"White Americans will invent self driving cars just to avoid getting on a bus." —@eternalskies.neocities.org
Thursday, February 26, 2026
"Why Is the Color of Snow?
Let's ask a poet with no way of knowing.
Someone who can give us an answer,
another duplicity to help double the world.
What kind of poetry is all question, anyway?
Each question leads to an iceburn,
a snownova, a single bed spinning in space.
Poet, Decide! I am lonely with questions.
What is snow? What isn't?
Do you see how it is for me.
Melt yourself to make yourself more clear
for the next observer.
I could barely see you anyway.
A blizzard I understand better,
the secrets of many revealed as one,
becoming another on my only head.
It's true that snow takes on gold from sunset
and red from rearlights. But that's occasional.
What is constant is white,
or is that only sight, a reflection of eyewhites
and light? Because snow reflects only itself,
self upon self upon self,
is a blanket used for smothering, for sleeping.
For not seeing the naked, flawed body.
Concealing it from the lover curious, ever curious!
Who won't stop looking.
White for privacy.
Millions of privacies to bless us with snow.
Don't we melt it?
Aren't we human dark with sugar hot to melt it?
Anyway, the question—
if a dream is a construction then what
is not a construction? If a bank of snow
is an obstruction, then what is not a bank of snow?
A winter vault of valuable crystals
convertible for use only by a zen
sun laughing at us.
Oh Materialists! Thinking matter matters.
If we dream of snow, of banks and blankets
to keep our treasure safe forever,
what world is made, that made us that we keep
making and making to replace the dreaming at last.
To stop the terrible dreaming."
—Brenda Shaughnessy
Stronger Together (In Times of Dragons).
" 'And you are afraid of nothing,' said her son.
'I don’t feel I am going to meet my Maker. And if I were, I should not fear him. He has not earned the feeling. I almost think he ought to fear me.
'I think he must,' murmured Hugo. —@ivycomptonburnett.bsky.social
Emil Cioran to Edmond Jabès:
“This curiosity may seem naïve. Yet one clearly senses that your reflections, your verses, or your formulations are the culmination of a process, and one tries to imagine this process without ever being able to reach it.
This impossibility does not harm the reading: on the contrary, it intensifies it. Thus one becomes grateful to the author for keeping to himself the secret of his face-to-face encounter with the ultimate presences.”
(Paris, February 14, 1983; trans. from French) via @yoonkim.bsky.social
again, enter the lists · in the never never
what paper drives us to · poor in spirit
the fog muffles · morning & noon
half blind · they caught me
said my cane · was a weapon
dropped me off · in the freezing cold
after escaping · one genocide
i died here · alone & afraid
The Celestial Compendium of Benevolent Machine Analogies.
"Time's fingers bend us slowly
With dubious craftsmanship,
That at last spoils all it forms."
—Krates (tr Rexroth)
"The authentic and pure values - truth, beauty and goodness - in the activity of a human being are the result of one and the same act, a certain application of the attention to the object."
—Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace via @sanctorium.bsky.social
Wednesday, February 25, 2026
"agentic cage nit"
remigration grapnel
grugprab on the slab bleats
stop & go flow-strangury
stillborn wisp of hearseprong
Hertzsprung map my purple
penitence as chance reaps
in the street red wingspan
in this rout bard lockjaw
Poets are a subset of Clowns, but they don't know it. Which makes them the highest kind.
Every day I get closer to turning my home into a wizard’s tower 🔮.
Georges Perec:
“To write: to try meticulously to retain something, to cause something to survive; to wrest a few precise scraps from the void as it grows, to leave somewhere a furrow, a trace, a mark or a few signs.”
(Species of Spaces, tr. John Sturrock) via @yoonkim.bsky.social
Poem in the Shape of the Poet Beating Henry Kissinger to Death with Their Bare Hands.
"the clowns retire my makeup"
those who escaped · from the Stechschritt sweep
so often could thank · one person's kindness
The Oversteegen sisters hunted Nazis in 1941. They were 14 & 16 at the time.
"Night on the outskirts.
Slowly the light's net is lifted
Out of the yard, and our kitchen
Fills with darkness
Like the hollows deep in a pool.
Silence -
The scrubbing brush creeps to life,
Above it, a patch of wall
Hesitates, hangs, not sure
Whether to stay or fall.
A night that wears oily rags
Heaves a sigh,
Halts in the sky;
Then settles on the outskirts,
Waddles over the square
And lights a bit of moon to see by.
Like ruins the factories loom.
But inside them a denser gloom
Even now is being produced. It sets,
A foundation for silence.
Through the windows of textile mills
Fly moonbeams in sheaves -
Moon thread till morning weaves
On motionless looms a fabric
Of girl workers' dreams.
Farther on, like a cloistered graveyard,
The foundry, bolt makers, cement works
Echoing family crypts.
Too well these workshops keep
The secret of resurrection.
A cat's claws on the fence;
And the simple night-watchman sees
A ghost, a flashing signal.
Coolly gleam
The beetle-backed dynamos.
A train whistle blows.
Dampness seeps into
The shadows, the boughs
Of a fallen tree.
The dust on the road grows heavy.
In the street a policeman,
A muttering workman, pass.
Now and then a comrade
Flits past with leaflets -
Keen as a dog on the track ahead,
Listening, cat-like, for noises behind him;
avoiding the lamps.
The tavern door belches out
A tainted light, its windows
Vomit, leaving puddles.
Inside, a half-stifled lamp
Slowly swings,
A solitary labourer keeps awake.
While the inn-keeper snores and wheezes,
He bares his teeth at the wall,
His grief climbs the stairs. He weeps,
Cries out for the revolution.
Cold metal, the water clinks.
A stray mongrel, the wind
Wanders. Its great tongue hangs
To touch the water, and laps it.
Straw mattresses are the rafts
That drift on night's currents.
The warehouse's hulk is aground.
In the foundry's iron dinghy
The smelter dreams red babies
Into the metal moulds.
All is damp, and heavy.
Mildew draws a map
Of misery's regions.
And there, on the dry meadows,
Rags and paper litter
The ragged, papery grass.
How they would whirl and fly!
They stir, but inertia holds them.
Night, your sluggish breeze
Is a flapping of soiled sheets.
Like frayed muslin to cord
You cling to the old sky,
As wretchedness clings to life.
Night of the poor, be my coal,
Smoulder here on my heart,
Melt the iron in me, to make
An anvil that never will split,
A hammer that clangs and glints,
A smooth blade for victory, night!
Grave this night is, and heavy.
I too shall sleep now, my brothers.
May our souls not be smothered by want.
Nor our bodies be bitten by vermin."
—Attila József
Translated by Michael Hamburger via
Writing is not about attention but deliverance.
Tuesday, February 24, 2026
shiv the day · dark powers
in the tall wire lattices
inscrutable sky · skelp minions
who can't shelter in place
what if we were · people...
plain as this overpass
the thought dissolves · into zigzag & culdesac
This is one of five surviving works by her.
Sometimes reading is swimming, sometimes flying, sometimes crawling.
Oldest known recording of a whale.
“I think the warning labels on alcoholic beverages are too bland. They should be more vivid. Here is one I would suggest: 'Alcohol will turn you into the same asshole your father was.' "
― George Carlin via @audiomite.bsky.social
"mirror for seeing around corners"
divisible Boswell
debuts a cold poledance
almond shard, shapeless
festschrift & smoke vespers
scurry along lantern
leading to but speed bumps
15th Street's no short cut
caterwaulology
"bread that can't be toasted"
well turned if turned at all
not the take back whisper
teal cup & a calm load
"What I didn’t anticipate was how much of reading is loss."
"But I wonder if we're not all living in a culture of moral distress and injury, and if it might not help to at least begin to name this." —Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg via
Creatures of the Cambrian period.
“Lovecraftians are like a hereditary priesthood where the lore is passed and iterated upon from initiate to initiate. From Derleth to Houellebecq through Borges, theirs may be the greatest longitudinal collection of fanfic in modern (literary) literature—and it started as pulp.
Note: I consider Borges as a most uncomfortable —but ultimately additive— Lovecraftian; a longheld impression that I honoured with a comic tribute to There Are More Things in my first book. TAMT is a distinct outlier in the Borgian corpus; a reluctantly accepted glitch.
So when I say “through” Borges, there is his implied antipathy and resistance, too. Over the years I have come to think of TAMT as an outstanding case of literary sublimation. It does not sit well in The Book of Sand, but there it is: a trace of blood in a sea of ichor.”
—@lapsuslima (3 tweets)
"Postcard 1
by Miklós Radnóti
written August 30, 1944
Out of Bulgaria, the great wild roar of the artillery thunders,
resounds on the mountain ridges, rebounds, then ebbs into silence
while here men, beasts, wagons and imagination all steadily increase;
the road whinnies and bucks, neighing; the maned sky gallops;
and you are eternally with me, love, constant amid all the chaos,
glowing within my conscience — incandescent, intense.
Somewhere within me, dear, you abide forever —
still, motionless, mute, like an angel stunned to silence by death
or a beetle hiding in the heart of a rotting tree."
—translated by Michael R. Burch
Ever.
74 Publications That Pay Freelancers for Book Reviews, Interviews, and More.
Rosilica cut-throat
carps pentacle rictus
ghost of a snowfall
nowhere seen
wadded paper windlass
wangles smaller cauldron
insomniac's yelp rampart
streeet of burnt-out hulks
in my mind
where young lungfish frolic
Another translator of Louise Labé.
How the purple falls · not a horse race
But perceived as such · he helped foster;
And this garish game · given over
to a gameshow host · will harry us all.
—my continuation of this
“Language is the house for all that is no more.”
(Quignard, The Fount of Time) via @yoonkim.bsky.social
"Strange Season
Winter sun, · world warming,
Leaf crackle, · crisp air, colourful,
Swishing underfoot, · dying.
Cold nip on · numb fingers
Frost fiend · forever threatening life.
Chill chasing chill, · till we choose heat.
Fire crackles well, · wood spit warming us,
Fearful, fur full, · Feast Hall hot,
As trees drop leaves, · colour-carpeting paths
Silver lattice work · glitters in sunlight.
Eye level · light blinds
Breath smokes · but beauty abounds,
Doom laden, · but lovely
No hint of new life · till years change."
—Tony Mitchell at FGR
"Precisely 28.06 miles, according to Google. 'I bet I could walk that in a day,' I silently mused." (via Mefi)
"Tower of Night
Moonwan and whitely intumescent
in anxious silence of a summer night
the tower
peers out and waits for sanguine tidings
of flame and ruin and fright.
A monody of silence strangles
the bells and hymns within this voiceless shrine,
and the Lord's
tower arises, stares, and trembles
beneath an awesome sign.
Mysterious swimmers of the heavens,
the misty moon clouds move and drift on high,
the tower
salutes the moon orb, this all-knowing
omnibus of the sky.
The moon has seen unnumbered towers
it never hurries and is never late,
it glances
in calm upon this little planet
and its unfolding fate.
This sentinel of our salvation
may gleam with blood beneath tomorrow's moon
as once more
we hear proclaimed the ancient motto,
to victory or ruin.
The tower may confess tomorrow
a dedication to the claw and fang,
and the bells
these iron cubs in spellbound languor,
will ominously clang.
The lonely moon will rumble onward,
so will this vacant and unpeopled earth,
and above
a moonwhite ruin of fallen towers
the peace will come to birth."
—Endre Ady (tr Anton Nyerges )
"if dog so worried about being vacuumed up why dog always in front of vacuum"
—@maggiestiefvater.bsky.social
Monday, February 23, 2026
"Lies he could take, not disfigurements." —Barefoot in the Head
"gravel pit"
Tiny Town · in the turquoise ripplet
pale pillow · pulled awake
intermittent roll · scroll carbonized
overpass den · vary the route
vampire consent · drift across white line
glitter at this one angle · sound dips for a bleep
molten candle · in the good lane
train's golden glide · Martian concrete
pale cerulean · Death's-head moth
"ASLANT,
as for us all,
the single hearing-flap
perches on you,
free,
and the deafness in you,
over there, by the temple-firn,
ceases to bloom now, with fool's
bells on each
sepal."
—Joris's Celan
All about the old telephone exchanges.
"The practice of asemic writing can be grounding, contemplative, freeing. It can be a place to say things when it is difficult to speak. It can hold a lot of thoughts that it feels the world doesn’t really want. It can inspire other thoughts. It puts one into the creative frame of mind, an openness, a place to imagine." —Shawna Lemay via
Snow update from Fifth Ave & Central Park.
"I'm hyggemaxxing" —@indyfromspace.bsky.social
"SONNET 18: Kiss Me Again
Kiss me again, rekiss me, and then kiss
me again, with your richest, most succulent
kiss; then adore me with another kiss, meant
to steam out fourfold the very hottest hiss
from my love-hot coals. Do I hear you moaning? This
is my plan to soothe you: ten more kisses, sent
just for your pleasure. Then, both sweetly bent
on love, we’ll enter joy through doubleness,
and we’ll each have two loving lives to tend:
one in our single self, one in our friend.
I’ll tell you something honest now, my Love:
it’s very bad for me to live apart.
There’s no way I can have a happy heart
without some place outside myself to move."
— Louise Labé, translated by Annie Finch
"Sleepwalking from Malheur
Step by step, Steens Mountain
rises in wide · and rippling waves
of grass that hide · its gradual height,
till we come to the edge · of Kiger Gorge
and look down amazed · at its long meadows
where toy cattle, tiny as ants,
quietly graze · in the green below.
Further we come · to the final escarpment,
and look out east · to the Alvord Desert,
while the land takes a fall · below our feet,
breaking the dream · of the drowsing slope
in an eager plunge · to the arid plain.
Step by step, we stalk the edge,
the choice not taken, the tipping point.
Will we awake? Will we go on?"
—David B. Ring in FGR
Postoperative Care of Small Wounds.
"All this as the world burn and drowns, says every cut-rate Cassandra in statements that gain no traction.
Culture will not completely collapse, but at some point soon it might be made almost only by the very rich.
This situation produces the art of our time." —@jacobwren.bsky.social
While some people are solving the world's problems, others can't seem to destroy it fast enough.
"IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE (Anagrammed Lines)
It came from outer space —
a comet of imp creatures;
a curse of meteor impact —
to permute a cosmic fear,
to cap our mesmeric fate..."
—@anthonyetherin.bsky.social
"drop-down menu"
dread & greed & grilse-spring
grueling obtain raindance
pale ceruleran in realtime
run out the clock toxin
furious small insults
cement mixer lemur
pass on the right parson
repose in bitter witness
never-late shift's leavebell
"If LARB did not invent the para-academic digital publication model, it was the first to master it."
"me, dead and at the gates of Hell: but why I am going to the ninth level, for betrayers? who have I betrayed?
a demon, poring over his book: it says here that you made Rodger get up off your lap after he was comfortable.
me: I didn’t know that counted.
a demon: it’s the main thing we look at." —@teganoneil5000.bsky.social
"into the meddle of the mudstorm" —Finnegans Wake
Love Canal connivance
now to reap a heaping—
bright-lit rooms carillon
the road not loaded
burgundy curve bardic
blurred sidestreet deleted
days of murder buzzing
mischance, eclipse rhapsode
veil between those vanished
reversal's song, jangled
we move in our dim ambits
erring & soon boondocks
flicker dazzled flimsy
who flow ever crowward
once could entail turmoil
& a told soft office
rolling device rulewheels
age of Alpha Centauri
the sky darkened scripture
skull place where a chase died
negative hued nimbus
deny a mimed crimescene
tintinnitis tested
tars tomorrow's parties