The Pittsburgh Press, Pennsylvania, January 14, 1935

Laika's still up there. not her body, sure, but her soul is. i saw it through my telescope one night when i was looking for aliens. she was sniffing for table scraps under saturn's ring. she chases comets and bites down on satellites. i saw her napping by neptune, she was kicking her feet. passing through the oort cloud is like the stroke of a hand on her fur. eyes like marbles and four little paws like flames. she bobs through jupiter's moons like cold moscow streets. up there the stars are a great big field. and look, she's running so fast. god damn, look at her go.

Roman Widow - Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1874 (details)

“When I die, leave my body in the woods. The wolves will be gentler than any man.”

-unknown

To My Twenty-Four-Year-Old Self - Elisa Gonzales

Sometimes you feel more intimacy with the woman who lives

in the apartment opposite—twenty years older, probably,

though she looks barely ten, devoted to evading age—

than with anyone stroked or kissed or otherwise handled.

You sit naked on the white sofa, lights on, looking into her home,

lights on.

She paints her toenails, watches a black-and-white film,

Hitchcock, maybe: there’s a woman with a platinum chignon.

She applies a green mask. A cream. A mystery ointment.

When you meet an older woman who resembles her, enough,

you do the obvious thing.

That woman says, after, Don’t ever leave me

but when you report to your friends

you change her words to Don’t ever forget me.

Typical of us, the lie and the lie.

Why couldn’t you tell the truth? That’s what I’ve come to ask.

Not to her—to your friends.

I can’t remember why it embarrassed you.

Was it that she was old enough not to bare her throat?

Or was it shame at yourself, for misunderstanding

how well you were understood?

(It always comes back to knowledge with us, doesn’t it?)

Maybe it doesn’t matter: you’ll think of this woman

so often throughout the years

that by some lights

you’ll have kept your vow.

-filmythings

I think this weekend I’ll go on an alcohol bender

But at least drinks are free when you’re the bartender.

Diana Reposing by Paul-Jacques-Aime Baudry (1859)

First born daughter playing therapist

Apology letters to anyone I’ve ever kissed

I think this weekend I’ll go on an alcohol bender

But at least drinks are free when you’re the bartender.

The Queen

by Pablo Neruda tr. Donald D. Walsh

I have named you queen. There are taller than you, taller. There are purer than you, purer. There are lovelier than you, lovelier.

But you are the queen.

When you go through the streets No one recognizes you. No one sees your crystal crown, no one looks At the carpet of red gold That you tread as you pass, The nonexistent carpet.

And when you appear All the rivers sound In my body, bells Shake the sky, And a hymn fills the world.

Only you and I, Only you and I, my love, Listen to it.