Relationships

I planned to write a book about / the color blue. Now I’m suddenly surrounded / by green, green gagging me / pleasurably, green holding onto my hips / from behind, digging into / the cleft, the cleft // that can be made.

The writer on surrendering, working through her avoidance, and using her body as an anchor. 

The writer on the artistic and emotional merits of reality TV. 

Overcast cobalt, tile unbolted, pictures / On loan require empty space / Like an expletive. Grisaille pigeons, / Endemic to our swamp of / Commission.

I meet the artist, who does x, for a snack one afternoon. We have the kind of conversation it was more necessary to have previous to the existence of the Internet. We exchange general info about the world. 

We went into the garden to pick out a poison blocker / We saw fish mint / A lizard’s tail / A chameleon plant / Your heartleaf / My fishwort

Writing as an intransitive catastrophe and the hyperbole of literature.

I was the type of man who got his ears cleaned. I was the type of woman who didn’t like dogs. We lived together in a house on a street that was the color of asphalt. I told you what I thought of you.

February 1 marked the centenary of Muriel Spark’s birth, and we’re celebrating with a selection of the British master’s aphorisms, notes, and observations.

I just said I didn’t know / and now you are saying / you aren’t sure I’m cool / that’s cool

Four generations of unhappiness populate the French auteur’s latest.

Filled with hairspray and dog-smoke / and cigarette meat / at the meeting  in the big town-hall / of the small provincial town of / sleep       

The novelists on Vietnam, Norman Mailer, and the dragon’s perspective.

I say something about the time and he replies, “I cannot sleep in this lifeless room, I can’t, I can’t. I won’t. You can’t make me.”

Sexual panic in South Brooklyn

I tried Al on like a suit and he didn’t fit. In the crotch area, excess fabric hung loose, like disappointment.

Everybody assumes I’m one or the other, at first. Sometimes it becomes a game, a mental tally of points in each column, trying to prove the original guess.

Reliable uncertainty in Deb Olin Unferth’s Wait Till You See Me Dance

Distance and searching in Katie Kitamura’s A Separation

Friendship and the lies we tell ourselves in Zadie Smith’s Swing Time.