Caroline Stockford: Manual for mourning a great poet

Hüseyin Özdemir, küçük İskender, 2006. Source: instagram.com/huseyinozdemir1

“Because life is the most tragic, most magnificent, most merciless trick death can play on us.”

küçük İskender, “Someone Call an Ambulance”

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When you first hear of his illness, you should be in the company of a genius journalist at seven at night and still at work. Upon going into the underwater world of shock, you should walk with said visiting journalist to the fountain that the ravens frequent in Vienna’s Volksgarten. Sit on a bench. As you watch the cascades of crystal beads streaming from between stone wreathes and sculpted longing you might say,

“I can’t cry yet.”

You may regret not having published books with the great poet and letting him have his own way with the stage play you wrote as a canto of his lines. But you didn’t finish it. Now, this is finishing it.

“When the question is asked: ‘Is there death, after life?'”

küçük İskender, “Necromantic”

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Robert Neuwirth: Closing Statement

Yüksel Arslan, Arture 401, Men XLII, 1989. Source: peramuzesi.org.tr

These are the times that sell men’s souls.

–THE BOOK OF DERIVATIVES®

In the beginning, a mother let go of a young girl’s hand.

–THE BOOK OF DERIVATIVES®

Let’s start with a few things we can all agree on.

We can agree that Vaughan does not know Marsha and Marsha does not know Vaughan and that neither of them knows Eric, who does not know them either.

And we can agree that, though Vaughan would probably recognize Marsha, particularly if she were wearing the fuzzy sweater and knit cap she had on in the video, Marsha would not recognize Vaughan, though she has probably heard of him, and neither of them would recognize Eric (who would not recognize Vaughan, but like Vaughan and for the same reasons, would probably recognize Marsha), though, if Vaughan checked his website’s logs, he would find Eric’s metadata and could follow Eric’s digital fingerprints around online, but it would be a one-sided relationship because Eric doesn’t have access to any of Vaughan’s info.

We can also stipulate (and I’m sure they would all agree on this) that aside from being involved in this matter in different ways, there’s pretty much nothing they have in common. Marsha’s an art historian and single mother from Tulsa who now lives in Southern California. Vaughan’s an IT guy based in Memphis who travels 220 miles there and back each weekend to attend his hometown high school’s football games. Eric works for the Post Office in Dayton – which his old college friends consider a piss-poor place for a guy with a theology degree to wind up – and spends most of his nights reading eschatology or philosophy or wasting time online as a low-risk day trader.

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Anita Nair: Letters to a Man Never Met

ITALY, Fashion story in the mood of Egon Schiele. Katalina.

Ferdinando Scianna, Italy. Source: magnumphotos.com

Murad: Desired

One day, just another still, warm day in February, there was you… Sometimes I wonder why there wasn’t something to suggest the birthing pains of this love: a camel-shaped eyelash, a rainbow above my roof, frogs raining, a tree bursting into yellow bloom overnight, a snatch of a song. But there was nothing. Not even a twitching eyelid or a skipped beat of the pulse. And yet, now when I think of the time before you, all I think of is this grey and metallic sheen of the strangled day and the death-like silence of the night.

Last Sunday the neighbours brought me a glass of something tall, cold and sweet. They had a name for it: thandai.

Did I know there was opium in it? I did. Why didn’t I say no? Probably because I wanted to know where it would lead me. Opium. Melded into milk and almonds and chilled so the sweet creaminess could slide down my throat while a foot soldier in black crept through my veins to the silly point of my brain.

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Jessica Sequeira: Three Poems

Liza Zhakova, from “fuckmehard”. Source: lensculture.com

Boathouse

From this red block of pure substance we look toward sea, separated from it by tiny flakes of white paint. Some finger has stuck itself in the same pot to draw wave tops, a line quivering but unbroken. Doctors speak of low iron levels in the blood and say things, “a nice broth is what you need” “a good cut of meat”, while the strength of the soul goes unmentioned. Yet here we rest, Soul and I, knowing better. I talk to you as if I’m old and you’re innocent, and I keep a shell in my hand. We sit in the shell of the boathouse, and my body remains a shell for you, and nothing passes through my mind except that I want to write lines clean and new. The wave top looks like a dishcloth wrung out, and the speed I move is not the speed of the water.

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