Casey Reiland
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caseyreiland.bsky.social
Casey Reiland
@caseyreiland.bsky.social
330 followers 300 following 340 posts
Bad sleeper | In search of the perfect bagel | Words in HAD, trampset, On the Seawall, and elsewhere

www.caseyreiland.com
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caseyreiland.bsky.social
Casey Reiland @caseyreiland.bsky.social · Oct 8
I have two new poems published today in @emergejournal.bsky.social! Read em here: emergeliteraryjournal.com/the-connecti...
The Connection The space between the sternum and the slope of flesh says so much. Here, a quarter, shiny like macadam in the morning sun, now thrown at her chest. A boy says, Look at how it slides right over her middle. Boarded, flat, fabled. This too a fable: Lavender. Tea tree oil. How many times have I written about what my body could not give? Instead, consider my grandmother, her torso gaping like mine. My sister insists we inherited our breasts from her, and I’ll admit this once would have split me of resentment— girl who wants to take up space, who wants to be enclosed perfectly into someone’s fist. Always myself witnessed in another’s eyes, a mark, a haunting, ruptured ribs in the canyons of their irises. But in my grandmother’s ripening, I now behold how we are bound, hanging on to what we still can, cupping the curves of each other’s hands. The thing we contain: a sphere of silver, spinning like a coin. I Said I Would Never Write About 2020 My coworker asks, “Wanna hear something funny?” and describes how he was hit by a car. I find his indifference to the ruthlessness of our job equivalent to the shock that comes from salt stinging a wound: a searing white space. Me: “Aren’t you ever angry?” Him___. When we fuck later, a barren plain glaciates between us. If I’m being honest, I mostly wanted to sleep with him because he is ___ years older than me. Age specifically has a distance. So does trauma. I’m afraid of driving because I’ve been in a car that spun into a cornfield. I was thirteen. My friend’s older sister was driving us to a Halloween party. The coarse dying stalks revolved yellow-green-yellow in my vision, and all I could think was, I’m going to___. In the mornings after the world has shut down, there goes the yellow-green-yellow-green in my mind. I text my one friend, What if one of us___? How do___? I’m so___. Later, my roommate reprimands me for almost wearing sandals to a protest at the White House. When the tear gas blooms a sulfur mist, I let their shaming engulf my legs as we run, grateful to have someone unafraid in their bluntness. I tell my mother what happens, and she says, ______. My coworker insists he only wants my body, and I let him have it because this is the year where I cough up shards of ice, where inside my mouth is a killing frost.
caseyreiland.bsky.social
A lot of ppl have said that it was unnecessary to have Wicked be in two parts. I used to think the same, but since re-seeing the Broadway musical, and now seeing Wicked: For Good for the first time, I highly disagree 🧵1/6
November 24, 2025 at 2:35 AM
caseyreiland.bsky.social
Employer: What can we give you this holiday season as a thank you for all the hard work you’ve done this year?
Employees: Ooo a bonus, a raise, more time off—
Employer: OKAY SELF-CARE TIPS IT IS!
An excerpt of an email that reads: “The holiday season can be a time of celebration and joy, but it can also be demanding. Between family gatherings, travel, financial considerations, and year-end stress, it's easy to feel overwhelmed. It is also easy to become so focused on others that we neglect our own feelings and needs. It's important to regularly check in with yourself. To support your mental and emotional well-being during this season, our Employee Assistance Program (EAP) has compiled a Holiday Resource Guide (attached). The Holiday Resource Guide provides: Simple ways to manage holiday stress Tips for setting boundaries and finding balance Support for coping with loneliness or burnout Self-care ideas Info on how to reach your EAP for free, confidential support”
November 21, 2025 at 12:13 AM
Reposted by Casey Reiland
kristinaten.bsky.social
New story day! My twisted fairy tale, “Head of the Household,” is in the winter issue of F(r)iction.

Koschei the Deathless, Slavic folklore’s baddest bad, has met his match in Ira: a mortal woman with a clever plan to take him down. At stake? Ira’s best friend’s freedom. Warning: contains gluten 🥖🩸
Head of the Household - F(r)iction
Kristina Ten presents the story of a woman preparing for her high-stakes marriage to an evil immortal lord.
frictionlit.org
November 19, 2025 at 5:50 PM
caseyreiland.bsky.social
“I feel– […] Like I’m waiting, she says and seems surprised with herself. Like the Dinah’s tears, and I am glad of it. She smiles. I am glad.

We inhale the air together, and my gills stretch with the taste of water.”

Loved this story, @lmanusos.bsky.social!
My Mother is the Water - F(r)iction
My Mother is the Water by Lyndsie Manusos explores a young woman's relationship (and magical connection to) the lake.
frictionlit.org
November 20, 2025 at 7:33 PM
caseyreiland.bsky.social
Is it just me or is it required that every ride share driver must dowse their car in the WORST perfume/cologne??
November 19, 2025 at 2:42 AM
caseyreiland.bsky.social
Me af
theferocity.bsky.social Saeed Jones @theferocity.bsky.social · 14d
I ain’t been right felt right or done right since Daylight Savings, lord.
November 12, 2025 at 2:57 AM
caseyreiland.bsky.social
Guys, let’s keep James Bond. Let’s keep Marvel. Let’s keep Jurassic World. Give the straight normies something. Please. They need it.
November 11, 2025 at 6:39 PM
caseyreiland.bsky.social
I’m late to the game, but I’m reading A SWIM IN A POND IN THE RAIN for a book club, and this may be the best craft book I’ve ever read. Funny, approachable, and actually makes you feel like George Saunders loves to write. Hell, I might even end up reading more Russian literature after this!
The book A SWIM IN A POND IN THE RAIN by George Saunders sitting on a white blanket. A hand with purple nail polish holds one corner of the cover.
November 9, 2025 at 10:18 PM
caseyreiland.bsky.social
Well this is a very normal and cool thing for a TV network to do
Marissa Bode’s Comment About a ‘Power-Hungry Dictator’ Removed From ‘Wicked’ Concert Special
The 'Wicked' TV special cut Marissa Bode's comment about a "power-hungry dictator," despite it receiving a standing ovation at the taping.
www.billboard.com
November 8, 2025 at 3:18 PM
Reposted by Casey Reiland
sirpurp.bsky.social
Did Women Ruin The Workplace?
Judith beheading Holofernes. Painting by Caravaggio
November 7, 2025 at 5:17 AM
Reposted by Casey Reiland
strangehorizons.bsky.social
Our portal is still open to submissions by Indigenous Authors!

Here is more information about our submission process including the link to our amoksha submission portal:
strangehorizons.com/submit/ficti...
Fiction Submissions Open Indigenous Authors
November 5, 2025 at 6:55 PM
caseyreiland.bsky.social
When this hits your submittable page 🥹🥹🥹
Green box from Submittable that says “Accepted”
November 4, 2025 at 10:48 PM
caseyreiland.bsky.social
ICYMI: I have a new short story published in Villain Era Lit! It’s about the Hex Hollow murders, a real set of murders that took place in the 1920s in central PA. Read here: villaineralit.com/2025/10/31/t...
November 1, 2025 at 3:39 PM
caseyreiland.bsky.social
It’s me! Thanks, @villaineralit.bsky.social!
October 31, 2025 at 6:18 PM
caseyreiland.bsky.social
I never thought I’d write historical fiction, but give me a witch in central PA and I won’t be able to resist. Check out my new short story over at @villaineralit.bsky.social. It’s based on a true story and it’s spooky and vengeful. Happy Halloween 👻
The Hex Hollow Murders as Told by the River Witch of Marietta, Pennsylvania, 1928 by Casey Reiland
Warlocks and the black arts, hexes and pow-wows have been neglected by a race of modern rustics who, when their crops are bad or their pigs perish, appeal to the U.S. government. City people, who s…
villaineralit.com
October 31, 2025 at 6:18 PM
Reposted by Casey Reiland
loopy.codes
There’s fine lines between “cringe” and “earnest” and “popular”. As Tris @noboilerplate.namtao.com.ap.brid.gy says: popularity matters. Loved participating in the most popular display of resistance yet here in Boston.
A portrait selfie of a man and woman in a crowd of people.
October 18, 2025 at 9:23 PM
Reposted by Casey Reiland
carlquintanilla.bsky.social
David Byrne at #NoKings on his bike.

(via @wutangforchildren.bsky.social)
October 18, 2025 at 7:43 PM
Reposted by Casey Reiland
angrystaffer.bsky.social
Boston. Wow.
October 18, 2025 at 5:19 PM
Reposted by Casey Reiland
villaineralit.bsky.social
An abusive small-town priest gets what's coming to him in Mike McClelland's celestially supernatural short story, today at Villain Era!
Father Dick by Mike McClelland
CW: CSA Father Richard, the Pithole’s “dial-a-deacon” for any weddings, christenings, baptisms, or other events that took place out of the grounds of an official church, was based in Pithole’s Oil County Courthouse. He’d shown his genitals to so many altar boys over the years that he was known throughout Pithole as Father Dick. The kids themselves all knew to give the big door to the right of the magistrate’s office——its brassy letters spelling out DEACON——a wide berth.
villaineralit.com
October 17, 2025 at 3:13 PM
caseyreiland.bsky.social
I’m a calzone and one beer deep on the T rn and just read this short story about food and friendship and omg the end made me tear up???
livesinpages.bsky.social Chris Gonzalez @livesinpages.bsky.social · Oct 9
I have a new story out today @maudlinhouse.bsky.social! Writing it was heavily inspired by the increasing cost of groceries and general anxieties around money and trying to live a stupid little life!
maudlinhouse.bsky.social Maudlin House @maudlinhouse.bsky.social · Oct 9
Tap It, Swipe It, Charge It by Christopher Gonzalez

maudlinhouse.net/tap-it-swipe...
October 11, 2025 at 12:03 AM
caseyreiland.bsky.social
ICYMI: I have two new poems in Emerge Lit Journal today! I’ve been feeling pretty discouraged with writing in general, so I’m very pleased these babies have been picked up. :)
October 8, 2025 at 10:03 PM
caseyreiland.bsky.social
I have two new poems published today in @emergejournal.bsky.social! Read em here: emergeliteraryjournal.com/the-connecti...
The Connection The space between the sternum and the slope of flesh says so much. Here, a quarter, shiny like macadam in the morning sun, now thrown at her chest. A boy says, Look at how it slides right over her middle. Boarded, flat, fabled. This too a fable: Lavender. Tea tree oil. How many times have I written about what my body could not give? Instead, consider my grandmother, her torso gaping like mine. My sister insists we inherited our breasts from her, and I’ll admit this once would have split me of resentment— girl who wants to take up space, who wants to be enclosed perfectly into someone’s fist. Always myself witnessed in another’s eyes, a mark, a haunting, ruptured ribs in the canyons of their irises. But in my grandmother’s ripening, I now behold how we are bound, hanging on to what we still can, cupping the curves of each other’s hands. The thing we contain: a sphere of silver, spinning like a coin. I Said I Would Never Write About 2020 My coworker asks, “Wanna hear something funny?” and describes how he was hit by a car. I find his indifference to the ruthlessness of our job equivalent to the shock that comes from salt stinging a wound: a searing white space. Me: “Aren’t you ever angry?” Him___. When we fuck later, a barren plain glaciates between us. If I’m being honest, I mostly wanted to sleep with him because he is ___ years older than me. Age specifically has a distance. So does trauma. I’m afraid of driving because I’ve been in a car that spun into a cornfield. I was thirteen. My friend’s older sister was driving us to a Halloween party. The coarse dying stalks revolved yellow-green-yellow in my vision, and all I could think was, I’m going to___. In the mornings after the world has shut down, there goes the yellow-green-yellow-green in my mind. I text my one friend, What if one of us___? How do___? I’m so___. Later, my roommate reprimands me for almost wearing sandals to a protest at the White House. When the tear gas blooms a sulfur mist, I let their shaming engulf my legs as we run, grateful to have someone unafraid in their bluntness. I tell my mother what happens, and she says, ______. My coworker insists he only wants my body, and I let him have it because this is the year where I cough up shards of ice, where inside my mouth is a killing frost.
October 8, 2025 at 6:00 PM
caseyreiland.bsky.social
In today’s episode of “Being a Preschool Teacher Is Making Me Have a Crisis About My Age,” I took the kids to the playground and went on the swings with them, only find out that swinging now gives me MOTION SICKNESS
October 2, 2025 at 9:56 PM
caseyreiland.bsky.social
Are there any online writing workshops that specifically help with generative novel writing? I can only seem to come up with short story ideas. I lose steam easily, so I would like a class that could inspire novel plots and also encourage hitting a word count. #writingcommunity
October 1, 2025 at 5:05 PM
caseyreiland.bsky.social
This. And it’s hilarious that Klein continues to call people who refuse to work with fascists as “fatalistic.” He won’t consider historical context nor the long fight it will take to transform our country for the better. Just listen to his interview with TNC. All he wants is a Bandaid.
helldude.bsky.social rich traditions @helldude.bsky.social · Sep 29
i keep saying this but what i hate most about the ezra kleins of the world is their insistence is that politics is about messaging and triangulating. its never about offering a compelling vision of the world, its about trying desperately to capitulate to whatever moment we are in
September 30, 2025 at 12:26 PM