Louise Glück, Poems 1962-2012 / Cynthia Ozick / Adonis, tr. by Khaled Mattawa, from ‘Celebrating Childhood’, Selected Poems / Gregory Orr, from “Origin of the Marble Forest” / Rainer Maria Rilke, tr. by. C.F. MacIntyre, Sonnets to Orpheus / John Boyne, The Absolutist

hold on a second man…

you ever feel like you were born with something rotten inside you and if people get close enough they’re gonna find out

stepped on a plum (overripe plum) (barefoot) it was on the driveway got out of the car and accidentally (didn't know it was there) stepped on the plum (warm) (on the ground) (it had fallen from the tree) barefoot (no shoes) wearing long pants (too long) (need to hem them) plum viscera got on them (the pants) unexpected plum on the driveway (hot plum) (97 degrees out) already super hungover (throwing up all morning) (should not have been driving at all) and I stepped out of the car (black car) (97 degrees out) and onto the plum (unexpected) (didn't know the plum was there) and it burst (plum nightmare on my only good pair of sweatpants) still we find ways to keep ourselves going from day to day

haunted house uquiz by streetlighthalo

“It is late now, I am a bit tired; the sky is irritated by stars…I love you, I love you, I love you…”

— Vladimir Nabokov, in a letter to his wife Véra (1926), Letters to Véra

What she says: im fine

What she means: the average age of conception over the past 250k years is apparently 26.9. Let's round it down to 25. Think of your birth mother. Hold her hand. Imagine her holding hands with her mother. Within 4 people, you're back in time 100 years, and it's an intimate family dinner. Just after WWI. Add another 16 people, a small party of 20, and you're in the 1500s. Double it, twice, and you're at 80 people. Your family would fill a restaurant, and you're at the height of the Roman empire. At 100 people, Confucius is alive but Socrates has not yet been born. 100 people. That's a medium sized wedding. A small lecture theatre or concert. 200 people, probably the biggest party i could ever hope to host, takes you back 5000 years. The guests at your soirée of parents would be contemporaries of the Egyptian and Indus Valley civilisations, although you'd probably be too busy fixing drinks and nibbles to talk to all of them. Just imagine it. 200 of you. That's all it takes to get back 5,000 years. And we could go further. 1000 people, a decent sized concert, a large high school, and we're at the end of the last ice age. Your ancestors are comparing their pink floyd vinyl with music played on instruments carved from wood or bones of long vanished species. Wander through the crowd. See your own features and phrases and gestures refract out like a kaleidoscope. What would they make of you? What do you make of them? Why does it feel so unfair that even that first 100 years --that small family dinner of four--is out of your grasp? Maybe it's because questions of spatial distance have become negligible to us now. why, oh why, does time hold out against us so stubbornly

i cannot even begin to tell you guys how excited i am to read this book

A little taste from my upcoming debut novel, Vertigo Peaks, inspired by Le Fanu's Carmilla.

And it is up for pre-order now which I am elated to share with you!

me: hey 

tumblr classics major who really likes halsey and thinks that the romantic poets were the only people to ever make contributions to english literature: you once made flowers grow within my ribcage but you were like icarus flying too close to the sun and your ichor wings are melting and now divinity stains your bronze fingertips like a pomegranate and you are holy holy holy 

every time somebody goes "uhm well this work depicts X, which seems kinda problematic >.>" and said depiction of X is specifically that it is a bad thing done by bad people, my blood pressure goes up a little bit

fake dating to lovers is nice but married for non-romantic reasons to lovers is next fucking level

thinking about this again

I love it when anons/guests find my works and kudo/leave reviews, but given the new revelation that Elon Musk is using bots to mine AO3 fanfiction for a writing AI without writer's permission, my works are now archive-locked and only available for people with an AO3 account.

don't mind me, I'm just casually plugging my new Tywin Lannister x Targaryen!OFC fic 👀

You deserve love now. Not once you lose weight. Not once you accomplish that thing. Not once you move. Not once you get on medication. Not once you start therapy. Not once you get that job. Not once you're more like them. Now. You don't have to earn the right to be loved. You deserve it right now, and always have.

as a literature major, this post makes my heart fill with joy

This is a comment someone appended to a photo of two men apparently having sex in a very fancy room, but it’s also kind of an amazing two-line poem? “His Wife has filled his house with chintz” is a really elegant and beautiful counterbalancing of h, f, and s sounds, and “chintz” is a perfect word choice here—sonically pleasing and good at evoking nouveau riche tackiness. And then “to keep it real I fuck him on the floor” collapses that whole mood with short percussive sounds—but it’s still a perfect iambic pentameter line, robust and a lovely obscene contrast with the chintz in the first line. Well done, tumblr user jjbang8