If your Christianity causes you to be offended by someone asking the most powerful person in the country to be merciful towards the powerless, then you have profoundly misunderstood the teachings of Jesus Christ.

There really aren’t enough beetle poems. Here’s a great one by @eugenialeigh.bsky.social which I discovered through Pádraig Ó Tuama’s podcast: #poetry

Ahem I was on live television this morning (still trying to wrap my head around it). Yes that's me I. @goodmorningamerica.bsky.social ! abcnews.go.com/GMA/Culture/...

Absolutely loved having this conversation with Vi Khi Nao @bombmag.bsky.social 🖤 bombmagazine.org/articles/202...

The Last Wildfire-Fighting Camp for Incarcerated Teens in California "You’re put in danger every time you’re on the fire line.” Read more: www.teenvogue.com/story/wildfi...

Ahhhhh!!!!! Congratulations & happy pub day to @karissachen.bsky.social, Jan’s @goodmorningamerica.bsky.social Book Club pick! So amazed by my brilliant bff! Her nationwide tour for HOMESEEKING kicks off tonight in NYC via Yu and Me Books at New Design High Seward Park Campus Library 350 Grand St.!

you can be driven into homelessness by someone like brian thompson, then legally murdered by someone like daniel penny, while the money that could have saved you is spent on murdering children in gaza.

i hope i die warmed by the life that i tried to live — Nikki Giovanni

Nikki Giovanni staunchly supported trans folks, especially trans youth. Her encouragement is a balm. “I think the transgender kids are the bravest kids right now that we see; they're as brave as my generation was in breaking down segregation.”

From an interview I did with Nikki Giovanni back in 2017:

Daniel Penny acquitted after literally killing someone on camera for being disruptive on the train the same day a person of interest in the shooting of a shitbag healthcare exec gets grabbed pretty succinctly sums up who in this country is allowed to kill and who they’re allowed to kill.

Grateful to have this new poem in the new issue of @thebeliever.net with thanks to habibi Fady Joudah whose book has helped get me through this past year, & to @sallywenmao.bsky.social for the support ❤️🙏🍉

Ugh. When the one piece of good news coming from @penamerica.bsky.social (about signing onto PACBI) was fake. Should’ve known it was too good to be true. Well. Hope PEN America takes notes & sees how quick we were to celebrate this. Sigh. 💔

Check out the Brooklyn Poets online auction! I’m donating the following: ✨written feedback on 1 full-length poetry manuscript ✨1-hr zoom convo — anything poetry-related ✨(2) book bundles: signed copies of Blood, Sparrows and Sparrows + Bianca plus 2 signed broadsides Auction ends this Sat 12/14

“Once you see empire, you can’t unsee it.” - Moon-Ho Jung

A stunning poem of lesbian love by the legend Willyce Kim. poets.org/poem/places

Been thinking about this tweet for five solid days

nypl book of the day Magical/Realism: Essays on Music, Memory, Fantasy, and Borders Vanessa Angélica Villarreal Villarreal's essays look to music, fantasy, and pop culture—from Beyoncé to Game of Thrones—to heal, to reimagine, and to excavate what has been disappeared by migration and colonialism

MIZNA 25.1: CATASTROPHE HAS ARRIVED! This issue is gorgeous and breathtaking beyond words. I hope you'll hold these words of our community, who have gathered here despite an impossible time for so many of us 🍉🇵🇸 mizna.org/product/mizn...

“Your novel’s bewildering you, but isn’t that always how it is?” —R.O. Kwon The author chronicles the journey to completing her novel, “Exhibit,” through two elections and a life-altering pandemic.

idk why but Kimiko Hahn posting nothing but the earth for four ig stories in a row is making me emotional 😭

I am keeper of the post-MFA tumblr (crowdsourced) which has tons of info on post-MFA fellowships, BUT it also has info on residencies—with a whole section of shorter residencies for caregivers! Pass it on! #writers #writingcommunity post-mfa.tumblr.com/residencies

Total actual dream come true to have an essay in Modern Love today! www.nytimes.com/2024/11/22/s...

To @lenakt.bsky.social: Absolutely, I want to congratulate you. Your National Book Award was well deserved. But more than congratulating, I want to thank you. Thank you, dear poet. May more and more heed your call to us every minute, every hour, every day until Palestine is free.

Heres an interview i did with Lena for Triquarterly over a year ago in the before before before times go listen to her wisdom and DO WHAT SHE SAID IN HER ACCEPTANCE SPEECH GO STOP THE GENOCIDE AND FREE PALESTINE www.triquarterly.org/the-latest-w...

I just read My Whole Life I Was Trained to Deny Myself by @eugenialeigh.bsky.social out loud in poetry workshop and everyone was so stunned, everyone is crying! ONE OF THE BEST POEMS OF ALL TIME. OF ALL TIME. thank you Eugenia always for the ways you have written about abuse. healing, always.

Poems remind us of our humanity because, sometimes, the lines break. Just like humans do. And what comfort to know you can break and still be understood.

alright I am wide awake working on a project so you all get my poetry starter pack of poets who know what the fuck is up (AKA are lefty, support Palestine, write good shit of all varieties, and are very worth reading in my expert opinion... disclaimer, most are my buds!) go.bsky.app/2s73n71

I’ve help off on posting bc *gestures at world* BUT I’m so excited to share that my essay on autism, transness, OCD, and the changeling myth was awarded the Copper Nickel Editors’ Prize in Prose & is now available to read online! copper-nickel.org/the-crooked-...

I love @honeyliterary.bsky.social , it's been an amazing home for my work and community to be with. They took in my writing about madness and neuroses and sex and food, and I think if you have something that fits their bill, you should send it!

It’s hard to think about love lately, but it's also the only thing worth thinking about. @honeyliterary.bsky.social, which centers marginalized writers & artists, is open for subs til 12/16. As Valentines Editor, I'd love to see any form of artistic expression touching on all types of love. ♥️

Terisa Siagatonu joined the party 🥳 @terisasiagatonu.bsky.social

Instead of “once upon a time,” Korean folk and fairy tales often begin with 호랑이 담배 피우던 시절에. It means “back when tigers smoked (pipes)”

For the next two weeks, we’re offering ten free ebooks for getting free Another world is possible if we fight for it www.haymarketbooks.org/blogs/517-te...

Here's a short video of the magical Poets House reading of the Iliad on the Hudson River, featuring wonderful poets/ readers Natalie Shapero, Eugenia Leigh and Nick Flynn. youtu.be/yEClPRg67JY

“Would this get me kicked out of the bodega” is a great metric for New Yorkers. You can make a midnight run in your pajamas for iced coffee and detergent while singing show tunes and carrying a cat, but if you’re rude to people, you’re out.

At tonight’s reading, I read a poem I don’t read often, about my mom returning to my abusive dad over & over again. And in the Q&A I said what I’ve been thinking all week: That that’s what this feels like. A power outside my control putting me in an abusive situation again.

Looking for poets, poems, and so on? Here's a place to start. No promises that it includes everyone but I tried to get a lot of y'all in here. Some room to add a few more as people show up. go.bsky.app/5oLR4YJ

how do i use this thing… hello? do i actually know real humans on here?

*whispers* mental illness is not a predictor of mass violence until it is combined with normative masculinity, military training and domestic violence

All out for G a z a this weekend. “The public’s around but disregarded UNLESS they FORCE THEMSELVES into the system BY SERIOUS ACTIVISM.” Check your local orgs & the link in the flyer to join a protest/rally against the g3n0c!de & war crimes our money is paying for. Say something. Do something.

The Wild Iris is the book I turn to when I don’t know how to go on. But more than that, I have always found comfort in Louise Glück’s constant public acknowledgment of her frequent years of silence & not writing. Farewell to a legend. (from her 2014 pw.org interview)

there is no frozen microwaveable meal more superior than Trader Joe’s Indian food. i hope whoever made these could know they’ve singlehandedly kept me alive over the years

“I didn’t know what was wrong so each night I prayed to God, but God just gave me tomorrow. Eventually, I stopped praying because I realized that God and I did not speak the same language.” — Victoria Chang, Dear Memory

But poets are the worst.. Someone sits at a table or lies on a sofa.. staring motionless at a wall or ceiling. Once in a while this person writes down 7 lines only to cross out one of them 15min later, and then another hour passes, during which nothing happens. — Wislawa Szymborska's Nobel lecture

while my 4.5yo drew fish with chalk, i found sand in my pockets. so i said his chalk must be magic bc the fish are making the ocean come to life in my pockets. he drew more fish & i found more sand & as we went inside, he said, “i didn’t know magic is real!” i assured him magic is absolutely real.

YES. My writer friends save my life & keep me going. ♥️ “The industry pits writers against each other... The industry is award ceremonies; it’s reviews & parties & magazines choosing who to profile. But writers are not the industry.” — Isle McElroy @Esquire www.esquire.com/entertainmen...

Tonight, Hala Alyan gave the 5 poets a wrapped gift. Each one was different, a print she made, framed. We chose randomly. Would you believe mine was this Etel Adnan quote? I was stunned because of what I’d noticed earlier about “love.” The Universe is saying something. But what?