kavikshiraj

[kavikshiraj]

I develop this ritual: I get stoned and ride my bike for hours, listening to Toni Braxton’s Secrets on loop. It’s hard to eat, even when I’m high, and craving that album is the closest thing to an appetite I have. But after a few days, the album gets tainted by my grief. Every song I’ve ever listened to reminds me of the last time I listened to it, which is a time that has passed, which is a death. I try to put on new music but it all makes me dizzy. It’s like having to learn a hundred dance moves in a foreign language under gunpoint. New songs don’t understand me. Their hands don’t know the shape of my head. I run out of weed and decide it’s best I don’t buy more. I keep riding my bike. My knees ache, and in the mornings they are Frankenstein-stiff.

...

from “Grief Services” by Maxine Stoker, published in Chestnut Review

#qd #maxine stoker #chestnut review #quotes

[kavikshiraj]

There are more people dead than living                  here on earth. What ghost here, what god, what girl dancing in an empty room.

. . .

from “The Last Motherhood of Shirley Jackson” by Eliza Browning, published in The Adroit Journal

#qd #eliza browning #quotes #poetry #lit #the adroit journal

[kavikshiraj]

Inevitably, the bomb glasses the sand                            but nothing ever ends. Even haunting, you said once, is a language of permanence. Sometimes, I still walk through the desert looking for broken shards. I find only fossils; the wind chafes my lips. Our theory’s failed again.

. . . 

from “The Age of Discovery” by Kyle Wang, published in The Adroit Journal

#qd #quotes #kyle wang #the adroit journal #poetry

[kavikshiraj]

Changing into school uniform felt like cross-dressing. I took my time: removing mask, then chest protector, lingering at the breeches. The day I learnt to lunge, I began to walk differently, saw distance as a kind of desire.

— "Flèche" by Mary Jean Chan, published in The Poetry Society

#qd #mary jean chan #the poetry society #quotes #poetry

[kavikshiraj]

III. Every death I escaped was for you.

from "Your Girlfriend in 30 Parts" by Camonghne Felix, published in Palette Poetry

#Camonghne Felix #palette poetry #quotes #poetry #lit #qd

[kavikshiraj]

You asked me to marry you on a gurney. I​s this the real life or is this ​a My Chemical Romance song. For three hours, I sat in the waiting room next to your mother. I counted the M&M’s and peanuts in my bag of trail mix and read the same verse by Louise Glück over and over until it became paper nailed to my skull. ​Luckily, you’re dead; otherwise you will learn that love and trauma make strange bedfellows. You can love someone enough to pull them back by the scruff of their neck, but forget you’re still the one who pushed them. I guess that’s why I put my arms in my face and let a tiny blade sever the nerves in my left middle finger.

from "And I said—" by MT Vallarta, published in Blanket Sea

#qd #cnf #lit #mt vallarta #blanket sea

[kavikshiraj]

She told me I was trapped in something that happened long ago, laying passively as recollections appeared, shadows on my bedroom wall. I reminded her that “remember” is a verb, an activity. That I am choosing it, again and again.

from “On the Ex I Too Often Describe as Stupid” by Divya Maniar, published in autofocus

#qd #divya maniar #autofocus #lit

[kavikshiraj]

I shall speak with my whole autobiography & without shame, shall sin & say so & know what I mean when I pray

from “Deus Vulgaris” by Cameron Martin, published in Palette Poetry

#palette poetry #cameron martin #poetry #quotes #qd

[kavikshiraj]

recent publications

The Q: “breathless”

Biological Creatures: “i slip my head off” + “the restless dead”

Doghouse Press: “kitchen lovesong”

Voicemail Poems: “transmission, planet-to-planet”

a complete list is found here.

#k

[kavikshiraj]

link to two poems

[image ID: large text reading, “do we rebuild from / decomposition? tell me root systems / will weave in and out my soil-filled skull. / tell me you will plant an orchard above.” below, in parentheses and smaller text, reads “from “i slip my head off” published in Biological Creatures” end ID]

#k

[kavikshiraj]

As they cut away the fuselage, a blade’s edge severs root from vine. Prayers morph into sobs morph into silence. I can see the power in that small act, the desecration of something intimate. I will never live up to the ghost of you.

from “Sole Survivor” by Sheree La Puma, published in the Orange Blossom Review

#qd #quotes #lit #poetry #sheree la puma #orange blossom review

[kavikshiraj]

I pick through the remains of you, and you of me, we carrion eaters, picking at the gristle clinging to each other’s rotting bones, laughing like two seagulls in the morning.

from The Carrion Eaters, by Jacob Budenz, published in Entropy

#poetry #qd #lit #quotes #entropy #jacob budenz

[kavikshiraj]

There is no use in planting trees tonight. Better to be a man & sleep—when morning comes, make a whetstone of it. Sharpen the knife of me & carve us a meal, something so fresh & warm it still wants to kill us.

from The Ape God Addresses Mononoke, by Steven Duong, published in HAD

#qd #steven duong #poetry #quotes #lit #had journal

[kavikshiraj]

I do not turn around or glance into my mirror. I look ahead into the dark and think about my God. She is bigger, but perhaps less powerful than my mother’s God. Her God is a noun; mine a heartbeat of a verb. My God wept when the air conditioner cord separated, spit and sparked. Her God could have stopped it.

from After Life (And a Bit Before) by Laurie Rachkus Uttich, published in Autofocus

#qd #quotes #lit #laurie rachkus uttich #autofocus

[kavikshiraj]

I study you. I breathe you. I have never felt so much and so little like an animal.

Then, I realize it, this simple truth: we have loved each other before. I know you like I know the freckle at the base of my wrist, the attic of my childhood home, the curve of your father’s chin. I know you. This knowing is not like the face in a crowd that you look at too long, wondering where you’ve met before. It is like the hidden cellar beside your Grandmother’s home. You grow—your youth a memory—and return one day, a guest where everything is and is not familiar. You go to the cellar, you open the door in the ground, you step down, inside the dirt, reach out your hand into the dark and there, there, your fingers awake and remember: the jars of jam, the bin of potatoes, the candle on the shelf, the matches behind the stewed tomatoes... everything just the way you left it. You remember, even in the dark. You know.

.

from After Life (And a Bit Before) by Laurie Rachkus Uttich, published in Autofocus

#qd #laurie rachkus uttich #autofocus #quotes #lit

[kavikshiraj]

at the party, i try to quote judith butler and say gender is a performance i’ve never been super good at. i tell them i have been dreaming about becoming a chandelier instead. ablaze, far from here, & safe. i am searching for one place that feels safe.

from chandelier by Derek Berry, published in beestung

#qd #beestung #derek berry #poetry #quote #lit

[kavikshiraj]

I’ve never looked like my mother, but the least I could have done for her was look like someone else’s daughter.

from After My Mother Shaves My Head for the First Time, by Erin O’Malley, published in The Penn Review

#qd #erin o'malley #the penn review #poetry #quotes