April 26, 2024: Origin Story, 1993, Adam Falkner

Origin Story, 1993 Adam Falkner

Your grandma says you look just like your cousin Frank, mostly in the eyes when you grin. They chuckle at the dinner table when there is Frankie in your hair, towhead cowlicks bolting into sky

like strands of snapped hay. No one stays long on the subject, really – just the way he lives in your laugh, your funny faces, how he smokes like a ghost from your whistle. Once, your nan

had to grip the back of a chair to keep from buckling. And he’s not dead. He just moved. They told him he had to. So he bought a blue ‘82 pickup & went to New York to “get AIDS

and die.” Which he did. But not before filling his lungs with sky the size of God country & the new-fashion baptism of a sequined, hungry life. Not before flashing

through a decade of open-mouth laughter & living room play readings, crowded apartment holidays & finally, the big breaks. Not before the coke parties & park muggings & good news to share

with the boys & dinners at diners that let you run a tab & hard news to share with the boys. Not before beach houses wind-whipped with salt & memory, where they sit arms pretzeled to watch

the sun steal into the other life. But that’s later. It is 1993. You are nine-and-a-half but going on knowing. It’s the fourth of July & everyone is here except everyone who never is. Your giggle

lingers like grease on the walls as you float the hallway, dull murmur carrying on from the kitchen & there—frozen on the dresser, like a trophy & a prayer. He kisses you back.

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Today in:

2023: For the Dogs Who Barked at Me on the Sidewalks in Connecticut, Hanif Abdurraqib 2022: Demeter, Midwinter, Mairead Small Staid 2021: from A Pillow Book, Suzanne Buffam 2020: Letter to My Great, Great Grandchild, J.P. Grasser 2019: After the First Child, the Second, Mary Austin Speaker 2018: A New Lifestyle, James Tate 2017: Anchorage, Joy Harjo 2016: Poem to First Love, Matthew Yeager 2015: Ode to the Reel Mower, Jim Daniels 2014: So Much Happiness, Naomi Shihab Nye 2013: Habitation, Margaret Atwood 2012: About Marriage, Denise Levertov 2011: In Praise of My Bed, Meredith Holmes 2010: Black Swan, Brigit Pegeen Kelly 2009: In Me as the Swans, Leslie Williams 2008: Gnosticism V, Anne Carson 2007: American Names, Stephen Vincent Benet 2006: since feeling is first, e.e. cummings 2005: The Second Coming, W.B. Yeats

☕️ ℭ𝔞𝔫 𝔶𝔬𝔲 𝔥𝔢𝔞𝔯 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔠𝔦𝔱𝔶 𝔫𝔬𝔦𝔰𝔢𝔰?

autumn in the city —

It must be spring 🥐🌼

TOKYO, JAPAN

Happy 1989 tv release week🗽

Toshiharu Mizutani Background art for AKIRA (1988).

𝑳𝒆𝒕’𝒔 𝒔𝒑𝒆𝒏𝒅 𝒂 𝒅𝒂𝒚 𝒊𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒄𝒊𝒕𝒚 𝒕𝒐𝒈𝒆𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒕𝒂𝒌𝒆 𝒑𝒐𝒍𝒂𝒓𝒐𝒊𝒅𝒔 📸 🎞️

Montmartre in autumn. A thing of beauty.