21. How Fragile We Are: The Tower Tarot Cure

This episode discusses our core existential fragility through a pink child's bracelet found on the side of the road, the violent and sometimes even bone-breaking choreography of Elizabeth Streb, as well as my mother's recent mishaps with "The Jaws of Fate". This episode is sponsored by Dorianne Laux's poem What Is Broken: The slate black sky. The middle step of the back porch. And long ago my mother’s necklace, the beads rolling north and south. Broken the rose stem, water into drops, glass knobs on the bedroom door. Last summer’s pot of parsley and mint, white roots shooting like streamers through the cracks. Years ago the cat’s tail, the bird bath, the car hood’s rusted latch. Broken little finger on my right hand at birth— I was pulled out too fast. What hasn’t been rent, divided, split? Broken the days into nights, the night sky into stars, the stars into patterns I make up as I trace them with a broken-off blade of grass. Possible, unthinkable, the cricket’s tiny back as I lie on the lawn in the dark, my heart a blue cup fallen from someone’s hands. -- LINKS: Elizabeth Streb talks about her work.  Maggie Nelson's The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning. Chase Eagleson acoustic cover of Sting's "Fragile".