“In some languages the word for dream / is the same as for music // is the kind of thing poets like to say / to prove they’re on your side” — @dobbygibson.bsky.social @parisreview.bsky.social @graywolfpress.bsky.social

“I am riding with blind Borges in his sophisticated air-car thinking about Hilda who never married and was built to play nose tackle, who taught me a thing or three about Borges and Lorca and Lope de Vega whose name made me giddy” —Jim Daniels theglacierjournal.com/issue-two/ji...

“After my field commission, / I never lost another man. My grip / shook from deployment to the hop / home. Couldn’t give up / cigarettes after that.” —Kyle Dargan, “Edgar the Security Guard on Poetry”

“The last thing my father did for me Was map a way: he died, & so Made death possible. If he could do it, I Will also, someday, be so honored.” —Larry Levis, “In the City of Light” @upittpress.bsky.social blackbird-archive.vcu.edu/v5n2/poetry/...

“I pictured them both in action, / underwater. Nancy’s legs wrapped around / its speeding shaft, her red eyes fixed like sniper / dots on the target ahead, a string of bubbles / flying out behind her like a chiffon scarf.” — @carolinebirduk.bsky.social, “Torpedo” @carcanet.bsky.social

“I told him that a troop of angels had been shot and dissolved when they hit the ground. // He asked who had shot them and I said a farmer.” —David Berman, “Snow” poetrysociety.org/poems-essays...

“Hands shaking so—not from alcohol but fear of regret—they had to give you an illegal Valium so you could sign consent.” —Patricia Caspers @pitheadchapel.bsky.social pitheadchapel.com/please-pleas...

“‘Are you all right,’ Duhaney asks me at the bar, / ‘You look like you just stepped on a nail.’ He bends / to my ear, ‘I have such a crush on you’” — @jamesallenhall.bsky.social, “Dirty Joke” www.greenlindenpress.com/issue17-jame...

“Near beer, / tight ends. / Night bends. / I know / it’s late / for a love game. // Which isn’t / sadness, / or freedom, / it’s a feeling / that precedes / feeling, a narcotic // urge” — @randallmann.bsky.social, “The Scene” @coppercanyonpress.bsky.social airlightmagazine.org/airlight/iss...

“I meet Mrs. Pepitone by the frozen fish, dark circles / under her dark eyes. I tell her, If we had met 16 years earlier / in the dairy section perhaps, everything would have been different.” —Peter Meinke, “Supermarket” @upittpress.bsky.social

“A house with a screened-in porch On the road to nowhere. The missus topless because of the heat, A bag of Frito Banditos in her lap.” —Charles Simic, “Pastoral Harpsichord”

“Nothing / can be relied upon but the disappointment / of beer.” — @biancatherosestone.bsky.social, “The Human Good” @tinhouse.bsky.social

“I want to step into Beethoven’s filthy apartment with the pizza / boxes stacked on the floor and listen to him pound / his piano into splinters. I want to be the splinters and the pain / in his gut that becomes the opening of his Fifth.” —Barbara Hamby, “Want Ode” @upittpress.bsky.social

“Cutouts, cutups, ambushes, / bushwackers. MC Mnemosyne shows up / around midnight like the undetectable dew // weighing down the leaves” —Terrance Hayes poets.org/poem/crying-...

“through the windshield at the distant galaxies,/enjoying my tacos with extra hot sauce,/thinking about the dolphins out there in the ocean/worrying about me, wasting their healing energy/on someone who was merely eating tacos in a Cleveland parking lot” —George Bilgere, Jazz @upittpress.bsky.social

“I thought I would be a wealthy, functional-alcoholic lawyer, / but I ended up being a poor sober person // working in a copy shop downtown, / trying to do a good job with the hole puncher / and the binding machine.” —Tony Hoagland, “Great Expectations”

“Of course love like anything begins in fire / and ends in an attic. It falls to earth in a new human body, and goes out among people / pretending to know how to tie its shoes, use a salad fork.” —Jeff Whitney, “A Chapter on Love” www.greenlindenpress.com/issue17-jeff...

“when you first realized / your body couldn’t be trusted / to take care of you. / Maybe the first kiss, that boy / with a penknife, or maybe / what came after” —Rebecca Hazelton, “The Husband as Mentalist” @adroitjournal.bsky.social @lsupress.bsky.social theadroitjournal.org/issue-twenty...

“‘I will kiss in the morning Your mouth which will be red and thick After sleep.’ She has left me For a banker she met in the gardens. The gas-jets are on: they are Like fountains of the best water.” —Norman Dubie, “Monologue of Two Moons, Nudes with Crests: 1938” @upittpress.bsky.social

“The lost dog won’t let me tether it. // Our neighbor strips on his porch, / out of his mind. // The monarch with the deformed wing / does not live happily among the zinnias / like I promised the children.” —Sarah Green @sixthfinch.bsky.social @uakronpress.bsky.social sixthfinch.com/sgreen7.html

“she sat twiddling a last hexahedron of ice / watering the gin in her Life’s a Beach! coffee mug. // Down cellar, a mild-mannered roach / checked into a homicidal motel.” — @jaswinderbolina.bsky.social, “A Film Noir for Joseph Stiglitz” @coppercanyonpress.bsky.social

“Spanish has a saying for wanting / to prove what needs not. // You’re just trying to make the water wet. / Suppose I am / sick of being a woman, each / word of us read aloud // like a 19th century letter / to rooms of distant relatives.” —Jenny Browne atlengthmag.com/he-would-alw...

n one of the last days I told him. You know how much you love Joe? / That’s how much I love you. And he said, No. And I said, Yes. // And he said, No.” —Marie Howe, “One of the Last Days”

“regardless I become a lesbian from Kamchatka / bursting through the diamonds of my waxy fronds / as through burning glass” —Jane Miller, “Wrought Iron” @coppercanyonpress.bsky.social

“My friend guided me; / he thought because I drank often / I drank well. / He thought I might be looking / for subtleties, as he was. / My vocabulary was ‘good’ / and ‘not so good.’ / I was usually a drinker / looking for a mood.” —Stephen Dunn, “Aging”

“the planet on the table / Always behaved, never struggled. / It knew its role, came apart / Like the moon in Spain: / That moon of coins / That broke for Goya.” —Stephen Kuusisto, “Elegy for Lucy Grealy” @coppercanyonpress.bsky.social www.raggededgemagazine.com/poetry/kuusi...

“The mirror won the battle. I am now imprisoned in the mirror. All my selves spread out like a deck of cards.” — @victoriachang.bsky.social, “Obit” @kenyonreview.bsky.social @coppercanyonpress.bsky.social

“A guy touched my friend for money / while he pretended to sleep. / He left a note for his husband / and his car in the garage.” —Aaron Smith, “Monday” www.greenlindenpress.com/issue17-aaro...

“The virgin priestesses kept getting raped by the pilgrims / so later the job was filled by noblewomen of a certain age” —Kim Addonizio, “Oracle at Delphi”

“Breastfeeding’s finally done, and I’m back / to getting high at night, feasts of crackers / and cheese, costume dramas, things that hold me / over so the days can keep repeating.” — @dorseycraft.bsky.social @narrativemag.bsky.social www.narrativemagazine.com/issues/winte...

Come for the clandestine midwife intel, stay for the Black Goat of the Woods Ladies’ Auxiliary!

“It’s still the 1980s. I’m still so good, I’m still stupid with my long hair and embarrassing excuses. I have a narrow bunk that pulls out like a drawer.” —David Keplinger, “Chance” @milkweededitions.bsky.social

Thanks to @ronslate.bsky.social for taking a poem from “Fingerling Lakes” for On The Seawall: “Meg Bowden was / the Treasurer for // The Black Goat / Ladies’ Auxiliary // until certain / irregularities / were discovered // in the books” www.ronslate.com/commerce/

“Remember the way you demanded sex / and I gave it? The way you liked / to watch yourself in a mirror. / Who was the double you saw there?” — @rebeccaslehmann.bsky.social, “Night Elegy” @upittpress.bsky.social

“I see your shadow rummaging / through the leaves of my yard, rattle up the junk // inside my garage, sunglasses aglint, mirrors / as mask, but I will not go out to meet you.” —Cate Marvin, “Cutting Up Apples” www.greenlindenpress.com/issue17-cate...

My Annual Reminder to Myself that I Actually Love Poetry (Part II): in 2025, I posted 365 poems by 168 authors, from 142 magazines, 178 books, and 72 presses. Here they are (along with author, magazine, book, and press links): simeonberry.com/poem-recomme...

“The morning after my father killed his first wife, he woke up next to her dead body, rose from their bed, and began his morning routine.” —Richard Siken, “Family Therapy” @coppercanyonpress.bsky.social conjunctions.com/articles/cal...

I was never tempted to be a public intellectual because I could not resist the lure of being a private weirdo

My Annual Reminder to Myself that I Actually Love Poetry (Part I): in 2025, I read 209 poetry books (202 full-length and 7 chapbooks, out of 353 books overall). Here are my favorites (in alphabetical order by author): simeonberry.com/book-recomme...

“I showed my father your poems. He said, ‘What?’ See, that’s an example of something my teacher calls compression: meaning a lot without saying a lot. Your poems are not very compressed.” —Ron Koertge, “Dear Mr. K” @redhenpress.bsky.social

“I heavily italicized my eyes / I burnt my mouth with wine / I lived in a cave for seven days” —Mary Ruefle, “Wants to Be an Artist”

“That sets me apart from Daniel Defoe, / an early novelist who sometimes / (page two hundred something) / kills himself years after having / survived the Plague of London.” — @heatherchristle.bsky.social, “Some Ideas on the Novel” @weslpress.bsky.social

“while the lazy sluts dream of their most dismal / Kinks, and scheme of doing nothing but floating / through the day, reading Russian novels all night” —Barbara Hamby @upittpress.bsky.social

“She’d asked me / to marry her / habitually, the way / you’d ask someone / to bring home milk.” —Andrea Cohen @fourwaybooks.bsky.social

all at once a queer accident happened

“My heart was not contrite. // ‘We used to call this melancholia,’ my mother said / coldly. // But at winter break, having left / school and the silent doctor and silent books” —Rosanna Warren, “Concerning Ceremonies” www.commonwealmagazine.org/poem-concern...

“This may be where / John Ashbery would introduce a non sequitur, / Not from aversion to responsibility / But from a sense he no doubt had / That there was a kind of self-importance / In the introduction of morality to poetry” —Robert Hass www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

“Every few months my friend and I get together / to talk about ‘what we’re doing’ vis-à-vis / ‘the perceived goal of our dual attempt / to become masters of wordsmithing / in the face of insurmountable opposition.’” —Jason Bredle, “Healthy Smiths” poets.org/poem/healthy...

“the word Kevin used to describe the prose of / airport-concourse novelist Dan Brown, / and I thought: That’s it, I’ve heard enough, / prattle is now my favorite word.” —Dobby Gibson, “Prattle” @graywolfpress.bsky.social

“I did not kill myself today. It was a Tuesday. And since you are reading this, neither did you. Neither of us were sent to war or had to hide in the basement.” —Sean Thomas Dougherty (@seanthomasd.bsky.social), “Poem Made of Fragments…” @boa-editions.bsky.social