Song Against Natural Selection

The weak survive!
A man with a damaged arm,
a house missing a single brick, one step
torn away from the other steps
the way I was once torn away
from you; this hurts us, it

isn't what we'd imagined, what
we'd hoped for when we were young
and still hoping for, still imagining things,
but we manage, we survive. Sure,
losing is hard work, one limb severed
at a time makes it that much harder

to get around the city, another word
dropped from our vocabularies
and the remaining words are that much heavier
on our tongues, that much further
from ourselves, and yet people
go on talking, speech survives.

It isn't easy giving up limbs,
trying to manage with that much
less to eat each week, that much more
money we know we'll never make,
things we not only can't buy, but
can't afford to look at in the stores;

this hurts us, and yet we manage, we survive
so that losing itself becomes a kind
of song, our song, our only witness
to the way we die, one day at a time;
a leg severed, a word buried: this
is how we recognize ourselves, and why.

-- Edward Hirsch

I am drowning in Shalach Manot!

The official LYA How to Purim:

"Read the Megilla, eat, drink, sing, drink, discuss or playact Purim story, drink, read Megilla again, drink, give money to the poor, drink, give Mishloach Manot, drink, sing, sleep, wake up with headache."

Elizabeth Wurtzel on Vashti

Staring down the barrel at the sea. Unfocused.

"Mac kills my inner child."

Your True Nature by llScorpiusll
Username
The quality that most appeals to you:	Strength
In a survival situation, you:	Do what is necessary
Your hidden talent is:	Spiritual wisdom
Your gift is:	Ability to acquire wealth
In groups, you:	Get the party started
Your best quality is:	Your inclusiveness
Your weakness is:	Your timidity
Created with quill18's MemeGen 3.0!

I'll miss talking with you this way.


Dialogue

She sits with one hand poised against her head, the
other turning an old ring to the light
for hours our talk has beaten
like rain against the screens
a sense of August and heat-lighting
I get up, go to make tea, come back
we look at each other
then she says (and this is what I live through
over and over) - she says: I do not know
if sex is an illusion
I do not know
who I was when I did those things
or who I said I was
or whether I willed to feel
what i had read about
or who in fact was there with me
or whether i knew, even then
that there was doubt about these things -

-- Adrienne Rich

x

Prayer

Somedays, although we cannot pray, a prayer
Utters its self. So, a woman will lift
Her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
At the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.

Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
Enters our hearts, that small familiar pain;
Then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth
In the distant latin chanting of a train.

Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano scales
Console the lodger looking out across
A midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
A child’s name as though they named their loss.

Darkness outside. Inside, the radio’s prayer-
Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.

-- Carol Ann Duffy

How very strange.