1. Luisa Muradyan's poem "Quoting the Bible" turns twice, and the middle portion has this franticness that I recognized and which drew me in. But it's the ending I'm continuing to mull over.
2. Carl Phillips's poem "Is It True All Legends Once Were Rumors" feels apocalyptic to me, appropriately so. I think I've read it ten or fifteen times in the past couple of weeks.
3. Finally, I was recently introduced (via TikTok) to Nickel Creek's song "Can't Complain," from their 2005 album Why Should the Fire Die? What a gut punch of a song about an intense and deeply toxic relationship.

As always, this is just a portion of what has mattered to me recently. I hope you have someone to take care of you, even if it's just yourself. I know you're doing your best, and so am I.

Take care.

1. Luisa Muradyan's poem "Quoting the Bible" turns twice, and the middle portion has this franticness that I recognized and which drew me in. But it's the ending I'm continuing to mull over.
2. Carl Phillips's poem "Is It True All Legends Once Were Rumors" feels apocalyptic to me, appropriately so. I think I've read it ten or fifteen times in the past couple of weeks.
3. Finally, I was recently introduced (via TikTok) to Nickel Creek's song "Can't Complain," from their 2005 album Why Should the Fire Die? What a gut punch of a song about an intense and deeply toxic relationship.

As always, this is just a portion of what has mattered to me recently. I hope you have someone to take care of you, even if it's just yourself. I know you're doing your best, and so am I.

Take care.

1. The single exclamation point in Mary Oliver's poem "I Know Someone."
2. There is this longing, I think, in Tami Haaland's poem "Not Scientifically Verifiable" about the separation between people. It's very sexy, too, I thought.
3. The way that Lisa Rhoades's captures the ephemeral moment of childhood in her poem "The Long Grass."
4. The last couplet, especially, of Rebecca Foust's poem "and for a time we lived."
5. Finally, Lyz Lenz's recent newsletter "Taking a Vacation at the End of the World": "It’s all grief. It’s some joy. And baby, I only know one way into the abyss and that’s head first."

As always, this is just a portion of what has mattered to me recently. Things are difficult and scary right now, I know. I'm doing my best to hold onto the ones I love, and to let go of what I need to let go of, and what needs me to let go of it.

Thanks, and take care.