Poetic Quotes

"You choose wrong, yet, choose again."
Joshua Nguyen, “In the Bathroom after Eating Hot Cheetos”

"The boy’s blood was red. It looked like wet paint. On average, it takes paint three days to dry."
- Shyla Hardwick, “Worms”

"My kiss tastes like a shotgun to the lips."
- Sabrina Benaim, from Depression & Other Magic Tricks

"She isn’t dying, but I’ve spent my whole life watching her eat herself into the earliest grave she can fit into."
FROM THE VAULT! Imani Cezanne - “Flowers”

"If I die in police custody, no I did not kill myself."
- Kwyn Townsend Riley, “PWI 10 Commandments”

"My mind can only count reasons to stay awake."
- Sabrina Benaim, from Depression & Other Magic Tricks

"They have plans for you. They want to stir your dreadlocks in a pot and turn them into a dog leash."
- Mega, “For Richard Sherman" 

"When I was a boy, I cursed so much my mother scrubbed my mouth with soap, and now what curses do I have left with which to clean the dead?"
Michael Lee, “Leaving”

"Push her so far into the mattress that she disappears completely. She will say your name over and over and over until she forgets her own."
- Megan Maughan, “5 Reasons to Date a Girl With an Eating Disorder”

"got a fifteen-second water break ten minutes ago and now we’ve got six miles around the golf course that is supposed to be the color of money but around here, looks like horse food."
- FROM THE VAULT! Olivia Gatwood - “Fourth Week of Two-a-Days in July”

"Sometimes you have to forget who you are to learn who you want to be"
- AJ Saleh, “Nujoom”

"Being somewhere you got no business being is the only heaven most of us believe in."
- William Evans, from Still Can’t Do My Daughter’s Hair

"Could you make this wheelchair feel like my father’s shoulders? Invent a makeup that prevents the bruises, instead of just covering them up?"
- Ken Arkind, “God Box”

"I am a sheep trapped in wolf’s clothing. I have been caught howling at the moon and mistaken for a predator, mistaken for bloodthirsty, mistaken for a mistake in need of erasing"
- Bilal Moon, “Muslim Bill of Rights”

"We’re supposed to take things slow, and we will. We’ll talk slow, we’ll eat slow, reveal everything we’ve kept hidden, just like that, slow."
- Neil Hilborn, “How Do You Sleep with an IV In?”

"In America, we are taught to scream the word ‘FIRE’ if being assaulted, because no one will help us if we yell ‘RAPE.’"
- Carrie Rudzinski, “In America" 

"I promise I will love you as if it’s the only thing I’ve ever done correctly."
- Rudy Francisco, from Helium

"No one is freaking out cause your dick is here."
- Danez Smith, “Peter”

"sick or not, your skin has always been on fire."
- Bernard Ferguson, “Flareup”

"I exist, and I am a woman, and I am real, and I am real, and I am real."
- Riley Zahn, “The TERF on My Shoulder”

"I am a pile of bricks and you are holding a sledgehammer, which is to say I would not exist without you."
- Neil Hilborn, from Our Numbered Days

"You always save the ones never meant to survive."
- Gary Jackson, “Tryouts”

"With your corporate conglomerate co-sponsors and policemen lining the sidewalks, whose equality are you celebrating anyway?"
- Sibel Sayiner & Violet Trachtenberg, “Pride”

"Fat Girl still manages to love her fat body. World says, ‘Stop glorifying obesity.’"
- Rachel Wiley, from Nothing is Okay

"I am always amazed at the ability to forget history is a choice for some people."
- Ariana Brown, “Volver, Volver”

"What is a nation which does not save poetry? What is a poem but the gathering of lines? What is a line but people waiting? What is waiting but satisfaction suspended?"
- Claire Schwartz, from Bound

"Splash guards never seemed necessary, at least, not the way I was taught to hold my body."
- William Evans, “Bathroom Etiquette”

"And I don’t like this. That my body is a photo you have to take."
- Talia Young, “The Virgin’s Lament”

"The consistency of hurt is what makes it so comforting."
- William Nu'utupu Giles, “What Do You Want? It’s Not That Simple”

"I am like you. I still want to feast on the happiest moments of strangers."
- Hanif Abdurraqib, from The Crown Ain’t Worth Much

"This is how we have learned to love. Texting each other pictures of our bodies. When we share a bed, we only know how to touch ourselves."
- Gage Wallace, “How We Have Learned To Love”

"It seems some clothes will always be in style, even when they are soaked in blood."
- Portia Bartley, “When Blackness Becomes a Hand-Me-Down Shirt”

"She knew every student by name, visited every classroom. Spoke to us like we were scholars, artists, scientists, athletes, musicians. And we were."
- Sarah Kay - “Mrs Ribeiro”