A gray plate of steaming mussels and a draught saucer of butter with floating slivers of garlic— Van Gogh coughs an affirmation at his brother who puts his brown cigarette on the edge of the table— he walks down the long street. He entered the rain, leaving the green awning. Each passing second they are somewhat more distant. They're both infected with syphilis. Theo is visiting his new girlfriend. She is not suffering with his infection.
He gives her a dripping wet bouquet of stolen calamus. In fact, Theo thinks she is still a virgin. She isn't. In less than a decade they all are dead and buried. The two brothers believe in the superstition of posterity. Her syphilis actually was congenital. As of last April all of them were entirely virginal. They do remain my best and only imaginary friends. I like a feint of mustard with my mussels. I like the rain.
"Any opportunity to contemplate Lorde would be a cause for celebration. The Selected Works of Audre Lorde, edited and introduced by Roxane Gay, arrives at an especially interesting moment, however. Lorde’s writing has rarely been more influential—or more misunderstood."
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“'The Wake of Maria De Jesus Martinez' was one attempt to write, as form, a casta-like poem, where each section of the lyric was itself of a different time and space, yet, linked through repeating phrases. As the lyric progressed, the work began to be less 'pictorial' and relied more and more on sound: the emotional labor of the poem was performed/rendered through its music."
