"I first consider a question or a poetic problem, I think in metaphor almost before I register what the thing is. It’s the reason you end up writing poetry. Looking at a vase you’re like, “Oh too late!” The metaphor is immediately what you see. And that’s just always been the way that my mind work"

I wonder if this is why I write and am drawn to long poems: "I realize that historically the function of painting large pictures is painting something very grandiose and pompous. The reason I paint them, however ... is precisely because I want to be very intimate and human." Mark Rothko

The great Sean Thomas Dougherty (also a Public School Poetry contributor in Issue #1!) word-singing the unmeasurable grams we're forced to measure

Today on FLASH BOULEVARD, the wonderful Gary Fincke. Enjoy. flashboulevard.wordpress.com/blog/

Time for some Friday afternoon backyard reading!

How could I not love a poem about the dead by Michael Bazzett? tahomaliteraryreview.com/selections/t...

Highly recommended reading right here www.ninemile.org/propel

The Weight of Money by Sean Thomas Dougherty "Is worth mentioning is one gram. But a Benjamin is a liter of blood. I often remind my kids that a Happy Meal costs a quarter of an hour. Your bicycle was a week’s wage." www.onlypoemsdaily.com/p/the-weight...

"How many grams does it take to sing the blues? How many grams does it take to shine?" #TodaysPoem #poetry The Weight of Money by Sean Thomas Dougherty (@SeanThomasD.bsky.social) (2025 Only Poems Daily) www.onlypoemsdaily.com/p/the-weight...

Thinking about the resurgence of Nationalism and flag waving I am reminded of this poem by Ada Limón 'A New National Anthem' ‘my bones are your bones, and your bones are my bones’ #poetry #poemoftheday #LoveKnowsNoBorders #PeopleNotFlags

"The Weight of Money by Sean Thomas Dougherty Is worth mentioning is one gram. But a Benjamin is a liter of blood. I often remind my kids that a Happy Meal costs a quarter of an hour. Your bicycle was a week’s wage. " www.onlypoemsdaily.com/p/the-weight...

My favorite singer in the world @lisaoneillmusic.bsky.social drops a political masterpiece just when we needed it most. "Oh, to be wild like the roses Oh, to be red with delight My blood is red out of fury The wind doesn’t blow this far right" www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nbm-pNGPuo8

New story, "Becoming a Member," up @south85journal.bsky.social! Thanks to @lesliepwriter.bsky.social and her crew for giving it a home, and to @kimmagowan.bsky.social for looking at an early draft. www.south85journal.com/becoming-a-m...

Oh hell yes. The new issue of Bending Genre just dropped with fab work by my friends in words Francine Witte, Jill Crammond, Carolee Bennet, and many more writers! All free and online. bendinggenres.com

Poetry!

RIP Baron Wormser www.mainepublic.org/show/poems-f...

The Freedom issue of ABOUT PLACE just dropped with super fine work by Susan Terris, Nancy Mercado, Alexandra Teague, Laura- Gray Street, Pam Uschuk, Denise Duhamel, Jacquiline Johnson, and Marjorie Maddox, and so much more. I have a couple poems, scroll all the way down. aboutplacejournal.org

Our Fall 2025 issue is OUT NOW! Featuring an #interview with Keetje Kuipers and works by Sean Thomas Dougherty, Suzy Eynon, Jason Bentsman, Chelsea Dingman, and many more. Read here: bit.ly/AmsterdamReview #poetry #fiction #translations #finearts #amsterdam 🇳🇱

Two new poems in Sweet for your poem sweet-tooth. sweetlit.org/sean-thomas-...

Meitner!

“Her memory Is a mix-tape of the past & fantastic fabrications of People who are dead. They return as grievances.” “Golden Shovel” by @seanthomasd.bsky.social from the Summer 2025 collection of Online Exclusives. Listen to Sean read: buff.ly/FqxG76t #writingcommunity

The Freedom issue of ABOUT PLACE just dropped with super fine work by Susan Terris, Nancy Mercado, Alexandra Teague, Laura- Gray Street, Pam Uschuk, Denise Duhamel, Jacquiline Johnson, and Marjorie Maddox, and so much more. I have a couple poems, scroll all the way down. aboutplacejournal.org

"I'm not paying your fee. Give the grant, the residency, that place in a journal, that job to someone else. I'll be here under the Bodhi tree with Tu Fu. He's sold a sheaf of poems." shopoetryjournal.com/sean-thomas-...

This poem by Spencer Reese blew me away. www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/53297/margaret-56d232772fb16

Jillena Rose: "Bones are easier to find than flowers in the desert, so I paint these: Fine white skulls of cows and horses." www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/55460/taos

Daneen Wardrop, another poet taken too soon. I love the last lines of this poem so much. poets.org/poem/name

Bravo to Michael! Bazzett for winning the Stern Prize! aprweb.org/news/2025/03...

A whole lot of Addonizio www.onlypoems.net/poets/kim-ad...

All of the last 20th century revolutionaries are fading into that good night. www.democracynow.org/2025/9/26/bl...

What a trio, and a particular shoutout to Jessica Traynor and her glorious poems.

This is about to drop. An anthology to speak to power. I got a little poem in it alongside all kinds of great work.

GOTDAMN.

“This is what life is: the passage of time. It’s not about how to pass the time, but about the acceptance of the time passing.” Very much looking forward to seeing a major retrospective of Hsieh’s work, which opens next week at Dia Beacon. (His work also features in my next book).

“The world might set on fire but here it has not yet. The grills are lit–come & eat with us. Come to our table without handcuffs.”

"To answer you–finches, wrens, robins & sparrows, and crows join, rustling their wings, arguing on a telephone line. A blue house cacophonous with a cook-out and all that is summer music. " from my poem "Curfew" in Boomer Lit. Link in the comments.

I answered 10 questions for @themassreview.bsky.social

I am overjoyed to announce the pre-sale for Lisa M. Dougherty's first full-length book The Dead Tree Garden, with an introduction by Stephen Kuusisto,. It is published by the Propel Disability Poetry Books Series in association with Syracuse University Press. press.syr.edu/supressbooks...

I find myself, now that I’m older, writing about things that happened in my life but then exploring an alternate outcome, like what if I’d reacted this way instead of that way to the even? Not sure why.

There is something hauntingly beautiful in this juxtaposition of sadness and hope 'Although the wind' - Izumi Shikibu #poetry #poemoftheday

Are you like this too? I've found I wrote less directly about my life when I was young because I was looking far ahead, I was imagining. But now that I am old I find myself looking back and trying to get down what I never said or didn't know how to say it, to imagine how is to save what was.

Damn this is some poem "here. that means us, the polyethylene kids, the runaways, the shiny thrown-aways, the dead-too-earlies, our soft rat bodies scrabbling in puddles trying to close a claw around a gleam..." speculativecity.com/poetry/polye...

The Blackwater River, which is a tributary (I think) of the Cheat River in West Virginia. Blackwater Falls State Park was the first I can remember going to as a kid and still a favorite.