Jessica Lee McMillan
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jessicaleemcmillan.com
Jessica Lee McMillan
@jessicaleemcmillan.com
510 followers 520 following 720 posts
Poet, teacher, music nerd | Chapbook: 𝐒𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐋𝐢𝐤𝐞 A 𝐃𝐢𝐦𝐞 I𝐧 T𝐡𝐞 𝐃𝐢𝐫𝐭 U𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫 T𝐡𝐞 𝐌𝐨𝐨𝐧 via Pinhole Poetry, Spring 2026 | Poems in CV2, The Malahat Review, QWERTY, ROOM, Crab Creek Review, The New Quarterly.
| BLM 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🍉🌻 | www.jessicaleemcmillan.com
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jessicaleemcmillan.com
For Heron Tree’s 12th issue, some of my experimental poems using 12 some way with texts in the public domain, incl. Yamazaki Sōkan & Arakida Morita, J.M. Barrie with a gesture to J.R.R. Tolkien, and Zona Gale.

herontree.com
HERON TREE
poetry online & collected variously
herontree.com
December 4, 2025 at 3:37 PM
jessicaleemcmillan.com
Made a double batch of pfeffernüsse on the weekend after finally getting the change to visit my spice store for lebkuchengewürz (spice blend) ingredients.❤️ This article touches on some fascinating food history including Goethe and Mendelssohn.
yummybazaar.com/blogs/blog/a...
A Guide to Pfeffernusse: The Overlooked German Gingerbread Cookies
With gingerbread cookies so popular a treat during Christmas season, we should be talking more about Pfeffernusse: probably the most unique gingerbread cookies of them all.
yummybazaar.com
December 4, 2025 at 12:59 AM
jessicaleemcmillan.com
Join us this Sunday Dec 7th @ 1pm PST/4pm EST for The Riff's monthly discussion on our favourite tracks for 2025, plus holiday faves @theriffmedia.bsky.social. Open to all. Link in the writeup. Feel free to add some songs and join!
medium.com/the-riff/fav...
Favorite Songs of 2025/Christmas Special
Your chance to be an influencer in the Riff Album discussion
medium.com
December 3, 2025 at 10:21 PM
jessicaleemcmillan.com
Trial by Cold Water by Eric Schmaltz
up at NewPoetry: newpoetry.ca
Trial by Cold Water Eric Schmaltz ‘My weight is my love; I am borne by it wherever I am borne’ – St. Augustine my lungs brimmed in my first memory, chlorinated & sodden I sunk to the bottom of the pool. it was no other occasion than friendship’s cusp, a longing to be accepted at three, maybe four, by him, his grandfather, maybe his mother, the early blue below, the sky, the clouds, cirrus, maybe cumulus, & the concrete’s scrape on my callow knees. we pulled the cushions, piled in the living room, maybe the kitchen, & laid them by the poolside. I remember the sun but no heat, maybe. I didn’t confess that I could not swim. I stepped toward the pool’s limit it welcomed me in my purity, weighted by my longing, by virtue of my lie
December 2, 2025 at 3:34 PM
Reposted by Jessica Lee McMillan
refo.gay
Hoje é Wolrd AIDS Day

Ignorância = medo
Silêncio = morte

Arte: Keith Haring
December 1, 2025 at 9:04 AM
Reposted by Jessica Lee McMillan
christinashah.bsky.social
WOW! Congrats Aidan! @allegorically.bsky.social
onlypoemsmag.bsky.social ONLY POEMS @onlypoemsmag.bsky.social · 5d
Our nominations for the Pushcart Prize!!!❤️
November 29, 2025 at 4:15 PM
Reposted by Jessica Lee McMillan
marcellenewbold.bsky.social
Next event, 5 Dec 6.30pm, is our annual festive get-together - an online festive evening of words and music, come along to share, enjoy and celebrate! @nbissell.bsky.social @dauvitf.bsky.social

Book your place here: tinyurl.com/3ksnvw5b
Festive Evening Celebration
Get ready for a night of joy at our Festive Evening Celebration - it's going to be a virtual party you won't want to miss!
tinyurl.com
November 28, 2025 at 1:31 PM
jessicaleemcmillan.com
Only a fraction of the spectacular haul I received from above/ground press @robmclennan.bsky.social. I am rich this winter! abovegroundpress.substack.com/p/abovegroun...
12 chapbooks lined up on a grey/blue/white spackled rug.
November 28, 2025 at 3:10 AM
jessicaleemcmillan.com
My friend makes incredible and affordable up-cycled creations including these must-have’s for writers (pen holder with elastic for book) and cloth bookmarks (in all patterns). Not only is she a cool, creative, hardworking single mom, but she’s also a postie!

designsbyjules73.square.site
Journal featuring vintage floral fabric pen holder with two skull-patterned bookmarks and a second pen holder on a wooden table.
November 28, 2025 at 3:04 AM
Reposted by Jessica Lee McMillan
bookgaga.bsky.social
"No consolation prize or midlife bucket list
might be counted beyond a simple day

of textbook weather."

#TodaysPoem #poetry
from The Moirai by David O'Meara from Masses on Radar (2021 @coachhousebooks.bsky.social) chbooks.com/Books/M/Mass...
Poetry collection Masses on Radar by David O'Meara (Coach House Books) sits on a green-tinged rock amidst dead leaves Handwritten transcription of part of the poem The Moirai by David O'Meara from the poetry collection Masses on Radar, with an uncapped pen resting on the notebook page and a piece of red brick resting on the poetry collection page
November 27, 2025 at 3:17 PM
Reposted by Jessica Lee McMillan
levostregc.bsky.social
Remember: It ys okaye to be lonely. It ys okaye to feel lost. It ys okaye to be sad. It ys okaye to have no plannes or just small plannes. It ys okaye to have big plannes that seem exhausting. It ys okaye to be a mess. Take care of thyself. Thou art amazinge.
November 27, 2025 at 12:07 AM
Reposted by Jessica Lee McMillan
rjjago.bsky.social
I’ve got an article out in the Star today about the Thomas King issue:
November 27, 2025 at 12:56 AM
jessicaleemcmillan.com
Had the pleasure of seeing Jimmy Cliff perform this live in a sunny auditorium in Seattle in the late 90s. Life memory. Legend and paragon, Jimmy Cliff💔 www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmc5...
The Harder They Come
YouTube video by Jimmy Cliff - Topic
www.youtube.com
November 25, 2025 at 3:58 PM
Reposted by Jessica Lee McMillan
chuckdpe.bsky.social
RIP early portrait of Jimmy Cliff 1980s
November 25, 2025 at 3:46 PM
Reposted by Jessica Lee McMillan
comingupontcm.bsky.social
#ComingUpOnTCM

PARIS IS BURNING (1990) Brooke Xtravaganza, André Christian, Dorian Corey
Dir.: Jennie Livingston 11: 00 PM PT

New York's drag scene in the 1980s, focusing on balls and voguing.

1h 18m | Documentary | TV-PG

#TCM #TCMParty
November 25, 2025 at 6:30 AM
jessicaleemcmillan.com
IYKYK. Kiddo and I finished it together while sick on Saturday.🥹❤️ #RonGilbert @grumpygamer.com
Screen shot of credits for The Curse of Monkey Island. Image of skull in helmet on sand in bottom right. Parchment background and credits include Ron Gilbert and George Lucas.
November 25, 2025 at 6:32 AM
jessicaleemcmillan.com
A 2022 article that reads even more vividly today. Thinking a lot about Hawthorne after watching Wicked. Allegory is having a moment.

www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/smal...
The Puritans Are Back: Did They Ever Leave?
Is seventeenth-century Puritan culture still shaping our behavioral patterns and beliefs?
www.psychologytoday.com
November 23, 2025 at 8:09 PM
jessicaleemcmillan.com
Let my Prime membership expire the day before Black Friday
November 22, 2025 at 4:20 PM
Reposted by Jessica Lee McMillan
passedmadepresent.bsky.social
"... Phife Dawg, who as a member of A Tribe Called Quest brought left-of-center hip-hop to the masses..."

#PhifeDawg
1970-2016
Born on this day

www.nytimes.com/2016/03/24/a...
Malik Taylor, Phife Dawg of A Tribe Called Quest, Dies at 45 (Published 2016)
www.nytimes.com
November 20, 2025 at 11:38 PM
jessicaleemcmillan.com
youtu.be/twIkfDx5yo8
Rushmore (1998) - Revenge Montage (The Who) scene [1080]
YouTube video by Screen Themes
youtu.be
November 16, 2025 at 5:36 PM
Reposted by Jessica Lee McMillan
womensartbluesky.bsky.social
The Mothers, 1921 woodcut, by German artist and #printmaker Käthe Kollwitz, is an anti war artwork, from the perspective of mothers #ReframingWomenPrintmakers
Black and white print featuring a huddle of embracing fearful women protecting their children whose faces peep from within the group
November 16, 2025 at 7:11 AM
jessicaleemcmillan.com
The Young Poet by .. Ben Ladouceur A young poet once told me, you get one exclamation mark your whole career. Twenty years passed and still his name is not very known. Each morning, all summer, I write the first line of a different ode; together the lines tell a story about suffering the way a dull axe tells a story about septicemia. Capably. The young poet loved me in order to make a different man suffer. For a countryside summer, the different man suffered, and wrote the worst poems of any of us, his one exclamation mark rotting like mutton in his pocket. I no longer know these men but when they come across the last and only exclamation mark of my career, I know they will interpret it as scorekeeper would at the diamond. Interchangeable with an asterisk. Great defensive play.
November 15, 2025 at 7:19 AM
jessicaleemcmillan.com
Banger
November 13, 2025 at 3:25 PM
Reposted by Jessica Lee McMillan
christinashah.bsky.social
Planet Earth Poetry's 30 for 30 fundraiser link- please share and help keep Western Canada's longest running poetry series going for another 30 years (or more!)!

💟📕

gofund.me/4ceb9c262

@zoeidadickinson.bsky.social @byallmeanswrite.bsky.social
Donate to 30 for 30, organized by Steven Ross Smith
30 for 30 - $30 for 30 Years - Help us fund another 30 years of poetry! Planet Earth Poetry invites y… Steven Ross Smith needs your support for 30 for 30
gofund.me
November 13, 2025 at 5:08 AM
jessicaleemcmillan.com
Joe's still speaking.

"...They say it would be wine and roses
If England were for Englishmen again"

"I missed the fourteen-eighteen war
But not the sorrow afterwards"

"...The garden party not a word was said
The ladies lifted cake to their mouths"

youtu.be/_TwDOO_RJ8Y
The Clash - Something About England (Remastered) [Official Audio]
YouTube video by theclashVEVO
youtu.be
November 11, 2025 at 8:25 AM