January 2011
19 posts
1 tag
the little string.
Your wrist is resting on her knee and you’re leaning forward and I wish I knew that weight, your shoulder blades curving away from me beneath your rumpled cotton shirt, blue-striped and familiar as the sound of your discoveries, the angle of your neck in thought, the little string tied round your wrist—
If it was my knee, if it was my knee.
from me to you.
Readers, if you never get anything here, if you’re never moved by anything you find, take just this from me: Get your heart completely and terribly and totally broken. When you don’t recognize anything—the books on the bookshelf, the clothes in the closet, the click of the front door—when it’s all turned over and you’ve nothing at all, I promise you,...
1 tag
everything i don't.
You know a girl who has my name. It should be enough to say I’m she, I’m what you think you know, and then we can just swing, we can just be air and not to blame when we can’t hold it. I can hold my hand and your hand up against the bluest sky as if we could press into it, and then each other, and then I’d be you, what I think I know and everything I don’t.
Anonymous asked: It's late at night, so as eloquent as I want this to sound, I'm sure it will come out a confused mess of consonants and bloviated vowels, so take no offense. This message is certainly meant to be of the highest caliber, to express how charming and intelligent and interesting you seem (and certainly are). This message is also meant to convey a particular annoyance that you don't live...
Hear Nebraska: Echoes: The Coachmen →
nebraska-admiral:
So my first Hear Nebraska post is up. I’ll be doing a series called Echoes, where I dig into the archives of Nebraska music past. I’ve been obsessively hunting for new bands and have some cool stuff coming up, so keep checking back.
Oh and congrats on the site launching, Andy! Exciting day!
John made me an awesome anti-Valentine’s Day mixtape once. You should read this...
5 tags
hear nebraska: jacket & sleeve. →
2 tags
hear nebraska.
As an editor, I don’t like the word “very” very much, but I have to say, I’m very, very excited to be part of writer and editor Andy Norman’s latest project, Hear Nebraska, a nonprofit Web site dedicated to all things music in our fair state. It’s set to launch today, and I’ll direct you there again, I’m sure, but check it out on Facebook. Follow the...
for my 8tracks fans. →
nothing new
except for this, a little scar, less work, the non-daily single cigarette, an earlier bedtime, colder hands, thrifted dresses, books, shows, spirit. Time, most of all, not to be spent but filled and filled and filled.
1 tag
spring and all.
By the road to the contagious hospital
under the surge of blue
mottled clouds driven from the
northeast--a cold wind. Beyond, the
waste of broad, muddy fields
brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen
patches of standing water
the scattering of tall trees
All along the road the reddish
purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy
stuff of bushes and small trees
with dead, brown leaves under...
1 tag
tulips.
The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here.
Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in.
I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly
As the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands.
I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions.
I have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses
And my history to the anesthetist and my body to the surgeons.
They...
1 tag
The story ends, the story doesn’t end.
1 tag
5. coastal
Cold April and the neighbor girl
--our plumber's daughter--
comes up the wet street
from the harbor carrying,
in a nest she's made
of her pink parka,
a loon. It's so sick,
she says when I ask.
Foolish kid,
does she think she can keep
this emissary of air?
Is it trust or illness
that allows the head
--sleek tulip--to bow
on its bent stem
across her arm?
...
1 tag
a slip of paper.
Today I went to the doctor--
the doctor said I was dying,
not in those words, but when I said it
she didn't deny it--
What have you done to your body, her silence says.
We gave it to you and look what you did to it,
how you abused it.
I'm not talking only of cigarettes, she says,
but also of poor diet, of drink.
She's a young woman; the stiff white coat disguises her body.
Her hair's pulled...
love.
If you’ve ended up here via my very great friend Bart Schaneman, I’m much obliged, to you and to him. If you don’t know him, you should.
He surprises, always.
1 tag
excerpt.
Thanks so much for sticking with me the last week, reading these bits of my story while I worked through it. I think the hardest part—at least emotionally—is behind me, and now I’ve just got a little, little bit farther to go.
I’ll end the week of excerpts with something small, but not so small—the first kiss of the piece, and the first I’d ever written (and...
1 tag
excerpt.
Oh, Peat.
Peat is incredibly tall.
One of his legs is at least as long as two-thirds of my body, and both are swathed in tight-fitting faded denim, the kind that reveals the contents of pockets, impeccably bunched around brown cowboy boots. One leg is stretched out under the table, the other gains awkwardly toward the base of my chair and I rearrange and rearrange.
Peat is from Texas, fresh...
mowthelawn asked: I stumbled upon your "The Mix I Never Gave You" and wanted to say that we share a lot of the same musical tastes, and then read a lot of your Tumblr. You're an inspiring writer and I wish you the best, from one creepy internet stranger to another :)
1 tag
excerpt.
This story is full of relationships, but the one at the center is told largely in flashback, based on a list of memories I wrote in 2005. This is another item from that list.
48. The first time you kissed me
We got ready for bed.
You handed me the same grey T-shirt you always lent me when I stayed the night, wherever I slept, and I went into the bathroom and closed the door and stared at...