not as smart as i think i am by Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz
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Not Doing Something Wrong Isn't the Same as Doing Something Right - Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz
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July, Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz
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A poem by Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz
July
The figs we ate wrapped in bacon.
The gelato we consumed greedily:
coconut milk, clove, fresh pear.
How we’d dump hot espresso on it
just to watch it melt, licking our spoons
clean. The potatoes fried in duck fat,
the salt we’d suck off our fingers,
the eggs we’d watch get beaten
’til they were a dizzying bright yellow,
how their edges crisped in the pan.
The pink salt blossom of prosciutto
we pulled apart with our hands, melted
on our eager tongues. The green herbs
with goat cheese, the aged brie paired
with a small pot of strawberry jam,
the final sour cherry we kept politely
pushing onto each other’s plate, saying,
No, you. But it’s so good. No, it’s yours.
How I finally put an end to it, plucked it
from the plate, and stuck it in my mouth.
How good it tasted: so sweet and so tart.
How good it felt: to want something and
pretend you don’t, and to get it anyway.
Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz
More poems by Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz are available through her website.
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Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz - July
The figs we ate wrapped in bacon.
The gelato we consumed greedily:
coconut milk, clove, fresh pear.
How we’d dump hot espresso on it
just to watch it melt, licking our spoons
clean. The potatoes fried in duck fat,
the salt we’d suck off our fingers,
the eggs we’d watch get beaten
’til they were a dizzying bright yellow,
how their edges crisped in the pan.
The pink salt blossom of prosciutto
we pulled apart with our hands, melted
on our eager tongues. The green herbs
with goat cheese, the aged brie paired
with a small pot of strawberry jam,
the final sour cherry we kept politely
pushing onto each other’s plate, saying,
No, you. But it’s so good. No, it’s yours.
How I finally put an end to it, plucked it
from the plate, and stuck it in my mouth.
How good it tasted: so sweet and so tart.
How good it felt: to want something and
pretend you don’t, and to get it anyway.
- July by Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz
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You probably don’t remember this discussion. Nor should you have, really, since it is no the role of the crush to remember. The crush simply exists. It is the role of the crushed to record.
Excerpt From: "Dear Future Boyfriend" by Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz. Scribd.
This material may be protected by copyright.
Read this book on Scribd: https://www.scribd.com/book/257695077
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astrology notes: 18 (love quotes) 🦇‧₊⁺⭒
quick note: i'm absolutely not an astrologer and this post is just for fun.
i understand that some of these quotes or excepts may not be about love when you consider the full context of the poem or work of literature, but this is how i am intepreting and applying them without context.
lastly, keep in mind that i'm not reading your birth chart and i know nothing about you. these are just quotes that remind me of the signs so you may or may not be able to relate to them. enjoy!
𓆩♡𓆪 aries:
“If we meet each other in Hell, it’s not Hell.”
— Geoffrey Hill, Broken Hierarchies: Poems 1952-2012
𓆩♡𓆪 taurus:
“The smell of her hair, the taste of her mouth, the feeling of her skin seemed to have got inside him, or into the air all round him. She had become a physical necessity...”
— George Orwell, 1984 ↟♡↟
𓆩♡𓆪 gemini:
“The next day I write him one of the most human notes he has ever received: no intellect, just words about his voice, his laughter, his hands.”
— Anaïs Nin, from Henry and June: From “A Journal of Love”: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1931-1932
𓆩♡𓆪 cancer:
“…Your chest is becoming the field I want to be buried in.”
— Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz, from The Year of No Mistakes: “Atlas”
𓆩♡𓆪 leo:
“Attention is the beginning of devotion."
― Mary Oliver, Upstream: Selected Essays 🦇
𓆩♡𓆪 virgo:
Pylades: I’ll take care of you.
Orestes: It’s rotten work.
Pylades: Not to me. Not if it’s you.
― Orestes by Euripides from An Oresteia, translated by Anne Carson
𓆩♡𓆪 libra:
“If there is life after the earth-life, will you come with me? Even then? Since were bound to be something, why not together.”
― Mary Oliver, from “West Wind” ↟♡↟
𓆩♡𓆪 scorpio:
“They had made love in every possible way, or so they believed, and they theorized about new ways but came up only with death.”
― Roberto Bolaño, from '2666', translated by Natasha Wimmer
𓆩♡𓆪 sagittarius:
"All roads lead to you even those I took to forget you."
― Mahmoud Darwish 🦇
𓆩♡𓆪 capricorn:
“She turned to me and said, ‘hold me’. So I dropped the world I had been holding and picked her up with both hands.”
― Zachry K Douglas ↟♡↟
𓆩♡𓆪 aquarius:
“I feel the distance between myself and others. I guard that distance … But when you move away from me, even just the least bit, a blackness descends upon me, I feel engulfed.”
— Henry Miller, "A Literate Passion: Letters of Anaïs Nin & Henry Miller 1932-1953"
𓆩♡𓆪 pisces:
“I asked if you heard the rain in your dream and half dreaming still you only said, I love you.”
— Edwin Morgan, When You Go 🦇
this was just something cute and extra since I haven’t posted anything in a while.
if you read this until the end i hope you enjoyed it & thank you so much for reading. ♥︎♥︎♥︎, those hearts are for you.
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[...] In my defense, how when we just sat listening to each other breathe, he said, “This is enough.” — (Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz)
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— Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz, from “How to Love the Empty Air”
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not doing something wrong isn’t the same as doing something right by cristin o'keefe aptowicz
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April 3, 2024: Positivity, D.A. Powell
Positivity
D.A. Powell
“Anyway, it isn’t forever,” Chris said,
“eventually you’re dead.” And we laughed
Besides, everything is better now. Not us
but implants, blenders, children, heart attacks.
There’s never been a better time to be alive
than when you are. If you are. Black-throated
blue warbler says chewchewchewchewchewww
drawing the last chew out like a sucking drainpipe
to say he has mated and is satisfied. Say what
you will about that. His joy is uncontainable
and yet it has a form, a measure, to make it clear
he’s not upset or feeling anxious. And if he’s bragging,
well, it’s no shame to brag that you’re happy.
Honeybees cavorting on the goldenrod are working
toward a common goal they’ll never see achieved.
They lay down the walls of their cathedral of honeycomb
and will not cope the spire, busy in the present task,
trusting that the work continues. I’d like to write
a children’s book called everybody dies. Upbeat, of
course, and pragmatic. You only got so many
days. Don’t think about death; when you’re
ready, death will think about you. Go out
tonight with your friends, like Chris, who went out
big or not at all. Have a ball. Plan ahead.
--
Hear the poet read this aloud.
also by D.A. Powell (shared in year 1 of this project!):
[this is what you love: more people. you remember]
More like this:
Overjoyed, Ada Limón
you can’t be a star in the sky without holy fire, Frank X. Gaspar
Today in:
2023: Picture This, Jiordan Castle
2022: Alba, Madeleine Cravens
2021: July, Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz
2020: Poem Beginning With A Retweet, Maggie Smith
2019: Waiting for Happiness, Nomi Stone
2018: United, Naomi Shihab Nye
2017: If You Are Over Staying Woke, Morgan Parker
2016: High School Senior, Sharon Olds
2015: Dog in Bed, Joyce Sidman
2014: Persephone Writes to Her Mother, Tara Mae Mulroy
2013: Hook, James Wright
2012: How to Build an Owl, Kathleen Lynch
2011: Expecting, Kevin Young
2010: The Choir, Luke Kennard
2009: I Come Home Wanting To Touch Everyone, Stephen Dunn
2008: Visible World, Richard Siken
2007: Anywhere Else, Maggie Dietz
2006: After Work, Richard Jones
2005: The Sheep-Child, James Dickey
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Who are your favorite poets? :)
AHHHHHH omg I haven't been able to talk about poetry in SO long.
First, the classics. I am not huge on William Shakespeare's plays, but I do like his poetry. Oscar Wilde is just an icon. I like a lot of poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley and Emily Dickinson. I HAVE to mention Edgar Allen Poe because he's from my state but honestly, I like his overall ideas over his execution most of the time. Joyce Kilmer wrote one of my favorite poems of all time, "Trees."
Moving closer to the present day, there's Allen Ginsberg. Howl changed how I understood poetry as a whole. Shel Silverstein taught me what poetry was in the first place. I also enjoy Edward Albee and Joyce Carol Oates.
Getting into poets who are writing right now, Maggie Nelson wrote this collection of poems called Bluets that I adore. I also got to take a seminar with her through my college. Finally, I saw Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz give a reading and she was just... mezmorizing. Honestly, poetry is meant to be performed, which is why I haven't read much since college. But if someone invites me to a poetry reading, I am so there.
My favorite collection of poems is Unleashed: Poems by Writers' Dogs. It is just what it sounds like and yes it made me sob uncontrollably by the end.
Curious to know if you or any of my other mutuals have thoughts about poetry!
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My Mother Wants to Know if I'm Dead
ARE YOU DEAD? is the subject line of her email.
The text outlines the numerous ways she thinks
I could have died: slain by an axe-murderer, lifeless
on the side of a highway, choked to death by smoke
since I'm a city girl and likely didn't realize you needed
to open the chimney flue before making a fire (and,
if I do happen to be alive, here's a link to a YouTube
video on fireplace safety that I should watch). Mom
muses about the point of writing this email. If I am
already dead, which is what she suspects, I wouldn't
be able to read it. And if I'm alive, what kind of daughter
am I not to write her own mother to let her know
that I've arrived at my fancy residency, safe and sound,
and then to immediately send pictures of everything,
like I promised her! If this was a crime show, she posits,
the detective might accuse her of sending this email
as a cover up for murder. How could she be the murderer,
if she wrote an email to her daughter asking if she was murdered?
her defense lawyers would argue at the trial. In fact,
now that she thinks of it, this email is the perfect alibi
for murdering me. And that is something I should
definitely keep in mind, if I don't write her back
as soon as I have a free goddamn second to spare.
- Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz, "My Mother Wants to Know if I'm Dead", how to love the empty air
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Books Read in 2023
Road of Bones by Christopher Golden (2022)
Zombie by Joyce Carol Oates (1995)
Night of the Mannequins by Stephen Graham Jones (2020)
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1962)
The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin (1978)
Dr. Mütter's Marvel's: A True Tale of Intrigue and Innovation at the Dawn of Modern Medicine by Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz (2014)
Devil House: A Novel by John Darnielle (2022)
The Shadows by Alex North (2020)
Lucky Girl: How I Became A Horror Writer: A Krampus Story by M. Rickert (2022)
The Hunger by Alma Katsu (2018)
Bloodchild and Other Stories by Octavia E. Butler (1995)
The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle (2016)
The Troop by Nick Cutter (2014)
The Deep by Nick Cutter (2015)
What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher (2022)*
Audition by Ryū Murakami (2010)
To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway (1937)
The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes by Suzanne Collins (2020)
The Hunger Games #1: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (2008)*
The Hunger Games #2: Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins (2009)*
The Hunger Games #3: Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins (2010)*
The Mist by Stephen King (1980)*
Tender Is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica (2017)
Sour Candy by Kealan Patrick Burke (2015)
The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole (1764)
I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream: Stories by Harlan Ellison (1967)
Sphere: A Novel by Michael Crichton (1987)
Heart, Haunt, Havoc by Freydís Moon (2023)
Nimona by N.D. Stevenson (2015)
All the Blood We Share by Camilla Bruce (2022)
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman*
Skeleton Crew by Stephen King (1985)
Stardust by Neil Gaiman (1997)*
Coraline by Neil Gaiman (2002)*
Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution by R.F. Kuang (2022)
Kill Creek by Scott Thomas (2017)
Simon Snow #1: Carry On by Rainbow Rowell (2015)*
Simon Snow #2: Wayward Son by Rainbow Rowell (2019)*
Simon Snow #3: Any Way the Wind Blows by Rainbow Rowell (2021)*
In Deeper Waters by F.T. Lukens (2021)
Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw (2021)*
The Case Against Satan by Ray Russell (1962)
The Victorians: A Very Short Introduction by Martin Hewitt (2023)
Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle (2023)
The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains by Neil Gaiman (2010)
Magic: An Anthology of the Esoteric and Arcane edited by Jonathan Oliver (2012)
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Things That Happen During Pet-Sitting I Remind Myself Are Not Metaphors For My Heart
The dog refuses to eat. I keep filling her bowl
anyway: new kibble on top of old, hoping
that it will suddenly becoming tempting.
When I write, the cat watches me from a chair.
When I look at him, he purrs loudly, leans forward
so that I might touch him. I don’t.
Now the dog refuses to come out of her cage,
no matter what I say, no matter how wide I open
the door. She knows that I am not her master.
On the couch, the cat crawls on top of me
and loves me so hard, his claws draw blood.
I was so lonely, I did nothing to stop it.
There are lights in this house I want to turn on,
but I can’t find their switches. Outside, an engine
turns and turns in the night, but never catches.
--Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz
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