"Publishing a weekly substack is like running a one-woman newspaper for an imaginary town that doesn’t exist." —@laurafaulkneristyping
"Ramadan, Lent, Spring Break"
heart's Valhalla-foothold
heralded splint-winter
torn up road uproarious
with risk-averse esquires
where the torus tumbles
too much of a suchness
"And heatstroke took the piglets’ lives."
"glint among matte shadows"
flickering
shadow shamrock
whispering
mutilation
smithereens summoned
sasquatch open casket
the dartk light years yeckate
coyote sips spritzer
Mussorgsky
coded malware
gallop bumps
better than smooth
the pitch made by Paddock
paltry skulk i'll take it
delete liar's contest
politer chirg ragweed
scintillant
surging darkness
drove the snakes
snazzy dumpster
derringer chess chapbook
with charred pages bordered
redbrick igloo runagate
the roost of bright stooges
flickering
though our wyrd flows
castles stormed
inside shards strewn
someone has the Sampo
circulates cloud powder
not yet scattered scry-notes
scowling like appall-solace
This is still the realest thing ever said about America.
"Time's a credible dice
Time sacred, I bled ice."
—@anthonyetherin.bsky.social
Elms.
"Verlaine’s pistol he used to shoot Rimbaud was once up for auction and was starting for around $80,000. I had about half that saved up from work + student loans + student grants and awards at the time. I thought maybe I could hawk everything I owned (computer, guitars, record collection, rare books) and sell my twink ass a bit to make up the rest. If I’d spent that money on the pistol, I would have had to drop out of school because I’d have no tuition money and would have been broke and homeless and in debt. Some nights I actually lie awake in bed soaking in my regret."
—Eris at Discordia Review
A fateful encounter with a poet.
"Lacaille 9352"
just king & the king's goons
carrying out foreplay
pale cerulean ragtime
berates the dung beetle
pillage the shrunk portions
on portico hoedown
no one stops at red lights
no one meets deadlines
we'll let mint massacres
mention us at floss time
overplus dusk aidles
car driving with tire flat
books i wrote reissued
robot-hoovered covers
the trestle my spraypaint
sprinkled now thankless
the king's gravel fortress
festers in its own time
never-sleep room's slippage
sly enough Fafnir
The greatest poem of all time was writ by an anonymous samurai.
"a night full of shoes" (—Carrie Fisher)
cyborg days & lost keys
lemmingtrust, with gremlins
harm festival firehosed
to find the right mindset
fury in the urn night
"He was a philosopher named Émile-Auguste Chartier, but everybody called him 'Alain.' (That was his pen name.) He suggested to Weil that she ought to fix her handwriting." —Robert Minto via
"Jugglers seem closer to god than other creatures of the carnival" —@donaldboat
"Rounding up the Mimes
They shunned the suburbs, trailer parks and farms.
Somewhere they had their silent neighborhood—
for who has ever lived next door to mimes?
Wherever they did live, they paid their taxes
from pocket change, obeyed our traffic laws,
and turned their radios down very low
so passers-by would never hear their songs.
Lacking identifiable positions
on anything important, they seemed…'Swiss.'
White face paint hinted at a racist past.
When tabloids called, they never would deny
connections with the Mafia or Roswell.
At the French Embassy, a mime was hung
by his suspenders as a mob denounced
Marcel Marceau; some vigilantes smeared
a mime with bacon fat and chicken feathers,
then left him flailing by a KFC;
kids trapped another one inside a box
of glass for days—and told him to 'pretend
to eat a sandwich.' For their own protection,
all mimes were taken into custody.
We watched as they were crowded into vans,
still gesturing with pouts and outstretched palms."
—Midge Goldberg via
"Why Are Your Poems So Dark?
Isn’t the moon dark too, most of the time?
And doesn’t the white page seem unfinished
without the dark stain of alphabets?
When God demanded light, he didn’t banish darkness.
Instead he invented ebony and crows
and that small mole on your left cheekbone
Or did you mean to ask 'Why are you sad so often?'
Ask the moon. Ask what it has witnessed."
—Linda Pastan
This is how i imagine my poems.
"WORD FACT
A phrasal anagram is a two-word phrase whose words use exactly the same letters in the same quantities.
Some personal favourites:
Remote meteor
Supersonic percussion
Soapstone teaspoons
Integral triangle
Persistent prettiness
Aristotelian retaliations
Daemonic comedian (the title of my next poetry collection....)" —@anthonyetherin
"crown shyness"
to lose human lampshades
yet livelihood in spinning
far from the frontlines
fascist gewgaws droogs clutch
zany substack zigzag
berserk scrolling tollway
can't pause sizzling pavement
pasteup spills my abasement
"I had resolved to give up smoking today. Then I woke up and remembered the existence of AI. I have now resolved to smoke more." —@alexanderfayne
Procrustean turn for this timeline, i'm all popcorn.
"If cancer did not swim in the same sea as us, we might admire it, as we admire sharks." —Geoff Ryman
"Against Refrain
The sound of someone learning to dance
again
A marionette’s awakening
and flexing of limbs that chafe
like wooden chimes
A song whose feet are bare
the better they might balance on each
root-note that appears
The sound of breath not quite controlled—
not quite the concertina
but the bellows
*
Perhaps this coal-dragged dancer fought
the wrong side of a war
and spared from swinging
punishes herself
by limping through a regimen
of grace
*
Or maybe this benighted piece
was once contender for
the National Anthem
and it would take some dusting off
to rescue from the hiss
another turn
*
The sound of someone learning to dance
again
a novel world
of novel gravity
entangling her
Like dreams in which we try
to wade through water—
dreams in which the mind maintains
it can command the body
with even less of a claim
And so this former dancer finds
herself as just another
dream refiner
But clad in the state of the novel art—
a deepsea diver of empty heavens—
she listens for the rhythm
of the slipstream
of her pulse
the only sound she can
and must keep close
as with no atmosphere
there is no noise
*
A murder of crows aggressively clears
its throat and shuffles up and down
a gutter like the brim of an old
hat (though everything is old
compared to Aves’ death-defying
bounds!)
*
The sound of someone learning to dance
against refrain
the way air resonates
with shaky ground
as ‘dance’ itself reorders the sounds in ‘sound’ "
—@huckastley
i have not read
the books i have
stuffed shelves parade
i have not read
cell less arid
than the bustling hive
i have not read
the books i have
"Context is the first casualty of Oral Culture" —@varaxes
The Song of the Eternal Sailor.
"Imagined life is more exhilarating than remembered life.” In Ita."
"There are too many Wile E. Coyotes on this site and not enough Acme catalogs."
—@jordandavis3
"Figs, dates, cashews,
washed down with boiled well water.
We sit in a cool, dark room
and wait for nightfall."
—@kimdorman.bsky.social
It is, of course, important to talk about the downsides of being autistic too.
"infusion valor"
beautiful dark morning
necromantic bank run
dull shine of shrill street slicks
machine tales early flourish
spray & gray skulls grinning
grasp weakly the seek-wheel
taillight glow over tumbled
mumbletrip crippling
beautiful berm forming
to bury eyes' zymurgy
dashboard light my delicious
ligature to gig-aim
hell fire in the cloud fringe
cross handed these boss fiends
shattering tower that teased us
with too bumptious jump hoops
To say that something should be burned down when it's already on fire is not saying much.
Prolegomena to End Literature.
“For ours is a most fictile world; and man is the most fingent plastic of creatures.” —Carlyle
On the Inadequacy of Foot-Based Scansion.
despair monetized
motion of the Rorschach
four coins in the fountain
foraged carrion fairways
carrion fairways
wanhope fueled hatred
in the gutter leaves
"2025 will mark the year where the literary scene of this city exploded."
"things known by the calendar"
psithuristic turnstile
guitar hero Pharaoh
rises from long lozenge
lunge from above hovered
leaves the city severed
serious blast pastime
golf cart full of gallows
engulfs werewolf furlongs
I used vintage typewriters for most of my life, until lit mags stopped taking paper submissions.
"Because the bird flew before there was a word for flight, there will one day be a word for what you and I do"
- Marcelo Hernandez Castillo via @jacobwren.vsky.social
"bullets are a popular way to die"
prequel orts
reaped squishy puns
selcouth slag
foment brutal
stilted ash
“Or Some Third Thing”
Gauntlet of dark
The drill’s entry
Cool water carve
Occult handbag
Eyewatering waste
To crawl on wheels
Pale blue speckle
Ever this recite
Sportive cannibal
Gauntlet of dark
“This game, which I myself had invented, was based on the proposition that just as nouns could be divided into masculine, feminine and neuter, so there was a distinction between tragic and comic nouns. For example, this system decreed that steamship and steam engine were both tragic nouns, while streetcar and bus were comic.’”--Dazai Osamu, No Longer Human (tr Donald Keene 1958) [—H'm. Poetry is tragic, while blog is comic...but poetics is comic & blogger is tragic...]
"Pitch" to me is a stink that fixes roads.
This Town Ain't Big Enough for 34 Lit Mags.
"Poem Beginning With A Line By Firdausi
'Ere from his lofty sphere the morn has thrown'
the full day's share of fire, forth I glided
after a Starbucks tea for my dear Lady:
slaughter on the radio, insane.
Day after day, week after week, I struggle
in Laocoön coils of sense & nonsense,
orange & turquoise clouds. But they remembered
what I would always get, & I then proffered
five quarters, two dimes, a nickel, & two pennies."
—Heidi Guerre, How Texans Saved Civilization (2002)
Pattern Poems of Hrabanus Maurus.
"autodidact"
& secret architecture
which way the toilet roll's turned
past made of alibis
concessions to bugpunk
the void filled by reasons
"I am gobsmacked that a movie this ingratiatingly insane got a big budget, major stars, and a wide release in tepid 2026, rather than 1973 or 1967." —Nathan Rabin on The Bride! via
"Was it AI that selected the Iranian school where at least 168 people were killed, mostly children?"
"The typical human walks 900 miles per year and consumes 22 gallons of coffee during that same year.
This means that humans get about 41 miles to a gallon." —@ikiquest
"grimdark stranger"
Darjeelingfade, fadged in
fidgety gears-ouzo
jungle-reclaimed gemstone
Jonestown run as funhouse
Old author i never see written about but have always been intrigued by her covers.
"A Requiem
Neobulë, being tired,
Far too tired to laugh or weep,
From the hours, rosy and gray,
Hid her golden face away.
Neobule, fain of sleep,
Slept at last as she desired!
Neobule! is it well,
That you haunt the hollow lands,
Where the poor, dead people stray,
Ghostly, pitiful and gray,
Plucking, with their spectral hands,
Scentless blooms of asphodel?
Neobule, tired to death
Of the flowers that I threw
On her flower-like, fair feet,
Sighed for blossoms not so sweet,
Lunar roses pale and blue,
Lilies of the world beneath.
Neobule! ah, too tired
Of the dreams and days above!
Where the poor, dead people stray,
Ghostly, pitiful and gray,
Out of life and out of love,
Sleeps the sleep which she desired."
—Ernest Dowson
It's not just the venom drizzle, it's the hell-stench.
Memoir scandals lately for those who don't keep up.
"the fascination of trifles; the enchantment of frivolity; the spell of worthless things; the seduction of nonsense; the charm of idle pursuits; the lure of empty pleasures; the enticement of meaningless diversions; the allure of trivial things; the spell of slight things" —@timesflow.bsky.social
"We’re a week in. Do we really still need to explain the Strait of Hormuz?"
1. "caltrops"
bad charade at nightfall
where do the shards carol
calthumpian thirlsnooze
upthrust duppy vespers
Frankford invigilated
frabjous queue of abject
the gray miles grilseswindle
granular point blank bando
refugee of Egypt
Geronimo Kronstad
bad charade at nightfall
where do the shards guzzle
2. "liminal clownship"
Algol blurb
egress dollhouse
glimmering
absinthe clasp murk
from obtuse
hellspawn Ogpu
3.
but what will come of it all
dark sky behind bright buildings
les lauriers sont coupés
another busted city
The time i learned what art is.
So many sadnesses,
like raindrops on a rainy morning,
there is no watching them.
Only submission
to a distant roar. Aurora
of the pole that is Pain,
the movie’s flicker-rate
in you becomes another movie.
"WORD FACT
A 'psithurism' is the sound of a tree’s rustling leaves. It comes from Greek 'psithurízō' (ψιθυρίζω), which means 'I whisper'."
—@anthonyetherin
"The 1936 discovery put this theory to rest. There were almost certainly no Christians living in Pompeii as early as 62 AD, and regardless all Christian writings were at that point in Greek."
—@weirdmedievalguys on the Sator square & other historical mysteries via
Hazlitt on a hatred true and beautiful.
"no comet, no eclipse"
indexical grievance
disproportionate response
briary morning wheelwell
the new bodies hung in the square
no representation rules you
more than being free of images
indexical grievance
disproportionate response
"Hatred and Vengeance, My Eternal Portion
Hatred and vengeance, my eternal portion,
Scarce can endure delay of execution,
Wait, with impatient readiness, to seize my
Soul in a moment.
Damned below Judas: more abhorred than he was,
Who for a few pence sold his holy master.
Twice betrayed, Jesus me, the last delinquent,
Deems the profanest.
Man disavows, and Deity disowns me:
Hell might afford my miseries a shelter;
Therefore hell keeps her ever-hungry mouths all
Bolted against me.
Hard lot! encompassed with a thousand dangers;
Weary, faint, trembling with a thousand terrors,
I’m called, if vanquished, to receive a sentence
Worse than Abiram’s.
Him the vindictive rod of angry justice
Sent quick and howling to the centre headlong;
I, fed with judgment, in a fleshly tomb, am
Buried above ground."
—William Cowper
The emblem of today is the violated body.
"The weight of flowers on Chengdu grows."
"Art is the oldest portal we have.
This is why we cry at a girl on the ice doing her thing with joy, on her own terms, freed. Her freedom briefly becomes our freedom. Her joy illuminates the places where we aren’t free yet.
It is the grief under the joy that yearns for that freedom." —@summerisferal
"DEMON (Palindrome by Pairs)
One mad
demand
made a demon."
—@anthonyetherin
