For #smallpoemsunday, a poem from "Hotel Almighty." @tomsnarsky.bsky.social Lord.' you, kept right on going downhill badly slurred -- The road you were on

Swann's Way

✨ SUBMISSIONS OPEN for the 2026 Sarabande Annual Prizes through Submittable starting today Jan 1 - Feb 15. This year’s judges are: Kaveh Akbar (Short Fiction), Adrian Matejka (Poetry), and Aimee Nezhukumatathil (Essay)! Winners receive $2,000 and publication! Full details at link in bio ✨

Wouldn't it feel good to start your new year off by sending out work? Think of us! Free subs from January 1 through February 15 in Poetry, Fiction, CNF, and Comics.

"Those who talk too little usually know it, those who talk too much usually don’t." Aphorisms by James Richardson rb.gy/x6dfsd

WISHING THINGS AWAY IS NOT EFFECTIVE

let bygones be bygones

I’m the poetry editor at Cable Street literary magazine @cablestreet-litmag.bsky.social • if you write prose poems, please send some my way by March 1—considering poems now for our Spring (April) issue. Three to six poems in a Word Doc or Google Docs link. Send to: [email protected]

Michael Keenan

. . . . . They wished to bloom and to bloom is to be beautiful; but we want to ripen and that means being dark and taking pains. . . . . . Sie wollten blühn, und blühn ist schön sein; doch wir wollen reifen, und das heißt dunkel sein und sich bemühn. -Rilke

"It's a Saturday in the middle of July on a white porch with an old friend. Towels along the clothesline. She’s ten years younger, so I’m always asking about her sex life." New CNF: "Mechanical Pencils by Dina L. Relles aka @dinalrelles.bsky.social www.matchbooklitmag.com/mb/relles/me...

Sale! @sarabandebooks.bsky.social has lost NEA $$, as its mission doesn’t align with that of the current admin. They appreciate any support! I didn’t promote Classic Crimes this year due to a 🙁 crisis, but if u pick up a copy in the coming days I’ll happily to send a collage postcard as a thank u.

Current read: Edith Pearlman's "Binocular Vision." "How lucky he had been in her, and in their children, and in his work—and yet how willingly he would trade the pleasures of this particular life for life itself." Got this from my mother many Christmases ago & just now rescued from a dark shelf.

"[The interludes...]," a poem from Hotel Almighty for #smallpoemsunday @tomsnarsky.bsky.social

One of the most memorable & enjoyable poems I read (for the 1st time) this year.

... I contriv'd a little Book in which I rul'd

It’s four in the morning, the end of December I’m writing you now just to see if you’re better. - Leonard Cohen, “Famous Blue Raincoat”

Olena Kalytiak Davis (TW: suicide)

"my god all the days we have lived thru saying not this one, not this, not now, not yet, this week doesn’t count, was lost, this month was shit, what a year, it sucked, it flew, that decade was for..." Olena Kalytiak Davis www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/147666...

"Once My Mother" put the phone in the freezer while we were talking and closed the fridge door. On my end, a white quiet came through the receiver... www.memorious.org?id=665

Baby Jesus having a snooze. Seen at an exhibition of photos by the Spanish photographer Colita in Barcelona.

They will be without arms like God. By the millions their dried skins will be sought In the new world. Their young will be like wet slugs. They will obsess the moon Over a field of a night-flowering phlox. Their nests will be a delicate cup of moss. -Norman Dubie

It’s raining, late, crowded, cold. Christmas is a bad time for buses. A stoned hippy girl shouted, “Let me off this fuckin’ bus!” “Wait for the designated stop!” the driver shouted back. --Lucia Berlin, “A Manual for Cleaning Women”

I like short days. I'm not a big fan of sunshine. I like dark and rain and cool air and clouds that put the dimmers on. I like candles, and reading by lamplight in a woolen sweater. I like a misty breeze, and nobody on the beach.

would you say "desires" rhymes with "swineherds?"

One of my visual poems from "Classic Crimes," done with embroidery. I didn't promote my book, which came out late May, because of some awful personal stuff that hopefully someday will end. ANYWAY, if you're so inclined & buy my book I will happily send you a collage postcard to thank you. You pick.

"It was evening when they got home. The early dark of late December. That low sky closing down." Plainsong, Kent Haruf

wfh music this morning

Wo ich hinkam, fand ich mich unter Steinen,

"Every third thought shall be my grave." The Tempest was a joy to me this year. I thought I'd read it but it seems I just absorbed the outline. The line above got me, having read it on my birthday. At 1st I thought it meant "each 3rd thought will be the death of me." No. Death shall be the subject.

get swept up with us today into today's square from Ivy Grimes "...he said he had news. He was going to ask our mutual friend to be his girlfriend. It was the first time I'd ever been alone with R. "Why are you telling me this?" I said." https://www.havehashad.com/ud9j6

Post a book you love from the 1980s. No explanations, no reviews, just cover. #booksky #bookchallenge

The jeweller was working again, bent over his bench, the tube tunnelled into his face. His hair was parted in the center. The part ran up into a bald spot, like a drained marsh in December. -William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury

you will be visited by three spirits 😀

a favorite from "Nets," Jen Bervin's erasure of Shakespeare sonnets

"Then the hospital chaplain comes in to pray over my repeat offender womb & says kind things about my dead fetus being in heaven with my other dead fetus & even though I haven’t been to church at any point during this century, I completely lose my shit."

We held each other, but I could not get warm. ("Yes, I've been doing very well since you left" page 3)

James Tate for #smallpoemsunday 🏹

Big fan of the visual poetry of Robert Seydel, who did a number of books with Siglio press.

One of my visual poems from "Classic Crimes," done with embroidery. I didn't promote my book, which came out late May, because of some awful personal stuff that hopefully someday will end. ANYWAY, if you're so inclined & buy my book I will happily send you a collage postcard to thank you. You pick.

Also love Erica Baum's "Dog Ear," published by Ugly Duckling Press. When I got my copy it came with a poster. Squee.

I absolutely loved Anney Bolgiano's "Flat-Pack," a chapbook that @eldiagram.bsky.social published a couple years back. Anney combines IKEA visual instructions with rearrangements of Marcus Aurelius. It's marvellous.