Quotes from Sabrina Orah Mark

The prose poem for me becomes a kind of chamber with no way out… a kind of hunt, because what is hunt but a breathing thing caught inside the house or the body or the box without the possibility of an exit?

We ask the child to drag around the unwieldy weight of magic. To clap wildly. To believe in what we believe in no longer. We ask the child to keep the awe we forgot how to hold. The fairy isn't the fairy. It's the child who is the fairy.

The strange thing about being a mother is how often I'm interrupted. Like something is happening and then something else is happening. It is difficult to get a good grasp on things.

I'm sorry, Son / I'm just a poet. I hope this is enough. / If it isn't I'll burn down the house / and give you the ashes.

After seven to ten days, the nit hatches and becomes what is known as a nymph, or a young louse. Cycles are essential to life. Without patterns our bodies would wander off into the middle of a parched field and just stand there staring up at the sky.

This is the problem with hunger. This is the problem with love. There is no end in sight.

There are so many people, and they are so beautiful and hopeful. And they too are covered in holes. They each carry a bucket. And in each bucket is a hole. This is the song we're in.

I come from a long line of superstitious people. We spit three times, we keep salt in our pockets, we wear tiny hands against our chests, we throw no baby showers, we chew on thread, we break the glass, we knock on wood, we rarely smile for fear of bringing attention to a happiness we rarely feel, for fear of someone out of nowhere taking our happiness away.