Category Archives: books poetry lit

Olive Oil

books poetry lit May 29, 2013 Leave a comment

The toast would taste better with egg, but there aren’t any,
so I pour a thimble-sized serving of olive oil on, to make it more

flavorful. I like the taste of olive oil. It reminds me of the time
when I was eighteen and jumped clear over the hood of my car

because I could. To be more specific, olive oil is the part where
I leave the ground and I’m in the air, halfway across. Right then,

before landing on the other side. That’s the taste of olive oil.
It also tastes the way Madagascar sounds when you say it

backwards. If there were olive oil cologne, I would wear it and if
there were olive oil goldfish, I would have two in a bowl on the

table. For some reason, it is also a man swallowing lighter
fluid because the pain in his belly is bigger than the Kalahari

Desert. But maybe that’s only when you drink it straight; and
sometimes it tastes like Brigitte Bardot. To be more specific,

in the scene where she is sunning naked in Capri, an impossibly
blue ocean wrestling with the sky in the distance.

-Paul Suntup, Rattle 

Neolithic Burial

books poetry lit May 7, 2013 Leave a comment

When he died they hunched him up
like baby in womb, curled him
into a shallow scoop in the cave-floor,
planted him like a seed as he slowly stiffened,
covering his slumped and earthen limbs
with a layer of red ochre,
sprinkling him with wildflowers—
then turned away.

Moon comes back each month, so bright,
then curls itself into a dying crescent—
baby struggles out of a woman’s darkness—
petals of delicate blue, pale yellow, in the wet woods,
how do they know
when sun is past dying and comes
to life again?

This is older than cities or books,
older than prayers or earnest discussions,
older than farming,
something buried and burst open
long before words, ideas, church or temple or crudest holy place,
older even than itself,

this longing.

-Tim Myers, Rattle

Life

books poetry lit, coffee, quotidian May 6, 2013 Leave a comment

coffeebooks

Shiny: BBC Drama, Iron Man 3, Neo-Noir Fiction

books poetry lit, film & television May 3, 2013 Leave a comment

Set against the iconic backdrop of the War of the Roses, The White Queen is an adaptation of Philippa Gregory‘s bestselling historical novel series The Cousin’s War. This Summer on BBC One.

 

Iron Man 3 Review. “The problem that then presents itself is that post-Avengers, all of this has changed. The world has changed. Now there are gods and monsters and supermen out of time, not to mention aliens and Hulks and Cosmic Cubes and even death Himself made a brief appearance. The entire game has shifted, and as a result, we’re at a peculiar kind of crossroads with Tony Stark and his invention. Where does one go, in this brave and crazy new world? What will Iron Man’s new enemies look like in this bizarre new landscape, where literal worlds have been opened up to us?” (RT Pajiba)

“What is neo-noir fiction? It’s contemporary dark fiction. It was built on the backbone of classic noir and hardboiled fiction, but it’s evolved to be so much more than that. It is a genre-bending subgenre that includes edgy literary fiction, as well as fantasy, science fiction, and horror. It also touches on niche storytelling like magical realism, slipstream, transgressive, and the grotesque.” –10 Essential Neo-Noir Authors (RT Flavorwire)

Quotidian: Middlemarch

books poetry lit, quotidian April 24, 2013 Leave a comment

Middlemarch is full of delicious sentences.

“Souls have complexions too. What suits one may not suit another.”

“This hope was not unmixed with the glow of proud delight – the joyous maiden surprise that she was chosen by the man whom her admiration had chosen.”

Also, no-one can sum up a character quite as dismissively as the 19th-century Victorian writers.

“It was hardly a year since they had come to live at Tipton Grange with their uncle, a man of nearly sixty, of acquiescent temper, miscellaneous opinions, and uncertain vote.”

 

Quotidian

books poetry lit March 18, 2013 Leave a comment

“He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.”

-Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

Reading Nook

art & illustration, books poetry lit March 15, 2013 Leave a comment

And after Belle and the Prince got married, they turned one of the palace rooms into this reading library where the community, young and old, could come and read.
booknook