Arse Poetica

February 14, 2015

Procrastination, Personified

Procrastination had followed me to London. An old, stubborn enemy, Procrastination is always there when the sun starts setting and the coffee starts brewing and the heart starts feeling nervous for the long night’s work ahead.

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Dora’s Ghost

Nobel laureate Patrick Modiano’s most famous novel, Dora Bruder, is something like a ghost story, though not in the traditional sense. It is a ghostly story about a young man and a nation haunted by history. Modiano received the Nobel Prize in literature in 2014, the fifteenth French writer to do so after the 2008 laureate Jean- Marie Georges Le Clézio. While Le Clézio’s writing is sensual and tinted with exoticism, Modiano’s is sparse, introspective, and heav- ily autobiographical, sometimes even termed “autofiction.”

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Our Kind of Blue

J & T and the whole gang have a new apartment, M tells me.

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Go on

Before leaving the stage for the last time the dancer takes off
her feet.

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We Should Really, Like, Do A Cleanse

What do Gwyneth Paltrow, my mother, and their doctors have in common?

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The Problem with Prestige

Why Princeton’s a-list speakers can’t keep us awake.

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Weird Vermeer

When I’m trying to be cool talking about my intersession I tell people I was visiting friends who are doing a gap year in the Capitol (which is technically true), but mostly I was hanging out with my aunt and going to art galleries.

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rpm

she cannot hope for anything better

than what she was on our red rust –

wagon’s wheels grinding as dad pulled us.

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You Can’t Sing

Coming to grips with bad pitch.

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Growing Up Ninja

The life and legacy of Naruto.

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M[]ss[]ss[]pp[] R[]ver

My hands that snatch and swat go numb.

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Erin O'Brien

Goddesses Live Here

A journey through a forgotten world.

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Puppy Videos

I’m all about puppies during finals because I never feel like less of human than when I have written the phrase “sociopolitical framework” and wondered whether what I meant was actually “geopolitical,”

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Bass Drops and Bomb Threats

When rockets fired from the Gaza Strip hit Tel Aviv for the first time since 1991, I was studying at an army preparato- ry program in one of the city’s southernmost neighborhoods.

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Dadvertising

Sitting down to watch last week’s Super Bowl XLIX, I thought I knew what to expect from an event the 49th of its kind: footballs on the field, fantasies in the commercials. From advertisements aimed at male audiences, I was accustomed to
hot babes, racecars and rock stars. What I found, instead, unsettled me.

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#yesfilter

It was half past midnight. The snow was soft and crisp from the other side of the glass. The radiator spluttered, rousing from its hour-long slumber. Like adding cotton to an over- stuffed pillow, it seeped a heat into the tired room that stirred our restless desire to descend.

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Verbatim

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Overheard at BodyHype Pickups

BodyHype Newbie: (takes off shirt)
BodyHype Bro: I’ve seen that body on Grindr before.

Overheard in Spelman

Lil Jon: Aw, skeet skeet motherfucker, aw, skeet skeet goddamn.
Frenchman: I learned this song before I learned English.

Overheard in NES 201

Preceptor: Imperialism isn’t for everyone.

Overheard in Terrace

Sophomore: I went to school in Exeter--at Exeter--I went to Exeter.

Overheard in Frist

Girl: One time this guy asked me out and I was like, “you’re my cousin,” and he was like, “no, we’re not related” and he got really offended.

Overheard in Cafe Viv

Employee to Boss: There’s just no swiss cheese. There just isn’t any. There is none. There is no swiss cheese. We have parsley. We have ham. There is no swiss cheese.

Overheard in East Pyne

Male Press Club Member 1: Dude, are those tights?
Male Press Club Member 2, indignant: It’s a thermal base layer!

Overheard in Urban Outfitters

Blonde shopper, on boyfriend: He pretends he’s an anarchist but he really just loves a nice cardigan on a woman.

Overheard on Ivy Listserv

Member: Hey, who has my black snapback? It says Margiela on it.

Overheard in Rocky Dining Hall

Casanova: So I slapped a mannequin on the ass, and there was this cute guy standing right behind me...Sorry, what was your name again?

Overheard in The Prince

Prince: The Office of Information Technology deferred comment to the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Students, who deferred comment to Housing and Real Estate Services. Housing and Real Estate Services deferred comment to Mbugua for this story.

Overheard on Pickups

Girl: Hey.
Guy: Hey.
Girl: How are you?
Guy: Good I just got hosed I’m pretty sad.

Overheard in Firestone

St. A’s Senior: Even if I could give myself a blowjob I think that I would choose not to.

Overheard in Elle Magazine

Article about male anxiety: Hysteria is so first millennium, welcome to the age of high scrociety!

Overheard outside Trader Joe’s

Young Lady: No, it really got worse. After the whole cancer thing people hate her even more.

Overheard in the CJL

BodyHype Senior: I have this friend who can look at a girl and know if she shaves her pubes. He calls it his furdar.