<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rss version="2.0">
  <channel>
    <title>Janie</title>
    <link>http://virb.com/leedswolfgirl</link>
    <description><![CDATA[I don't speak the language, I hold no currency- I am a foreign girl. I am surrounded by the sound: cattles in the market-places, scatterlings and orphanages. I look around; I see angels in the architecture, spinning in infinity; I say 'Amen' and 'Hallelujah'.]]></description>
    <generator>Virb 2.0 (@leedswolfgirl)</generator>
    <language>en</language>
    <item>
      <title>Peter's Brother</title>
      <link>http://virb.com/leedswolfgirl/photos/1714339</link>
      <description><![CDATA[<a href="http://virb.com/leedswolfgirl/photos/1714339"><img src="http://g.virbcdn.com/i/resize_575x575/Image-110935-1477153-n660651914_1277781_5792.jpg" /></a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>Thu, 08 Jan 2009 11:51:12 -0800</pubDate>
      <guid>http://virb.com/leedswolfgirl/photos/1714339</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>it was just like that</title>
      <link>http://virb.com/leedswolfgirl/posts/text/598498</link>
      <description><![CDATA[this afternoon i was hanging out with kate and owen. owen is a misplaced beatnik; there's nothing else to say about him. kate, she is kind of funny; she has orangish hair that is kind of frizz-curly with side bangs. she looks really nineties. and she wears terribly red lipstick and white blouses. she usually has paint on her hands, and sometimes she wears men's boots. we've been friends for a while, i guess.

when i got to their house, kate was on the steps with her legs sticking out into the dripping rain, drawing on a yellowy piece of paper. it was a kind of abstract collage of tiny shapes and arcs around some rain clouds and a disfigured face. she looks really sweet, but most of what she does and says is not pretty or nice. the rain made little mud puddles and flat grass on the yard and ground around in the gravel driveway. owen was sitting on a porch chair tying knots and stuff with this funny skeletal emerald string. he wore a burgundy sweater and he was kind of scrunching his face so his black-framed glasses sat in a funny place on his nose. his hands are such boy-hands-- the fingernails are bitten down shorter than you think possible, and they're all imperfect and flattened at the tips.
"hey, guys," i said. "what is that?"
own looked up at me.
"hey, janie. it's a seacatcher."
"a what?"
"a seacatcher. it catches bits of sea that are in the air and your eyes and the words you say and the tv and stuff."
i went over and looked at it. it was a kind of complicated spiderweb of twigs and string.
"that doesn't make sense," i said.
"here," said owen, handing it to me.

and there were inky squid eyes blinking into mine, barnacles pinching the skin on my arms, the continual grey sound of moving water, coral fish and nautilus spirals-- a salt-green wave smashed up against my chest and i stood there breathless as owen took the seacatcher knowingly out of my hand.
"damn," i said.
"yeah," said own. owen is a misplaced beatnik. nothing he does makes sense.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Fri, 02 May 2008 22:57:48 -0700</pubDate>
      <guid>http://virb.com/leedswolfgirl/posts/text/598498</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>love and stasis</title>
      <link>http://virb.com/leedswolfgirl/posts/text/596312</link>
      <description><![CDATA[the first time: green-flank hose spilling water out of dead-gold mouth as you held it out to my thirsty mouth, and your boy-mouth touching mine before the cold-headache of the hose-water left me. i never knew how to react to you. twelve or twenty, i don't know how to react to you.

the last time: sunset-haze skyline spilling asphalt into the vortex-mouth of the air so everything's dusty grey half-dark. the apartment balcony might be a tenuous ship that breaks off the wall from our weight. we might die. "we might die," you said, so you pulled my mouth against yours. alleviate the pain of passing? i don't think so.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Thu, 01 May 2008 15:35:59 -0700</pubDate>
      <guid>http://virb.com/leedswolfgirl/posts/text/596312</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>leaping back</title>
      <link>http://virb.com/leedswolfgirl/posts/text/596301</link>
      <description><![CDATA[I
Keep you hid among the spices in the cupboard
Cardamom, Turmeric, Sorceric, Cinnamon, Thyme;
your name in code in the tattoos on my arm and shoulder-blade
simmers with spice-flavoured milk-drinks in my mouth 8AM; the coffee smells
are wasting over me and Peter walks with me to class and talks about
peace, film, Douglas, entropy and it's like -BAM!- the day is here 
long before I'm ready.

II
2PM- the afternoon reads like a sonnet about grey days:
interchanging rhyme and the quiet crinkle 
of paper and cranes until just the end, and when he
varies the form, i almost love him i almost 
love him i almost love him--
it's almost Time.

III
the light rain from one or two 11:30PM 
lamps tires my eyes and i read and stir
milk and chai on the stove, pinning the book
with my chin against my chest when i need to use two hands.
he comes up the stairs two at a time, just when i need him least,
and i force the pale taste of you out of my mind 
because i almost love him 
i almost love him 
but you come
-LEAPING- 
back.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Thu, 01 May 2008 15:26:51 -0700</pubDate>
      <guid>http://virb.com/leedswolfgirl/posts/text/596301</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>bob dylan</title>
      <link>http://virb.com/leedswolfgirl/posts/text/586324</link>
      <description><![CDATA[After everything else in the world passes away, this fact will still remain: Bob Dylan is brilliant. The best poet of all. 

<i>"The tragic figure!" her sister did shout,
"Leave her alone, God damn you, get out!"
And I in my armor, turning about
And nailing her to the ruins of her pettiness.

Beneath a bare light bulb the plaster did pound
Her sister and I in a screaming battleground.
And she in between, the victim of sound,
Soon shattered as a child 'neath her shadows.</i>]]></description>
      <pubDate>Fri, 25 Apr 2008 15:07:31 -0700</pubDate>
      <guid>http://virb.com/leedswolfgirl/posts/text/586324</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>mere anarchy, baby</title>
      <link>http://virb.com/leedswolfgirl/posts/text/578802</link>
      <description><![CDATA[griffon lurked in the shadowy part of the room, straddling a wrong-way-round chair. his fingers ratcheted out bloodless noises- tap. tap. tap.- on the grunge and grey of the brickwork like metal. i lay defiantly in the pale watery light coming in through the window bars. turning and turning. the best lack all conviction, and we were the worst, filled with passionate intense mechanics and lassaiz-faire and many months had gone by.

from forty or fifty stories down, you could hear the gunshot and sirens, the shuddering of collapsing buildings and the dull roar of fires, but there was a strange calm in our cell, for nothing human reached us. no screaming horrific murdered, no shouting gunmen, no bereft or destroyed plaintive voices. it made the destruction seem peaceable, tolerant- we didn't care anymore. it was like griffon said one time, as we stood pale-skin-to-pale-skin at the window watching flames play over the city. "it's just anarchy, baby," he muttered against my face. it was the last little flame of hope dying in my heart and the final takeover of my inhuman side when i pulled away from him a little and studied his grey eyes, the fire in the city, the dilapidated cell, and the endless endless hard blue sky. it hurt for a second, what he said. then i shrugged. "mere anarchy," i said back. i talked almost against his mouth, but it wasn't like there was anything there anymore. certainly not desire. certainly not passion. certainly not vivacity or breathing or liquid motion. the whole world had walls and our bodies were blank and pitiless machines, and only the sky was real, turning and turning and fading and arched, but-- too far away to hear.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Mon, 21 Apr 2008 17:03:49 -0700</pubDate>
      <guid>http://virb.com/leedswolfgirl/posts/text/578802</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Choice; #3 </title>
      <link>http://virb.com/leedswolfgirl/posts/text/568301</link>
      <description><![CDATA[they want you to be jealous. they've been building these superior buildings for thirteen years, women stalking over the construction sites in black heels, rich sons hanging out in the parking lot with their shiny cars, calm businesslike men with clipboards overseeing. they want you to be jealous, the music pounding beat-first over the area, the handbags and cocktails.

we sit on the girders of the bridge-- you my courduroy boy jagged-edged repose against my handsful of asphalt romance-- watching, watching, watching. on sunday afternoons the sky falls, shedding pink and violet birds into the pacific, draping the city in swathes of aether. the chatharsis and the breathlessness don't stop them though. again and again, they paste the sky back up. they want us to be jealous.

so tonight, thurday, october the 9th, we slide down and cross the parking lot, defiantly entwined with each other, and we throw open the plate glass doors. and it's just like that-- the whole building collapses, cracks thrown across the parkinglots, shattered glass, clouds of dust.

"fuck, yeah," you say, coughing. we crawl back out to the real air. there are rusting, red and black steel boats in the fog, in the harbor. we lie on our backs in the shattered parking lot, hubcaps and engine parts the perfect bed. the sky falls on us, cloud-cold.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Tue, 15 Apr 2008 09:55:21 -0700</pubDate>
      <guid>http://virb.com/leedswolfgirl/posts/text/568301</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>ambient/electronica</title>
      <link>http://virb.com/leedswolfgirl/posts/text/545414</link>
      <description><![CDATA[It's been, I would say, five or six months since the absolute last petering out of my ambient/electronica phase. 

It is time to start listening again. I'm starting with 3DarkHours; who knows where it will go?

I am excited to get back into ambient and electronica because they are terribly beautiful.

Terrified
Terrified
Wow.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Wed, 02 Apr 2008 12:58:06 -0700</pubDate>
      <guid>http://virb.com/leedswolfgirl/posts/text/545414</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>heavy hands: toronto, april 2nd.</title>
      <link>http://virb.com/leedswolfgirl/posts/text/543433</link>
      <description><![CDATA[we woke up this morning feeling
bold and bright, though I can't quite get over the
longing to see something immense. I can't quite
reconcile myself to
buying a few records, and
holding your heavy hand as we walk back home.

and the ground is stirred and thick chocolate from
the melting of the snow. and we'll be cool--
we're cool. 

the sky is a sea of bread; porous and
yeasty. i place one fingertip in each of
the valleys between your knuckles, my caution
breached as an old city. cars and buses rumble
past. we'll keep cool--
we're keepin' cool.

if i'm looking at you sideways,
maybe you'll wonder what i'm thinking; it's about
nazis, the drop from the curb to the street, my
holy butter and kissing away words from your 
august warm-blue mouth. how
everyone is optimistic now, but they're
guarding their hearts because it will
snow again. i know you're thinking
about how cool we are
with each other.
and
i remember
standing beside the stage
as you sang, watching you wearing 
your hands above your head like flareguns.
and God saw all that he had made
and it was very good.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Tue, 01 Apr 2008 12:25:25 -0700</pubDate>
      <guid>http://virb.com/leedswolfgirl/posts/text/543433</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>suburban dryad</title>
      <link>http://virb.com/leedswolfgirl/posts/text/538771</link>
      <description><![CDATA[okay, you know that taste that sometimes comes with the heat in the car? that taste and the way your lips slowly dry out and crack open, and your lungs get fuzzy and your body is tied down with twine? i feel like that.my lips cracking open and dropping out secrets i really needed not to tell. my body tied down to the most artificial chocolate-cake world, trying to bite away the styrofoam and escape back out to the true air.

two years i've been here, counting down the days to the end of my exile, buying coffee and oranges at the supermarket and coiffing my hair over the tattoos on my temples. 

it was going to be easy. i promised dariann that i would live out these seven years without any suspicion falling on me-- without my going mad. and the first year every eye was on me in suspicion: me crouched among the potted saplings at tree nurseries, me pressed hard against the little scrawny maple in my front yard, me up at 2:30 in the morning watching documentaries on trees. they knew i was strange. 

and the second year, i was mad. people on the street turned and stared after me, because i could hardly keep the murmurs in the old language off my tongue, and they could feel that pulsing from me. i was mad; mad to be in the heart of a hundred-year tree again, longing for the freedom of my forest clothes and my bare back swirled with the brown tattoos of a cedar-dryad. i stumbled and scraped my face on brick walls. i caught my hands wandering over strangers' skulls in quiet rage. i caught your eyes, blue and steady and unafraid, watching me move through the newsprint women. and i looked back too hard.

and at 4:30 in the morning, i thought back to you watching me that afternoon, and i breathed wildly on the kitchen linoleum and knew i had to find you again. i thought i would die, that night, but your blue eyes, almost as dark and unfathomable as my fierce green ones, kept me breathing-- wildly, terribly, screaming with the longing for a world i could not return to, but still breathing.

and now i've found you, i can't help telling you the truth. i want you to look into my eyes and know that they are not mortal and love me for it anyways. i want you to trace your fingers over the tattoos on my temples, down the script on the back of my neck, over the jagged branches on my shoulder blades... i want you to quench my cracked mouth and i want to drown against you back into the old old forests. i want you to keep my shaded breaths coming until i can return to my own place and make love to the tall old trees i was born among, dance fathoms deep in glossy green oceans, curl my endless arms around the wind.

i don't know if you'll believe me, and if you don't, i don't know if you'll think i'm crazy in a good way, or a bad way. and if you do believe me, i don't know if that will scare the hell out of you or not. i don't know if you'll quench me or drown me or trace my tattoos. but i have to tell you. i have to have your unreal eyes understand my unreal eyes. ]]></description>
      <pubDate>Sat, 29 Mar 2008 14:21:56 -0700</pubDate>
      <guid>http://virb.com/leedswolfgirl/posts/text/538771</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>song #9- certain grand and glorious delusions</title>
      <link>http://virb.com/leedswolfgirl/posts/text/538658</link>
      <description><![CDATA[i met a banjoist, fourteen years old, claimed he could see my soul
and he took great pride in the songs that he wrote from all of the secrets he stole
i met a fabulous liar, lay on his lawn as he swallowed the fire
he took me for granted, i saw in his face as it stretched through my mind as a telephone wire
oh, and i started to laugh, laugh at myself for a fool
oh, and i couldn't help crying, decided the world was too cruel

so i took a spaceship to mars, left you a graveyard of cats and old cars
i sent you a postcard of mocking words, said i was happy to be in the stars
then i rode a comet back home, i couldn't quite take all the being alone
but i told you i just came back to see what you'd done with my favourite cat's bones.
oh, and i started to rage, rage at my treasonous mouth
oh, and i started to cry, cry for myself by myself

i met my landlord's son, looking like he carried a gun
and he said the world was the problem, the reason we're coming undone.
then i met my childhood friend, careless of who he offended
he said the world was on fire, spinning away to a glorious end!
oh, and i started to sing, sing i believed he was right
oh, and i started to sing, sing that the world was alight
oh, and i started to sing, sing like i was taking flight
oh, and the sky hurt my eyes, flaming and pulsing that bright...]]></description>
      <pubDate>Sat, 29 Mar 2008 12:09:23 -0700</pubDate>
      <guid>http://virb.com/leedswolfgirl/posts/text/538658</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>isaac, 1902</title>
      <link>http://virb.com/leedswolfgirl/posts/text/534519</link>
      <description><![CDATA[the way he made me feel, it was dusky and red-throated like a missing bird in an ebony tree. i could think of him differently, if i let myself, think of him whole and mine. but i don't let myself.

some late-summer monday afternoons when we were too busy to keep still and too overwrought to keep silent, we sat by the creek in the forest. we ate persimmons and didn't talk. can you think how i watched the tendons of his strong hands? or my thoughts wandered into new-planed boards and coal mines, rainy afternoons and wasted industry. can you think how i sometimes fought to hide my trembling?

but that was summer, late summer, and summer ends. there will be baskets of persimmons in the cellar, and i cannot imagine myself sitting there almost touching him in the cold dark of the cellar. so this ends. and my hands tremble with mischief that i fight to contain; i turn dusky-red in the firelight and i don't let myself think.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Thu, 27 Mar 2008 02:26:12 -0700</pubDate>
      <guid>http://virb.com/leedswolfgirl/posts/text/534519</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>fashion question:</title>
      <link>http://virb.com/leedswolfgirl/posts/text/533765</link>
      <description><![CDATA[why don't we wear aprons
as fashion items
instead of just useful bits of fabric
since they are clearly awesome?
<a href="http://s181.photobucket.com/albums/x160/Giverny5/?action=view&current=IMG000096.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i181.photobucket.com/albums/x160/Giverny5/IMG000096.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket" /></a>
je suis in an apron i sewed when i was a kid. i wonder what would happen if i wore it places.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Wed, 26 Mar 2008 18:06:40 -0700</pubDate>
      <guid>http://virb.com/leedswolfgirl/posts/text/533765</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>"This sky where we live is no place to lose your wings so love, love, love."</title>
      <link>http://virb.com/leedswolfgirl/posts/text/524347</link>
      <description><![CDATA[for some reason, there are thousands of people living in cities across the world who think subway tunnels are rabbit holes; they look at them and photograph them and think there might be a wonderland down such a dark arched place. but then they get off and stalk back up to the surface, and they're still the same people with the same boredoms as before, and the only thing that's the least bit curious is that they thought about it all.

i've been down the rabbit hole. a couple of times, actually; i know it's not like a subway tunnel. a lot of what happened when i was there was my own shifting proportions and i wrangled with fruit and swam in tears. but there was also you. 

you are burnished like bronze at night when i'm dreaming; i look at you and my own creamy palette slides into recognizable shapes and letters. at one time, it was late afternoon, and we were curled up in a forest we'd turned dwarf for. you were smoking a hookah pipe; i was eating butter and currant and cakes. one of your lazy hands made masculine journeys through my hair. there was sun in my mouth, and i showed my teeth so that little golden drops fell off my tongue.
"you're mine, you know," you said, bending over me masterful and curious.
not the sort of thing i could deny.

the time after that when i came down, i couldn't find you. instead, i was wading waist-deep in oyster shells, echoing a hollow and insincere cry that I did not understand. but you caught up with me from behind and i, scared at how you crept up on me, hit you ineffectually and tried not to cry that you had come. there was no honey-colored sun in my mouth, but you tasted it anyways.

and no rabbit-hole was ever the least bit like a subway tunnel. rabbit-holes are smooth-pale dirt, pretty, surreal, and synaesthetic; victorian and afflicting-- laden with dark whimsy or light curious screenprints and woodcuts. 
and if there was one person here who knew that with me, i would never have to go down one.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Thu, 20 Mar 2008 14:55:36 -0700</pubDate>
      <guid>http://virb.com/leedswolfgirl/posts/text/524347</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>childish and ghostly at nineteen</title>
      <link>http://virb.com/leedswolfgirl/posts/text/515954</link>
      <description><![CDATA[my mind has/all sorts of nuances,
most of which I haven't begun to unearth
but I will say that things were easier when I was 12,
without this unshakable notion of Desire. At night,
among lilies and among dead beeches, I write a
song with more words than I can fit in my breath until I go  Crazy!
more breaths than I can fit in my Humanity until you come back!
there are cinders bleeding out of the armchairms there are
Your fingerprints on the windowpanes there are
no other reasons you should come back but to stop my Screaming!

and stop your eavesdropping; these are conversations
meant for our feminine ears only: do 
you even begin to know the nuances of our Bodies? they are ghastly; ghastly, my dear!
but things were easier before this
desire  took  me  and
i feel childish and ghostly, but i am 19.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Sat, 15 Mar 2008 16:58:09 -0700</pubDate>
      <guid>http://virb.com/leedswolfgirl/posts/text/515954</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>excerpt from 'the bell jar'</title>
      <link>http://virb.com/leedswolfgirl/posts/text/514104</link>
      <description><![CDATA[As we sat back to back on our separate sides of the bed fumbling with our shoes in the horrid cheerful white light of the bed lamp, I sensed Constantin turn round. "Is your hair always like that?"
"Like what?"
He didn't answer, but reached over and put his hand at the root of my hair and ran his fingers out slowly to the tip end like a comb. A little electric shock flared through me and I sat quite still. Ever since I was small I loved feeling somebody comb my hair. It made me go all sleepy and peaceful.
"Ah, I know what it is," Constantin said. "You've just washed it."
And he bent to lace up his tennis shoes.
]]></description>
      <pubDate>Fri, 14 Mar 2008 12:38:41 -0700</pubDate>
      <guid>http://virb.com/leedswolfgirl/posts/text/514104</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>my heart skips</title>
      <link>http://virb.com/leedswolfgirl/posts/text/512092</link>
      <description><![CDATA[i confess: i have a large crush on craig from cubistliterature. 

but it's.. well, it's something, probably negative. because not only is he a drunken knitting student who lives in brooklyn.... and a boy feminist... and most of what he says worries me... but also, he doesn't know i exist. (unless someone told him, but that seems unlikely). and he will probably never know.

but when he says 'they're not cute; they're indifferent' about his rabbits... or looks out-of-place and a little bit sarcastic on TV.. my heart skips.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Thu, 13 Mar 2008 10:30:22 -0700</pubDate>
      <guid>http://virb.com/leedswolfgirl/posts/text/512092</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>wrist writing</title>
      <link>http://virb.com/leedswolfgirl/posts/text/510432</link>
      <description><![CDATA[all week the phrase 'i think you should go' has been running through my head with blue hightops and untied laces.

i can't figure out what it means; who should go?

so i'm writing it down on my wrist until one of three things happens:
1) i stop thinking about it
2) i make up or discover who i mean
3) the person who i think should go reads it and decides to go.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Wed, 12 Mar 2008 12:59:08 -0700</pubDate>
      <guid>http://virb.com/leedswolfgirl/posts/text/510432</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>the heaton to my abbot</title>
      <link>http://virb.com/leedswolfgirl/posts/text/509623</link>
      <description><![CDATA[i like to imagine that our story is just like heaton and abbot's, but i guess we're both too small.

you're not running your second successful band, but i like to sit in the garage and listen to you and the boys writing imperfect sonnets on saturday afternoons. and i like that your lineup is fixed and i'm really the only one who likes you a great deal, and so you like me a great deal.

and my voice isn't heavenly, but sometimes i hum bits of music that end up in your songs, and you smile at me over your microphone and none of the other boys know that was me taking my part in the band.

and heaton and abbot were big, but we're in love, and so i guess their story is really too small.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Tue, 11 Mar 2008 23:55:30 -0700</pubDate>
      <guid>http://virb.com/leedswolfgirl/posts/text/509623</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>[this is not a complaint]</title>
      <link>http://virb.com/leedswolfgirl/posts/text/506830</link>
      <description><![CDATA[people never seem to notice that the way they see me isn't the way i see myself.

he's been writing stories about me, although just now we're pretending that he's not. the trouble is, i've been writing stories about me, too, and the me in his stories doesn't match with the me in my own. can't he see that? doesn't he notice that the girl he talks to who doesn't really answer has painted her whole life and heart and soul out in words and hung it up for the world to see?

doesn't he ever stop to look?

sometimes i just stand in front of the mirror and look at my eyes. i am the only person i know who looks in my eyes like that and tries to read them. if, someday, i meet someone else, some boy who does that, he will own me. until then, i am going to walk with everyone, my friends, my family, my lovers, with a certain unaccountable aloofness and read them like if i wrote them, and no one will read me.

i think you should know that i can do without you right now.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Mon, 10 Mar 2008 13:56:01 -0700</pubDate>
      <guid>http://virb.com/leedswolfgirl/posts/text/506830</guid>
    </item>
  </channel>
</rss>
