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Richard Siken Biography

Richard Siken is an American poet, painter, and filmmaker. He is the author of the collection Crush (Yale University Press, 2005), which won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition in 2004. His second book of poems, War of the Foxes, was released from Copper Canyon Press in 2015.

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Richard Siken Quotes

You see, I take the parts that I remember and stitch them back together to make a creature that will do what I say or love me back.

Back, Love, Remember, Say, Stitches, Together

Sorry about the blood in your mouth. I wish it was mine. I couldn't get the boy to kill me, but I wore his jacket for the longest time.

Blood, Boys, Mouth, Sorry, Wish, Wore

Knot the tie and go to work, unknot the tie and go to sleep. I sleep. I dream. I wake. I sing. I get out the hammer and start knocking in the wooden pegs that affix the meaning to the landscape, the inner life to the body, the names to the things. I float too much to wander, like you, in the real world. I envy it but that’s the dealio—you’re a train and I’m a trainstation and when I try to guess your trajectory I end up telling my own story.

Dream, Hammer, Life, Real, Sleep, Trainstation

Okay, so I’m the dragon. Big deal. You still get to be the hero.

Big, Bigs, Deal, Dragons, Hero, Okay

Wearing your clothes or standing in the shower for over an hour, pretending that this skin is your skin, these hands your hands, these shins, these soapy flanks

Clothes, Hands, Pretending, Shins, Skins, Wearing

Actually, you said Love, for you, is larger than the usual romantic love. It’s like a religion. It’s terrifying. No one will ever want to sleep with you.

Love, Religion, Romantic Love, Sleep, Usual

You wanted happiness, I can’t blame you for that, and maybe a mouth sounds idiotic when it blathers on about joy but tell me you love this, tell me you’re not miserable.

Happiness, Joy, Love, Mouths, Sound, Sounds

The way you slam your body into mine reminds me I’m alive, but monsters are always hungry, darling.

Alive, Body, Hungry, Monsters, Reminds, Way

I never liked that ending either. More love streaming out the wrong way, and I don't want to be the kind that says the wrong way. But it doesn't work, these erasures, this constant refolding of the pleats. There were some nice parts, sure, all lemondrop and mellonball, laughing in silk pajamas and the grain of sugar on the toast, love love or whatever, take a number. I'm sorry it's such a lousy story.

Liked, Lousy, Nice, Numbers, Silk, Sorry

I woke up in the morning and I didn’t want anything, didn’t do anything, couldn’t do it anyway, just lay there listening to the blood rush through me and it never made any sense, anything.

Blood, Listening, Morning, Woke

He was pointing at the moon, but I was looking at his hand.

Hand, Hands, Looking, Moon, Pointing

I sleep. I dream. I make up things that I would never say. I say them very quietly.

Dream, Make, Quietly, Say, Sleep

We have not touched the stars, nor are we forgiven. . .

Forgiven, Stars, Touched

I am singing now while Rome burns.

Burns, Rome, Singing

Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us. These, our bodies, possessed by light. Tell me we'll never get used to it.

And Love, Bodies, Body, Light, Love, Ruin

Sometimes you get so close to someone you end up on the other side of them.

Close, Ends, Side, Sides, Sometimes

The entire history of human desire takes about seventy minutes to tell. Unfortunately, we don’t have that kind of time.

Desire, Entire, Kind, Minutes, Seventy, Unfortunately

Do we simply stare at what is horrible and forgive it?

Forgiving, Horrible, Simply, Stare, Staring

Is that too much to expect? That I would name the stars for you? That I would take you there? The splash of my tongue melting you like a sugar cube?

Like, Melting, Names, Splash, Stars

Who am I? I'm just a writer. I write things down. I walk through your dreams and invent the future. Sure, I sink the boat of love, but that comes later. And yes, I swallow glass, but that comes later.

Boat, Dream, Glasses, Love, Walk, Writing

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