14august2026 // 23:47

so which poetry books should i bring on my trip

suddenly i’m tireduncomfortablenauseous. i make my way home walking slouchingslugging i look like some annoyed teenager. i want comfortwarmth my bed. mind drifts, i think, which poetry books should i bring on my trip. i should probably bring some. i have already made a stack of the books i will bring: collected stories by flannery o’connor / lolita by nabokov / erotism by bataille / in memory of memory by maria stepanova / crime and punishment by dostoevsky / swann’s way by proust / on the road by kerouac / orlando by woolf / the waves by woolf / another country by baldwin / close to the knives by david wojnarowicz / rebecca by daphne du maurier / madame bovary by flaubert / our lady of the flowers by genet. (i don’t normally read so many male authors at once but i feel the need to catch up on some classics (funny how male authors are easily recognizable by their last name whereas women less often so (i’ve been reading quite a bit of chris kraus lately so it’s making me some kind of literary feminist))) anyways i probably need to bring some poetry. poetry keeps my mind trained on language itself, the language of every moment, the language that escapes itself— when i talk about things that are simultaneously eternal and ephemeral it is really always just Language. i am always thinking of the words— the constant stream of language in my mind moves at all times— but often i forget that it’s there, and then it’s just a matter of if i can catch it. (i am jealous of story writers who can enter and exit the writing as they please, never feeling as if they are constantly losing something during the off-moments.) it comes when i am brushing my teeth, frying an egg, god forbid when i am driving to work. i can’t pause, i can’t catch the words— yes for a moment i am holding them but after another minute or two they start to escape me. i rush to finish brushing my teeth. sacrifice the dental health— anything to get back to the pen and paper— Catch This Now. the dream life for a poet is one where they have the freedom to pause at any time. pause and catch, kill and keep.

juarez machado