As always, today is a great day for me to receive a poetry submission acceptance and ten thousand dollars. If you can make that happen, I’ll hold you in especially high esteem!

I’m flagging this because I’ve kinda transferred some of the mental reward structure from social media to the submission process, meaning it’s as much a self-distraction from like, all this grading I have to do, as it is genuinely creative.

The brain is a funny thing!

Currently my dopamine release triggers are keyed into different components of drafting/revising/submitting poems:

Jotting ideas
Reviewing feedback
Outlining revisions
Finding venues
Clicking submit
Writing friendly queries

It’s *not* the same as being excited about poetry, though I have that too.

Sadly, on college campuses people don’t learn to feed sourdough starter, but to yell at it.

That’s a really good video

Saying this with a lot of respect for Bouie! Don’t get me wrong! But I think he’s more online than he says he is

I had this funny realization that Jamelle Bouie’s specific type of offline cool (a “sure I’ll chop it up online for a sec then go back to being cool offline” vibe) is only visible because he’s actually very online lol

I only just realized “mums” is short for chrysanthemums

help support small press!

help support death magazines!

we're just out here trying to do some cool shit, like:

@vajra.me is guest editing OCTOBER and JANUARY deadlands DOUBLE VAJRA !

with CUSTOM DOUBLE ART BY @carlydraws.bsky.social !!

upcoming NOVELETTE (April 2026) by @dianadima.com !!!

And make sure to donate to The Deadlands’ annual fundraiser!!!!

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On my substack, I wrote a companion essay to my poem “Query Telling on Other Elder,” published by @thedeadlands.com in their summer issue. Read on for reflections on the politics of translating oral poetry, and when world-building demands the poetic to express it.

open.substack.com/pub/mrpoemgu...

My favorite one-liner of all time is “I went to a therapist, he said, ‘tell me everything.’ I did, and now he’s doing my act.”

One thing I very much appreciate about Clarkesworld is how fast their first reader rejections are. One to three days and boom you’re ready for the next market. No anxiety. That takes a lot of effort and coordination and should really be praised!

Come help us fund year six of The Deadlands--paying for stories, poems, essays, and staff! Your mushroom coin enters you in spooky giveaways throughout 2026. We can't do this without you!

psychopomp.com/the-deadland...

There are a few signed copies of RAKESFALL you can get for supporting The Deadlands! psychopomp.com/the-deadland...

South Minneapolis is full of contradictions. My mostly working class immigrant neighborhood is on high alert for ICE raids, and a mile away the rich liberals are pulling NIMBY hijinks to stop a pizza place from getting a liquor license.

I fell asleep and had this hot take within a dream, which was that whichever Brueggers Bagels CEO steered the company through the dot com crash was underrated

Ludwig Luigi Bean

Came here to ask if it was Wake In Fright

I think especially if you saw one of the despecialized versions you’d have interesting takes based on your anime expertise!

One more round of edits on this pseudo-Arthurian sci fi poem (anachronistically set in the present with mad max tech bro cowboy knights) and it should be ready to submit. Hopefully soon you’ll get to read its depictions of flying car jousting, gender-neutral courtly love, & eroticized alien hunting.

🚨🚨 My dear friend and fellow academic, the Palestinian American sociologist @emanabdelhadi.bsky.social has been taken by the Cook County Sheriff near Chicago. They have not mirandized her. Please signal boost. All eyes on Broadview for Eman and the community she was defending 🚨🚨

This summer I took my daughter to the Field Museum in Chicago and after all the cool dinosaur stuff stumbled onto Lucy the hominid skeleton, and was kind of surprised by how moved I was to get to see her. It was like, that’s me! That’s us! 🥲

I love the medieval literature trope of the prince/knight who’s too busy hunting to find a girlfriend, then finds an animal while hunting who turns into a beautiful lady, but in a tragic complicated way