“I’ve Seen A Lot Of Beautiful Things With A Heavy Heart.”

BARBARA KRUGER

Too much joy, I swear, is lost in our desperation to keep it.

Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

Jonathan Safran Foer

Madeline Miller, Circe

Richard Siken, Crush

“If only we’d stop trying to be happy we’d have a pretty good time.”

Edith Wharton

Slavoj Žižek

Richard Siken, Crush

D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, the first indigenous actor nominated in any lead category, attends the 2024 Emmys with a red handprint over his mouth, the symbol for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW). September 15, 2024.

“Do you realize that all great literature is all about what a bummer it is to be a human being? Isn’t it such a relief to have somebody say that?”

— Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

-Pablo Neruda

Communication Error: In art people have things to say and they are important, they pound against their chest and they cry and music swells but here, here my words slide and scrap up my throat amounting in nothing. I want to tell you everything, but I can barely open my mouth to tell you my name.

Richard Siken// Call Me By Your Name dir. Luca Guadagnino// Margaret Atwood// Lisel Mueller// // Virginia Woolf// Richard Siken// Jeanette Winterson// Georges Bataille// Inside Llewyn Davis dir. The Coen Brothers // Mikko Harvey// The Rehearsal, Nathan Fielder//Hieu Minh Nguyen

“If you’re reading this, if there’s air in your lungs on this November day, then there is still hope for you. Your story is still going. And maybe some things are true for all of us. Perhaps we all relate to pain. Perhaps we all relate to fear and loss and questions. And perhaps we all deserve to be honest, all deserve whatever help we need. Our stories are all so many things: Heavy and light. Beautiful and difficult. Hopeful and uncertain. But our stories aren’t finished yet. There is still time, for things to heal and change and grow. There is still time to be surprised. We are still going, you and I. We are stories still going.”

— Jamie Tworkowski

The Untrustworthy Speaker

Don’t listen to me; my heart’s been broken.

I don’t see anything objectively.

I know myself; I’ve learned to hear like a psychiatrist.

When I speak passionately,

that’s when I’m least to be trusted.

It’s very sad, really: all my life, I’ve been praised

for my intelligence, my powers of language, of insight.

In the end, they’re wasted—

I never see myself,

standing on the front steps, holding my sister’s hand.

That’s why I can’t account

for the bruises on her arm, where the sleeve ends.

In my own mind, I’m invisible: that’s why I’m dangerous.

People like me, who seem selfless,

we’re the cripples, the liars;

we’re the ones who should be factored out

in the interest of truth.

When I’m quiet, that’s when the truth emerges.

A clear sky, the clouds like white fibers.

Underneath, a little gray house, the azaleas

red and bright pink.

If you want the truth, you have to close yourself

to the older daughter, block her out:

when a living thing is hurt like that,

in its deepest workings,

all function is altered.

That’s why I’m not to be trusted.

Because a wound to the heart

is also a wound to the mind.

By Louise Glück

Caddo Lake, Texas by Fred R Cox