Friday, July 31, 2026
patter of blown twigs
on a car roof
a murder of crows
approaches, misdemeanor-bent
hammer in a bag
rancid pale cerulean
shadereft, as the bone cradle
boils inly, a fool's choice
to fetch back
shapes of Feghoot
confinement steel wheelwell
patter of blown twigs
on a car roof
this parking lot
alive with birdsong & traffic mutter
nothing like lyric
Jupiter eats a comet
calmly amidst headstand
my magnum opus mapped out
in merle-colored furlongs
high summer
with long simmer
patter on a car roof blown
"There is no line, now, if there ever was, between there and here, burning and breathing, their life and our own." —Becca Rose Hall via
Thursday, July 30, 2026
A murder of crows approaches, misdemeanor-bent.
"The hat now sits in the Smithsonian, made at Duke-Rigs Men's Shop in New York."
"Tvashtar"
half halfdeaf
ideawise weighstation
hissing kitchen
warrior in sackcloth
"...the voice makes lots of precise gestures of meaning, mixed up with bafflingly imprecise jokes."
"ekphrasis"
ho velura kverelo
ravel velour verdure,
violet grail
awelight by autumnal shine
urns carnage
unearths frith
despair escapes containment
torn attire
the whole wrench of hilching
gleamgold in the rolldark
garble carbs
noclip trip
ravel velour zugzwang
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"awelight"- the project of making Poliespo useable
"autumnal shine"- the taste of Newcastle ale
epigraph- a line from an Esperanto poem of mine: 'oh velvet quarrel!'
"Whether that means exploring the history of a word, composing a lipogram, creating nonsense literature, crafting alliterative verse, constructing a word puzzle, or taking language apart to see what else it can do, Elementary Penguin will be a home for that spirit of playful curiosity."
—Anthony Etherin via
All Pieces of a River Shore. Found #70 here (?).
"vacuance (VAK-yoo-ants) n. The emptiness a person leaves; vacancy that keeps their shape. He sold the chair at last, but the vacuance kept its tenancy, an emptiness the exact shape of her evening posture." —RB Barnes via
The Egg - Aquatron VX-33c radio & 8 track by the Brother Corporation.
"clankerphronema"
Vatic harrumph. vifgage
converted to dirt bike.
after train tracks gift turnip
troubles the grub axiom.
many such cases
Wednesday, July 29, 2026
"...hōgan-biiki (判官贔屓), a Japanese phrase still used today for siding with the underdog."
"BURGLAR (Palindrome)
Cased lucre
in a zanier
cul-de-sac."
—Anthony Etherin
"An empty box need not be THIS WAY UP." —Alexander Fayne
I asked booksellers how AI is changing their field.
Gertrude Stein is Having a Moment.
"We glamorize travel, but running away to find a less damaged place will not save us." —Amy Brunvand via
"parataxis & dyfalu"
should have birch switches
shimmer in Niflheim
long ago festivals
things shelved in the back & forgotten
new ways of being present
foodways lost & found
from who i was when i saw that movie
a postcard
encrustation
on the daily cup
I always regret when i see this amazing art that so little of it is on public display & has to wait for a special show or a book that most people will never open. We should have around us as many war paintings as the Renaissance had madonnas.
"Do you know you have Lee Marvin."
injury, illness, banjo cover
earnest burning
blind futures
shiny big menus
grinding pale cerulean
walks into an empty house
goblinescamotage
"A Finnish professor of literature, Jukka Ammondt, from the University of Jyväskylä ...once recorded two albums of Elvis Presley songs in Latin. His later release, you will be relieved to know, consists of songs of the 'King' in Sumerian. The first cut is 'Blue Suede Shoes,' which translates into Sumerian as 'E-sir Kush-za-gin-ga' ('Sandals of Leather of the Color of a Blue Gem')." —Handbook to Life in Ancient Mesopotamia
"In the main WWI gallery my eye was caught by a display on aerial bombardment ...and when I looked closely, this map recovered from a Zeppelin in 1916 contains a note saying that a copy was also carried 'by Casement when landing in Ireland'." —@inpursuitofthepast via
wodwo sanguine
scintillating lantern
this bright rose
left on Dalit velvet
Rough Trade (the band) thread.
Arriving Early at the Griffin Observatory.
"Betelgeuse companion again"
baleen grep bupkis
broken statue catchment;
1B34 turns,
duck turquoise huckster
on the war chump path change
"Your occasional reminder that I used to review films for a site called Sci-Fi Wire. My negative review of Inception met such a fierce reception from Nolan die-hards that not only was I fired, the site stopped reviewing films." —@nickmamatas729830
The Hundred Schools of Thought. (via Axial Age)
Tuesday, July 28, 2026
"Moody Latin Ides used, in Italy, doom." —Anthony Etherin
A couple of Kripkensteinian fables.
"questions that aren't questions"
a sun you could fire · stoneware with
stands in my mind before dawn
wrong way · in the test tube
drop a white pill
stiff & staggering · & partly fueled
drop a few rules
suits deciding · poison's okay
after all
i blend two coffees
"Above the water passes the shadow of a cloud,
something will not let me be at peace."
—Santoka (tr J Abrams via )
"The modern bicycle owes its existence, in small part, to one of history’s greatest natural disasters: the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora..." —Rob Stephenson via
How an albatross gave birth to an entire aviary.
Tolkien's Generation and Alliterative Verse.
"I’m sorry moosh, my boyfriend Darius texted, using his pet name for me, Farsi for 'mouse.' I know it’s frustrating but you’re very brave" —@cassidymcfadzean.bsky.social via
"He harnesses a rage (riddle: a cough)
I heard a bastard · hovering about me,
an absolute nuisance · nestled by my side,
clinging, like a child · clasped around my neck
he cries out, sputtering, · clamouring to speak.
When I temper him, · tending to his whims
I listen to him blather,· the burden I must bear.
Stifle him and he shrieks, · shouting louder
the firmer he’s held down. · In fierce winter winds,
he harnesses a rage · racking my breastplate
with all his foul force, · fists constantly flying,
battering my bones · a bludgeon, though feeble.
Who is this creature, · this constant pest
growing ever galling · though I grip him by the throat?"
—Cassidy McFadzean, 2012
"This is just to say
I have turned into pigs
the men
that were on
my island
and which
you were probably
saving
to row you to Ithaca
Forgive me
they were disgusting
so male
and so disrespectful."
—Marie Phillips via
Bitterness would be nothing without the conceit of its reasons. Unfortunately they exist. But not as reasons for bitterness.
The roadside lined with ragweed.
"Perchance, when, in the course of ages, American liberty has become a fiction of the past--as it is to some extent a fiction of the present--the poets of the world will be inspired by American mythology."
—Thoreau, cited in 𝑆𝑦𝑚𝑝𝑜𝑠𝑖𝑢𝑚 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑊ℎ𝑜𝑙𝑒
poppyhorse, grayfaced harpist
inhale concrete dust, tailspin
worthy, teeth-turnlane
tulipmaniac trainwreck
poppyhorse, punk rehearsal
in pale cerulean hailstones
How French Theory Lost its Cool.
"better guac than a Glock"
1.
Garland tokonoma
Tianannwn
cruentation crashsite
accrues purple lozenge
in the thick green graveyard
squandered hour's onus
2.
the stars
fugitive urn
the war in the air
narrated
3.
poppyhorse
I’ve met a small handful of poets who knew their own poems by heart. They were like emissaries from a lost golden age of bards. Other poets hated them.
Monday, July 27, 2026
I remember an academic party once, there was a piano & a guy sat down & seemed to not know what he was doing at first & then this incredible wave of sound came out of it. He finished, everyone was amazed, & he said “Jeaux d’Eau” which i looked up later was by Ravel.
"Knowing I Live in a Dark Age
Knowing I live in a dark age before history,
I watch my wallet and
am less struck by gunfights in the avenues
than by the newsie with his dirty pink chapped face
calling a shabby poet back for his change.
The crows mobbing the blinking, sun-stupid owl;
wolves eating a hamstrung calf hind end first
keeping their meat alive and fresh...these
are marks of foresight, beginnings of wit;
but Jesus wearing thorns and sunstroke
beating his life and death into words
to break the rods and blunt the axes of Rome:
this and like things followed.
Knowing that in this advertising rainbow
I live like a trapeze artist with a headache,
my poems are no aspirins...they show
pale bayonets of grass waving thin on dunes;
the paralytic and his lyric secrets;
my friend Al, union builder and cynic,
hesitating to believe his own delicate poems
lest he believe in something better than himself:
and history, which is yet to begin,
will exceed this, exalt this
as a poem erases and rewrites its poet."
—Milton Acorn
"Rambo marathon"
Burbling in the corner, some flatline machine.
Dim with the curtains drawn, a man lies still
who never again on his own will tread the earth
who once caused much ado, & some of it harm.
This death-in-life continues a bad charade
as his charade at service betrayed his oath.
Party remains, & partisan lies he held
closer than spiteful breath which soon will end.
This blind machine constructed to carry the flesh
when all else fails, will move to another bed;
i too have seen those rooms with curtains drawn
& heard struggling breath when it was mine.
"the oval office looks like it was molested by liberace’s bedroom." —@johnfugelsang.bsky.social
More than a Thousand Years of Bad Reminders.
Sunday, July 26, 2026
The series of notebooks i keep which started as a diary eventually turned into what i call a "braidtext", in which i keep adding to various headings, some of which are just lists & others more linear; new categories arise while sometimes one lapses. I'm pretty sure i started doing it this way after reading Shōnagon.
"we have always lived in the casbah"
fly agaric agora
triangulates language
air feels full of smoke
even when it isn't
marble crisp ancestors
crunchy, jawing munchkins
glasses fogging up
the instant i step outside
my treasure is in heaven
"bonfire of the verities"
wild things fleeing a fire
on my crappy laptop
what land is this?
all lands
Poetics List Reading Editions. Kevin Killian's part.
"The list holds several things side by side, lets them stay unlike, and declines to reduce them to a point. That declining is the whole technique." —Tōan via
"It was clear that nobody believed that anything would ever happen ever again."
"Wanting to meet a writer because you like their books is like wanting to meet a duck because you like pâté.” — Margaret Atwood via @ianduhig.bsky.social
Spectral Nights in West Virginia.
"The Ruin
Remorseless sun · stunts the dew
Glistening towers · of tainted glass
ignite and blister · in blood-yellow light
recalling the tallest · of crumbling tombs
as humbler graves · harbor their dead
in the clutches of earth · and callous night
The past is draining · through inhuman dreams
no people are packing · backrooms and bars
no pride or empire · rises on ruins
no glance at a face · gleans what is fair
Everyone senses · evil has come
The world we knew · will not be renewed
and gods of technology · are graceless and numb
We call for a hero · but just hear recordings "
—AM Juster via
In the animal kingdom it's known as threat display..
One day we will realize that all the robots are kidding, too. You don't have to be carbon based to have imposter syndrome.
Saturday, July 25, 2026
"the hall of the mountain king"
weekday-unmoored · software glitching
begin the day · one ear stopped up
regime medicinal · injury-avoidant
saving scraps · & losing what you save
never reach · an end to riddles
to the scroll add · inchmeal amscray
The horrors persist but so do i.
"while ponderous planets of unwaning woe revolve round me, deep down and deep inland there I still bathe me in eternal mildness of joy" —@mobydickatsea.bsky.social
Star Axis. (via mefi)
“ ‘They—we—were betrayed. In our souls we have never been sure by whom. When we feel cheated we are ready to kill; and maybe we feel cheated all the time.’ ” —Gene Wolfe, “Seven American Nights,” in: Best Science Fiction Stories (1980)
when wild things are given names
they join the rote sestina
with parallel amens
& never again siesta
they join the rote sestina
a plethora of lush tisanes
& never again siesta
nor in the woods leave stains
a plethora of lush tisanes
when wild things are given names
nor in the woods leave stains
with parallel amens
(2024)
"White House Dungeon Synth"
cruel supernal candy
costs-ev'rything treethirl
thirsty Nosferatu
whose nuzzle grants answers
unending crave eventide
"The fact that we call smartphones phones is such a mass linguistic spell. It’s like calling the nuclear bomb a microwave because it can warm up a burrito" —@somethingishappening
"As a translator, I see my work as having most affinity with Iris, the divine messenger goddess..."
"Just when we have the green tech available at scale to fully transition from fossil fuels, an anti-human technology has been forcibly integrated into every aspect of our daily lives, increasing our (already frantic) economic precarity while making us dependent on it for our every (mediocre) thought as it gobbles up resources at a rate that would make it a plausible alien invader from a comic if it had just done us the favor of presenting with tentacles, or a flaming eye." —Alaya Dawn Johnson via
"To an old philosopher
The 'old philosopher' of the title is George Santayana, under whom Stevens studied briefly at Harvard, and who died in Rome at a hospital run by nuns.
On the threshold of heaven, the figures in the street
Become the figures of heaven, the majestic movement
Of men growing small in the distances of space,
Singing, with smaller and still smaller sound,
Unintelligible absolution and an end—
The threshold, Rome, and that more merciful Rome
Beyond, the two alike in the make of the mind.
It is as if in a human dignity
Two parallels become one, a perspective, of which
Men are part both in the inch and in the mile.
How easily the blown banners change to wings . . .
Things dark on the horizons of perception,
Become accompaniments of fortune, but
Of the fortune of the spirit, beyond the eye,
Not of its sphere, and yet not far beyond,
The human end in the spirit’s greatest reach,
The extreme of the known in the presence of the extreme
Of the unknown. The newsboys’ muttering
Becomes another murmuring; the smell
Of medicine, a fragrantness not to be spoiled . . .
The bed, the books, the chair, the moving nuns,
The candle as it evades the sight, these are
The sources of happiness in the shape of Rome,
A shape within the ancient circles of shapes,
And these beneath the shadow of a shape
In a confusion on bed and books, a portent
On the chair, a moving transparence on the nuns,
A light on the candle tearing against the wick
To join a hovering excellence, to escape
From fire and be part only of that which
Fire is the symbol: the celestial possible.
Speak to your pillow as if it was yourself.
Be orator but with an accurate tongue
And without eloquence, O, half-asleep,
Of the pity that is the memorial of this room,
So that we feel, in this illumined large,
The veritable small, so that each of us
Beholds himself in you, and hears his voice
In yours, master and commiserable man,
Intent on your particles of nether-do,
Your dozing in the depths of wakefulness,
In the warmth of your bed, at the edge of your chair, alive
Yet living in two worlds, impenitent
As to one, and, as to one, most penitent,
Impatient for the grandeur that you need
In so much misery; and yet finding it
Only in misery, the afflatus of ruin,
Profound poetry of the poor and of the dead,
As in the last drop of the deepest blood,
As it falls from the heart and lies there to be seen,
Even as the blood of an empire, it might be,
For a citizen of heaven though still of Rome.
It is poverty’s speech that seeks us out the most.
It is older than the oldest speech of Rome.
This is the tragic accent of the scene.
And you—it is you that speak it, without speech,
The loftiest syllable among loftiest things,
The one invulnerable man among
Crude captains, the naked majesty, if you like,
Of bird-nest arches and of rain-stained-vaults.
The sounds drift in. The buildings are remembered.
The life of the city never lets go, nor do you
Ever want it to. It is part of the life in your room.
Its domes are the architecture of your bed.
The bells keep on repeating solemn names
In choruses and choirs of choruses,
Unwilling that mercy should be a mystery
Of silence, that any solitude of sense
Should give you more than their peculiar chords
And reverberations clinging to whisper still.
It is a kind of total grandeur at the end,
With every visible thing enlarged and yet
No more than a bed, a chair and moving nuns,
The immensest theatre, and pillared porch,
The book and candle in your ambered room,
Total grandeur of a total edifice,
Chosen by an inquisitor of structures
For himself. He stops upon this threshold,
As if the design of all his words takes form
And frame from thinking and is realized."
—Wallace Stevens via
"Jimothy sortilege"
moth wrangler, Komodo
dragon wrangler
car seats patched with duct tape
the shadow of books i read
diff'rent when i read again
dead soldiers
on a leaning table
same tilt as the earth
summoned by hand-drawn lines
cannot say
& it stays where captured
fractionated light
a sidewalk made of measured steps
"Here is a bitter yearly winnowing
of what’s to come from what is in decline"
—Jane Greer via