Another list of five things I love, in very particular order: Cherry trees. Men’s musky armpits. Lies that are my backstory of how exactly Björk came to distrust poets, then used an e.e. cummings poem as lyrics for one of my favorite shorter songs of hers. The way I don’t care if heaven exists, so long as men’s musky armpits do. The smallest words, I tell my students, can make a world of difference. Conjunctions like “but,” “and,” “or.”Adverbs like “then.” How often “then” occurs in scenes like at the food truck—the lie the cook tells me, the truth he smiles at her, the reality that depends on
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