One of my weekly joys is pointing my trusty web browser over to the internet comic strip A Softer World. Each week, over the course of three brilliant panels, the authors almost never cease to amuse me with their dark, cynical humor.

Aside from the funnies, what I love about A Softer World is its inherent (help me out here) poetryness? Poeticism? A word like that.

Each strip is usually a single sentence or two, stretched out over the panels with discrete line breaks put in to cue the reader. there even seem to be stanza breaks built in as well–some text blocks are solid white, while others are more clearly lineated. Some examples:

Oct. 29, 2004:

“my superpower is

everyone smiles at me

I don’t know

who to trust.”

Oct. 8, 2004

over photos of a girl in a bathtub)

“I meant to suicide

but the warm water

was your voice

and I touched myself

instead.”

The spare lyricism of this comic strip really transcends its media. Not that I think there’s anything especially lofty about poetry or anything low about comics, but this collision of the two is a sum greater than its parts.

The photography in these strip is also phenomenal, hypnotic, and frequently haunting, even as the lyric language of the strip mocks, skews, or refutes the images.

And if you’re angry about the election, this strip will definitely speak to you.