Good lord, they had cats back when!

The desk has almost thawed. That’s exciting.

Key West treasures from Books & Books. Not languoring at the moment. That warm spell was before the freeze and steadfast snow.

Spent the day in Annapolis talking to politicians (who happen to get it) about arts funding. Not a bad day. The Walking Monks were in proximity. I believe we were chorus by presence for each other.

It astounds me how ‘everyone’ thinks they are normal and wriggles questions at the behavior of others.

A new entertainment: watching water clear and shimmy in various ways instead of its cautionary white and blue motionlessness. And then there is the going from dullness to sparkle as it takes on what to do with light.

Looking out the window to see the deer, also fed up with the frozen water ground cover, taking the plowed bike path through the woods. Nine of them. Looks ridiculous, but smart. Maybe they are evolving.

Living under snow-covered skylights has been like being in a spider’s silk cocoon, prey captured and unable to look out. Does one escape such? Today, there’s a half circle of thawed hope most of a penny wide. I can almost make out something, the memory of being alive.

Two friends chat a bit. The artist @christopherquirk.bsky.social and the novelist Zachary Lazar. Have a look: www.tusslemagazine.com/christopher-... Would the link share one of the paintings instead of a logo, sigh. More reason to click. You are so close to so much. Click and look and read.

Scream FIRE and warn Icarus, here comes the sun! And —say it/be it— forty degrees! Was afraid the day was only to be heat-infused, covered in clouds and, yes, warmer, but lacking the sparkle of ’round-the-corner Spring. Watch for falling feathers as the day wears on.

I love the Etch A Sketch dreams, the ones that come with a half hour extra to sleep, short bursts of trying-to-organize confusion, then the quick dissolving into another and again another. They are not refreshing, but they are interesting. Confusions abandoning themselves.

Two weeks solid, this snow, blue and heavy by the light of later day shadows, but bright, now, with the morning, bright and all that facet sparkle. It's almost light itself, and, yes, lightness.

We’re delighted to welcome Caoilinn Hughes, acclaimed author of The Wild Laughter and The Alternatives, as our featured guest for the Annual Celebration of Irish Writing & Music. 🗓️ Saturday, February 7th, 7:30 p.m. 📍 Smith Theater-HCC Campus-Columbia, Maryland 🎟️ hocopolitso.org/irish-evening/

Warrior.

These shiteaters are playing video games with the people of the Americas. That’s all the training they have had at being ‘human’.

The sky (God’s, you choose yours and I’ll go with it) shrouds America with snow.

Wondering there was a TikTok on French Onion Soup ‘cause the pile of a thousand onions at the store was down to none.

Wow. When?

"If you’re still looking for a New Year’s resolution, 'read more books' could well be good for national morale." —Brittany Allen, @literaryhub.bsky.social lithub.com/in-2025-most...

Let’s spill all the ink and let the Rorschachs rage protest. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Does the tinnitus of leaf blowing ever end?

You kept telling us. We kept looking in the wrong place. Thanks for your persistence. The ghost of last year's contest that has been haunting our website has now been exercised. Sincere apologies for that inconvenience. You can now visit HoCoPoLitSo.org for a no-ghosts go at entering the contest.

Are you the next Ellen Conroy Kennedy Poetry Prize winner? We are looking forward to seeing your work! For all you need to know and to enter, visit: hocopolitso.org/2025/08/08/t...

Ross Gay comes to Columbia on November 7th.

America likes to be the best at things. These days it’s living up to that stature, being the best at being stupid.

The morals of corporate America are non existent. Profit over everything. And this isn’t even an important example. Use your imagination and scale up.

Two opportunities to see Safia Elhillo -- author of the acclaimed Bright Red Fruit -- for #FREE tomorrow on the campus of Howard Community College. 12:30 p.m. Monteabaro Hall & streamed via Vimeo (link below). 6:00 p.m. Monteabaro Hall All you need to know: www.howardcc.edu/discover/art...

That day we look around and find we are all human.

There's a book festival in Baltimore tomorrow. baltimorebookfest.com/full-stage-s...

New season of Wilde Readings launches Tuesday evening at Columbia's fantastic independent bookstore, Queen Takes Book (6955 Oakland Mills Rd E, Columbia, MD 21045). Featured readers and open mic. Starts at 7. We'd love to see you there.

Let's just call it by its full name, shall we: The Department of War on America, Peace, and Humanity. Who wants a peace prize only to go renaming things such? Nothing but a madman and his gathering of sycophant crusaders. We are in for it, folks.

In our latest issue, poet and essayist Molly McCully Brown unpacks the value of a creative writing degree, “Think of it in early readers accumulated: The one you’ll e-mail for the next thirty years with your earliest drafts and subject headings like ‘This may be very bad.’” at.pw.org/ValueOfADegree

Held annually in loving memory of HoCoPoLitSo’s co-founder, the 2025 Ellen Conroy Kennedy Poetry Prize submission window is now open. hocopolitso.org/2025/08/08/t...

“There’s man all over for you, blaming on his boots the faults of his feet.” ― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

The pause and preen of a hummingbird, and then the explosion back into its hummingbird self.

Just saw Paul Revere galloping through the streets of Washington DC screaming out a warning to its citizens, "The Red Coats are coming! The Red Coats are coming...." after King Bozo's morning bloviation.

Watching America go nuts over the Cold Play & ignore daily atrocities this very country is participant in, well, that’s all anyone needs to know about US right now. We have transformed into a cohort of monsters supporting opportunist & powerhungry madmen. America, get your head out of Trump’s ass.

humidity and heat— quiet as their shadows, crows rising from a cornfield

In Hate we trust.

Wanting the same kind of @bsky.app attention as the catbird, a Carolina wren lands under my chair to chirp his case. A mocking bird takes them all on. Cooler air prevails, today, and the birds are on it.

Summer suet feeder and the catbird meows and meows to keep all away. Or maybe it is just the feral joy of having this other personality inside a cage of feathers. Meow. Meow. It's a noisy boast, but the suet and the morning seem to be his, a slant of sun pointing this out.

Oh, good grief. "Reading in public – not cool. Or at least “performative reading”, as it’s been dubbed on social media, is worthy of ridicule." www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

Weatherchange and birdsong through the open windows.

The way an oscillating fan bullies the humidity this way, then that, this way, then that.

No one wins a holy war. All the gods know this.

Peace is such harder work than war. Leaders always cave to war, other people’s children and all.

Words can turn into poems themselves when a within word steps into view: colLABoration.

The air is full of insect hatches. A cloud of termites, perhaps, visits and moves along (am working at an outside table). How slight they are and yet they take on forests. Such a slow and clumsy energy at the moment. How so very many have set out, how few might survive this burst into the world.

There’s a pond out back with so many frogs. And they keep the chatter going, it’s like gossip screaming, but no meaning, all excitement and earnestness, but just the dark presence of sound/being. God, I hope the Universe can hear this over the constant sound of humans murdering each other.