I’ll treat you
better Hold on
Love is maintaining a home wherever your family
is not Love is putting Us first, because it is safest
there Love is the structure It is building, setting on fire, and building
again
Love is accepting that different tastes in music
exist Love knows that you can be cooler if you want it Love is sharing hygienic products It is bringing home one thing and then bringing
home another
Love is arguing over different aspects of the
band Maroon 5 because sometimes
there is literally nothing else to argue about
Love is giving in Love is growing up Love is never stopping
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth
It is Yoko’s tweet on August 16th, 2017: Hold
your friend in your heart and walk together.
Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres
Love turns you inside out so you can see the part of you that’s drifting over me
And when you wake they’re never there but when you sleep they’re everywhere
Mark created image macros and shared lines from my book after he read it, and I cannot describe the love and support I felt seeing them for the first time and every time others continue to share it to this day.
sarah jean alexander, from her new book ‘wild lives’
Everyone knows that breathing is just the silent version of screaming.
Some days everything is perfect
I feel beautiful and happy
Other days I want to shake men
aggressively by their shoulders
make direct eye contact with them
and say, ‘Stop writing novels!’
‘Nobody knew us. Nobody cared about us. Nobody wanted to. We just roamed around the west end of the city like we were totally chill with the recent apocalypse and it was so sweet while it lasted. It lasted about six months.‘
Lucy K Shaw wrote The Motion (421 Atlanta, 2015) and edits Shabby Doll House. She lives in Berlin and tweets @LKShowbiz.
’Watching my cat licking her belly on my bedroom floor with her legs stretched out over her head, I think yeah, get in there, fucking get in there, and then I say it out loud.’
Sarah Jean Alexander is an American writer from Baltimore. She wrote WILDLIVES (Big Lucks Books, 2015) and edits Shabby Doll House. She tweets @sarahjeanalex
if you buy it from May 2-May 8, I’ll create & send u a custom banner up to 10 letters! just email me at sarahjeanalexander@gmail.com (fwd your confirmation email) with what you’d like the banner to say, and i’ll send it out within the next couple of weeks.
– una traducción de José María Martínez / Tive, 2015
AGUJEROS
Si miro en tus ojos azules el
tiempo suficiente y si me empeño lo suficiente, ¿se despegará algo del color de
tus iris y flotará en el espacio a la velocidad suficiente para no perderse en
un cambio del viento, y poder posarse amablemente en las húmedas colinas
marrones de mis ojos, para yo comenzar a parecer un poco más tranquila y sentirme
un poco más ligera? Entonces dentro de veinte años la gente me preguntará, ¿Cómo lograste que el color del cielo habitara
en los agujeros de tu cabeza cuando el resto de ti es tan oscuro? y yo
podré mirarles y decir, Amé demasiado a
otro ser humano y esto es lo que él me entregó a cambio.
RAÍCES TIERNAS Y BARRO
Traga mi nombre para poder
meterme dentro de ti y recuperarlo. Murmura tres notas mientras lo hago. Muerde
entonces y apodérate de dos partes de mi. Yo acaricio el fondo de tu cuello con
las yemas de mis dedos suaves y tú relajas la mandíbula tranquilamente. Me
libero y desando dos pasos, marcas de dientes, mi nombre y todo. Trago mi
propio nombre y lo digo en alto con voz de otra, y tú lo atrapas en tus oídos y
te hundes en la tierra. Tu cuerpo se disuelve en raíces tiernas y barro. Y
dices Qué te enseña esto, con la boca
llena de bichos, y respondo Nada en
absoluto, y empiezo a aguantar la respiración.
TE FUNDIRÁS CONMIGO
Quiero volverme agujero negro y
que tú te vuelvas agujero negro y quiero que los dos juguemos a este juego por el
resto de la eternidad y atrapemos y atrapemos y atrapemos todo a nuestro
alrededor y hagamos bromas sobre si tú te fundirás conmigo o yo me fundiré
contigo, pero al final no importará porque lo natural es que dos agujeros
negros en relativa proximidad se fundan el uno con el otro para volverse un
agujero negro supermasivo con millones de masas solares. Ohhhh y juntaremos y
alimentaremos las toneladas métricas de luminosidad como a hijos nuestros,
ellos —nuestros bebés, ellos—
nuestro futuro, y uno a uno los destruiremos porque no serán más que fallidos cúmulos
estelares dependientes, y nosotros nada más que viejas estrellas muertas, pero
recuerda cuando nos fundimos y que solo es un juego y ohhhh el universo joven
debe haber sido algo hermoso.
— Sarah Jean Alexandervive y escribe en Brooklyn. Estos tres poemas pertenecen a su primer libro, “Wild Lives” (Big Lucks Books, 2015).
Imagine that every person on this planet is born with a semi-corporeal, entirely trackable amount of grief that they can physically bear until it breaks their body down and turns it into dust. This would include palpable weariness, mental strain, emotional capacity—anything and everything that leads you from being alive, to being entirely dead in the ground until the earth burns up. There are things that exist to push this off: things that pause these enduring aches. These are the things that keep you alive. Things like the new One Direction album on repeat. Things like watching the music video for “Perfect” 48 times in a row. You just took a break from turning into dust and added 183 minutes to your life. Things like Harry Styles in the tightest pants imaginable. Things like imagining Louis Tomlinson smiling into the camera while looking eerily too similar to a jungle cat. Things like Niall’s chest hair (I don’t deserve those hairs but I will take them). Every moment of mild to extreme obsession that I spend considering cute and sort-of-dirty boys are moments that I don’t have to worry about dying. I worry about dying a lot. I’m worrying about it now. I’m off work in 6 hours. I have the new One Direction album downloaded already. I won’t be worrying then. So I’ll just worry about 1D to fend off the fact that death is coming for me regardless.
