Deborah Landau Quotes

“I have nearly completed
your disappearance”
― Deborah Landau, The Last Usable Hour

“I am always nighttime on the inside
barefoot and heretic”
― Deborah Landau, The Last Usable Hour

“with his words
in my head
I slept for thirty
or forty forevers
while the grass shrieked
and the trees tremored
it was crazy
letting my youth
pass like that
giving myself up
to the abstract fears
balconies collapsing
over the east river
as far as the eye could see
until all is miniature
wind over water
without end
when I am dead
I will have something
to say about death
& all the men stretched out
a girl must be a graveyard
I am a descendant of fields
and want to keep my mind off it, especially”
― Deborah Landau, The Last Usable Hour

“Everything gets more and more absurd.”
― Deborah Landau, The Last Usable Hour

“More and more it's deliciousness I want
but all the time there's less of it.”
― Deborah Landau, The Last Usable Hour

“How long can I sit here not doing the thing
I want to do.”
― Deborah Landau, The Last Usable Hour

“Nowhere to go to tea.
Only gin here
and no god at any gate
and no goodness.”
― Deborah Landau, The Last Usable Hour

“immaculate middle-of-the-night quiet

rainlessness

the late moony sadness
of the one specific mosquito

dear someone

you habituate me to the invisible
I exit through you not as myself”
― Deborah Landau, The Last Usable Hour

“so it came time and
no day like that is ever
good in the coming”
― Deborah Landau, The Last Usable Hour

“and home isn't here
and home isn't there”
― Deborah Landau, The Last Usable Hour

“I'd rather watch you doing it
than do it myself.
I'd rather hear about it.
I want to be told.
I'd rather just sit here.
Hold the mask over my face
while you do it to me.
I'll put some music on.
Now see how we grow aglow
so young and beautiful
our capillaries all lit up.”
― Deborah Landau, The Last Usable Hour

“narrow the zone and see your life
which is what we call it as if it were a real thing.”
― Deborah Landau, The Last Usable Hour

“In the middle of my wood, I found myself in a dark life.
The day was going toward the narrow place the blank.
No matter how many glasses of gin
it will get dark on this platform of earth.”
― Deborah Landau, The Last Usable Hour

“no longer a girl but slinking around nonetheless.”
― Deborah Landau, The Last Usable Hour

“There's a little edge of pain here and we walk along it.
Don't cry, don't kiss me either, and also don't stop.”
― Deborah Landau, The Last Usable Hour

“then we were actual people
your actual mouth on mine”
― Deborah Landau, The Last Usable Hour

“now you are here
and never here”
― Deborah Landau, The Last Usable Hour

“we'll be dark-hinged and planetary
drifting in and out of every season”
― Deborah Landau, The Last Usable Hour

“you are floating alone
in the cold blue

these are the hours of blankness

all the walls are bare”
― Deborah Landau, The Last Usable Hour

“we were at rest and breathing
away from lovely death”
― Deborah Landau, The Last Usable Hour

“mostly dreams reject us
lights go up at daybreak
no reentry”
― Deborah Landau, The Last Usable Hour

“welcome to the future

I have come into the aware
where the gilt edges are”
― Deborah Landau, The Last Usable Hour

“I had fallen into despair
did this bother him”
― Deborah Landau, The Last Usable Hour

“worry never another summer
never again to live here gentle
with the other inhabitants”
― Deborah Landau, The Last Usable Hour

“tonight the backyard is brutal
in its twilit emptiness
& I have put my lips
on the glass of his face again
so I won't be lonely
& I have dressed to please him
because it's too quiet here
my hand alive in the cage of his
an actual dandelion in the grass
beside his sandal
the mosquitoes grazing our ankles
we should go inside he says
as the pitchblack comes on again like arsenic
over the glowing lawn”
― Deborah Landau, The Last Usable Hour

“to stay here
would be
contentment
would be
an afterlife”
― Deborah Landau, The Last Usable Hour