The Assemblage Newsletter #68
Welcome to this week’s newsletter from Assemblage. These newsletters go out every Friday to highlight some of the top works from the past week. We hope these links (all friend links, so anyone can view them) find you wildly expectant. It has to get better than how it’s been. And it’s been worse before.
“I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness; I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too. I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too shall end, that peace and tranquility will return once more.” — Anne Frank
We could all look up at the sky a little bit more each day.
Featured Writer
Each week we feature one of our writers and up to six of their essays or poems on the homepage underneath the Featured Essays and Featured Poems sections. This week our Featured Writer is Jessica Lee McMillan. Jessica is a mama, poet, iconoclast, and word nerd who likes shiny things and writes on philosophy, art, music, and nature.
Collection
Collections are groupings of essays or poems with an overall theme. You can find Collections on the home page underneath the Featured Stories, Featured Poetry, and Featured Writer sections.
On Habits features 8 different works from 8 different writers all with a unique twist on habits. This section is a great way to get acquainted with multiple works around one theme, as well as to find writers you haven’t read before or ones you shouldn’t miss. Take a look at our Collection this week and see what you may have missed.
On Habits features one work each from Lance Baker, Pandora Domeyko, Niki Marinis, Em Unravelling, Susie Pinon, Cara Harbstreet (She/Her), Anna I. Smith, and The Rewired Soul.
Essays and Poems From Last Week
What a Stoplight Exchange Taught Me About Joy by Vanessa Torre
“My daughter delivered a present that day. I am certain that man drove off giggling to himself. I can only imagine that he was racking his brain trying to figure out the last time that somebody challenged him to a game of roshambo. Never at a stoplight.”
Pinhole Camera by Jonathan Greene
“Some days I feel like a light-proof box
with a small hole in one side
watching scenes of us
pass through the aperture
and project on that white wall,
the one where we said our last goodbye,
where we became, camera obscura”
If They Don’t Want to Be With You, That’s Closure by Jeff Barton
“And after looking back on my life and my relationships, I realized most of the problems which I was overthinking (and the answers to the questions I thought were unknown) were actually quite clear and right in front of me. The signs were flashing bright and blinding me; I chose to ignore them because I really didn’t want to know the truth, and mostly, I didn’t want to be thrust into the unknown of being alone.”
“Words would bounce off the sun and burn holes through tangled clouds,
eclipsing my grasp of invisible stars hiding behind them,
knowing that while there are times I can’t see these pinpricks of light,
they are always there, waiting to shine.”
“I don’t hunt my former selves; they hunt me through the arbitrary remnants of my existence. Sometimes scabs reopen; other times, I discover wounds that never actually healed. The bleeding may have temporarily ceased, but a minuscule scratch destructs the barrier that guards my past from my present. I’ve tried to shed my skin to rid myself of scars, but they’re carved into my bones, too.”
Shiver by Jessica Lee McMillan
“in the season of no time
greened concrete architecture
anchors the still-water sky
unresounding like broken bells,
pulling focus; a shiver of hunger.”
Terms & Conditions by Em Unravelling
“A partial refund, then, please
in recognition of my partial fault
because I only skim-read all the details, ignoring the subheadings
so keen was I to get to the fun parts”
For The Ones Who Are Losing Patience by Megan Minutillo
“Moments of impatience are little signs of what we need to work on, things that we perhaps have to talk about, or unpack, or discuss with our loved ones or therapist or journal on our own. Having them doesn’t mean that you can never get your patience back — it just means that you’re having a bit of a day, or a week, or a month — and so, you need to take a beat.”
Grasping Universal Constants by Bradley J Nordell
“Thinkers awake,
grasping constants
in nonlinear echoes
grains of chaos between toes.”
Weekly Note
“It’s easier to go down a hill than up it but the view is much better at the top.” — Henry Ward Beecher
How are you going to get back to your top?
