Brute Quotes

“What is this impulse in me to worship & crucify
anyone who leaves me—”
― Emily Skaja, Brute: Poems

“If ghost, if whore, if virgin—same origin story:

because X was a face too lovely, Y was a corpse in the lake.”
― Emily Skaja, Brute: Poems

“How many implements of shame should I hold against

myself?”
― Emily Skaja, Brute: Poems

“We're almost a whole shadow now from far away.”
― Emily Skaja, Brute: Poems

“I know what to do
with the dark.”
― Emily Skaja, Brute: Poems

“Done with the whole dark
& the insect dirge
under blue lit lamps.
Done trying to remember

June, first stars & August
when I was Penelope
when I was Eurydice
when July was missing

& I was my own dull shade.”
― Emily Skaja, Brute: Poems

“It's easy to be angry
about how much hope there is
in reaching
The whole house gone
& so many little monuments
to the wrong thing”
― Emily Skaja, Brute: Poems

“He said I didn't want to tell you
to wait for me (But wait for me)”
― Emily Skaja, Brute: Poems

“It's not anyone's fault that this world is full of omens.
By all accounts, history is a practice

of ignoring things & hoping for the best. You can drive
yourself crazy with looking. You can expect

bad luck to mark you unfooled, fooled.
Light to mark you with light.”
― Emily Skaja, Brute: Poems

“as if my own voice
could return me

to myself.”
― Emily Skaja, Brute: Poems

“Oh hawk, what's your damage—
are you here to pick the bones

of the years I laid waste to
like I never loved a thing? So be it.”
― Emily Skaja, Brute: Poems

“Is it giving up if you give what you have
& the universe still fucks you”
― Emily Skaja, Brute: Poems

“Without you, all the proverbs are halved in my mouth. Where there's smoke there's. Where there's smoke.”
― Emily Skaja, Brute: Poems

“My mind is a wishbone drying. I hold it taut & pull to break.”
― Emily Skaja, Brute: Poems

“I have just this one heart okay I was burned I was gaslit nearly to ash on the first try
From the start I was told I was a powerful speaker I was told when & how I should speak
It's true I made a feast of my own misery I invited everyone the whole gang”
― Emily Skaja, Brute: Poems

“Don't tell me the sun is an exit

the sky is a clamp.”
― Emily Skaja, Brute: Poems

“I said I never want to survive that story again”
― Emily Skaja, Brute: Poems

“On Broad Street, ravens

lurk on the Divine Lorraine Hotel as if to say
Always a corpse flower, never a bride.”
― Emily Skaja, Brute: Poems

“After you leave, you leave &
thicketed in sludge I’ve been glued open. Self as spectacle:
Yolk Marvel. Unbird. Emily as grave pillar as salt lick as dammed up
luminous in thread. I have read the whole moon
cycle; it doesn’t explain the cracks. Mercury for once
cannot be blamed. My dishes float in soap like little planets.
I drop my hands in the sink. They come up feathered.”
― Emily Skaja, Brute: Poems

“I have a list
of cocoons to transform my body: Uncontrollable
Shaking. Sleep Paralysis. Dread of Eating. I’m guilty
of pretending the roads to your house are no longer roads
but deerpaths angled crooked through the marsh. Again the water
doesn’t stop; it rains even when the weather is overdue: a holy
parallel. My mouth is rotted & anonymous. The bed needs oars.”
― Emily Skaja, Brute: Poems

“Stone after stone, I’m defacing the river of being in love with you.”
― Emily Skaja, Brute: Poems

“I grow true to seed. Unfamiliar with traditions of marksmanship. Whose grouse it is. Whose grouse I am after I fall.”
― Emily Skaja, Brute: Poems

“No one was with you — how that weights on me. That there can be no untwisting of the tree back into its seed. Innocent of all changes.”
― Emily Skaja, Brute: Poems

“Is it true that you can’t love a man against his will & get away without a scratch.”
― Emily Skaja, Brute: Poems

“I am sewn into a dress.”
― Emily Skaja, Brute

“If I loved someone like that. A figure of questionable authority
figuring out which relics to preserve under cling wrap.

For the way he smelled like cedar. Mispronounced the names of plants.”
― Emily Skaja, Brute: Poems

“Listen to me, I'm not hiding it—
I'm swimming out to meet the boats
coming armed up the river

& I wish he were watching
through a lead-black fog.
I had his book of exits learned by heart.
I thought I knew it.”
― Emily Skaja, Brute: Poems

“but I can stand here reciting all the words I have
over the hole & that's what's left—”
― Emily Skaja, Brute: Poems

“Compromised by longing & looking for language

to note the differences in the map: the pointed spruces
tipped against the moon this time

& the water halflit, star-slid—but it makes no difference
in the telling.”
― Emily Skaja, Brute: Poems

“Hello you

are a vessel of vessels.”
― Emily Skaja, Brute: Poems