Closer and closer (Knausgaard)

All of this still existed. The smooth, flat rocks were exactly the same, the sea pounded down on them in the same way, and also the landscape under the water, with its small valleys and bays and steep chasms and slopes, strewn with starfish and sea urchins, crabs and fish, was the same.... The houses where we lived were still standing, all of them. The sole difference, which is the difference between a child's reality and an adult's, was that they were no longer laden with meaning. A pair of Le Coq soccer boots was just a pair of soccer boots. If I felt anything when I held a pair in my hands now it was only a hangover from my childhood, nothing else, nothing in itself. The same with the sea, the same with the rocks, the same with the taste of salt that could fill your summer days to saturation, now it was just salt, end of story. The world was the same, yet it wasn't, for its meaning had been displaced, and was still being displaced, approaching closer and closer to meaninglessness.

Karl Ove Knausgaard, My Struggle: Book One

The Animal Commitments

My poetry chapbook, The Animal Commitments, is now available for pre-order! If you are interested in buying a copy, please place an order during this pre-order period, as the number of pre-orders I get will determine my initial press run and the number of author copies I receive from the publisher.

New poems

+15

Thai curry tilapia

On grief

Grief is a systemic rejection of the intolerable.

On influence

Influence is an infection, which provokes a creative reaction by the immune system.