constellations #79: two poems for spring

Hi again.

Sending you a short missive this month because I am dealing with some personal things. Anyway here is a poem by Molly Brodak:

In the Morning, Before Anything Bad Happens

The sky is open
all the way.

Workers upright on the line
like spokes.

I know there is a river somewhere,
lit, fragrant, golden mist, all that,

whose irrepressible birds
can’t believe their luck this morning
and every morning.

I let them riot
in my mind a few minutes more
before the news comes.

***

One day this week I looked out my window and saw buds appearing on a tree in my neighbor’s backyard, and in that moment I genuinely felt some of the ice around my heart melt away. It reminded me of a poem by Ada Limón that my friend Elle included when she wrote a guest star edition of constellations a couple years ago:

Instructions on Not Giving Up

More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.

***

Here are some other things I have been consuming lately: 1000 gecs by 100 gecs; Radical Romantics by Fever Ray (which I reviewed for NPR Music); Sublimation by Shalom; a long-awaited and really magnificent Strange Mangers show (also featuring Brittle Brian and Vinegar and Knifeplay); We’re All Going To The World’s Fair; the podcast series SISTERS from The Heart (so moving but honestly so emotionally triggering — if you also have sisters and have listened to this series, please unpack it with me); a rewatch of the first few seasons of Girls, which apparently everyone else is re-watching now, too; this really nice interview with the writer Charlotte Shane; this conversation between Cate Blanchett and Maggie Nelson about Tár (thanks to Hazel for sending me this); a manicure, for the first time in years; homemade blueberry muffins; an excellent cardamom bun from Otway in Clinton Hill; an excellent martini at Hart’s in Bed-Stuy; some bad news and, in response, a lot of tears and a lot of kindness

***

This time last year I was: giving and getting compliments; and before that, I was moving out of a very good city

***

Thanks for reading. Take care of yourself. I hope you see some nice things blooming between now & when we speak again.

xo,
M