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Susan L. Leary @susanlleary.bsky.social · Aug 6

This incredible poem from Susan Rich in BLUE ATLAS 💙

Day 6 - #SealeyChallenge

@susanrich-poet18.bsky.social
@redhenpress.bsky.social
@sealeychallenge.bsky.social

Abeyance

Today my friend told me of her girl's hand-dug coffin; how in Antarctica, training to stay alive meant to pickaxe,
crack, and cut, until a furrow the size of a brown bear appears and her graduate school daughter descends
into a trench barely length-wise enough for her sleeping sac; eventually sealed-off with a brick of snow.
An ice coffin, the mother told me, gently recalling how her offspring slipped beneath the crust of the world.
How the hours spent warming hands in armpits was worth it.
To survive the woman relied on her own muscle work—
a lacey box of molecules and the animal beat of her heart.
At dusk with the exercise completed, the men disappeared
to hot showers, a dinner of ribs in the ranger station, but her daughter remained underground. She had labored
for hours and was determined to sleep beneath the ice.
And then suddenly, the next morning as she climbed up-solidly
alive, stunned by the machinery of her own body.
I like to believe she knew herself as different—
changed as Persephone had changed, into a new woman— lifted into a blue abeyance-beyond the self and climbing.

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Perugia Press @perugiapress.bsky.social · Jul 2

Poets, get your manuscripts ready! Perugia Press’s annual prize opens August 1. Open to women poets, inclusive of all gender-expansive definitions of that term, who have not published more than one full-length collection. Full guidelines & submission info in linktree. Can’t wait to read your work!

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Susan L. Leary @susanlleary.bsky.social · Jun 5

🚨SALE!🚨I noticed a certain retailer is selling my book for less than $5 and thought I should offer copies for the same price! So, if you've been wanting to read DRESSING THE BEAR, l'd love to send you it! $5 INCLUDES SHIPPING, until I run out! DM me! And thank you in advance! 💙 @triohousepress.org

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Perugia Press @perugiapress.bsky.social · May 28

Please check out our blog (linktree in bio) to read more about the work of Saba Keramati and her book Self-Mythology (U. of Arkansas Press, 2024).🌟 @sabadilla15.bsky.social @uarkpress.bsky.social

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Community of Literary Magazines & Presses (CLMP) @clmporg.bsky.social · May 17

Carolina Hotchandani’s debut collection, “conceived in loss, examines shifts in identity due to Partition, immigration, illness, and birth.”

THE BOOK EATERS is published in @perugiapress.bsky.social & featured in our #APAHeritageMonth reading list: perugiapress.org/product/the-...

The Book Eaters - Perugia Press

Conceived in loss, The Book Eaters examines shifts in identity due to Partition, immigration, illness, and birth. It is also a study in belonging—to our bodies, memories, stories, ourselves, families…

perugiapress.org

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Jane Zwart (she/her) @janezwart.bsky.social · May 16

Feeling grateful (also floored) to turn to a page in Poetry Magazine & find this poem I wrote, with all admiration, after Mary Oliver's "When Death Comes."

Thank you, Adrian, Lindsay, Holly, et al.

This poem will be available in an accessible online format at Poetry Magazine's website shortly. You'll also be able to listen to me read it.

Cover of Poetry Magazine's June 2025 issue:
half-carton of eggs, with the letters P O E T R Y painted on them.

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Nicholas Yingling @nyingling.bsky.social · Apr 27

My pleasure. Fantastic reading.

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Nicholas Yingling @nyingling.bsky.social · Apr 24

"When I say land
sometimes I mean belief. When I say ocean

I mean all the rest

unarticulated with the mouth's
profane shape"
-Amanda Hawkins from WHEN I SAY THE BONES I MEAN THE BONES @wapress.bsky.social

Cover of WHEN I SAY THE BONES I MEAN THE BONES by Amanda Hawkins

Bears Ears National Monument and Other Diminishing Lands

What gods do we grope in common-what land sprawls to the west-

what oceans will swallow
our solid continents? I wanted

the remnants, the salvageable
bones kept clean and away from light.

The paintings-one might stand too close the breath

to carry the unseen,
water droplets decay what would be

preserved. Kept, I thought, was the operative

word suspended-the holy
space set aside.

Who says such preservation is
in contention with logic-

land lies
bare, flat, folded,
stacked, and ripped along a seam. The bones of

the dead are everywhere

believed to be sacred. The land exposed,

but most hidden
by oceans rising, by the land being by nature

a surface. When I say land
sometimes I mean belief. When I say ocean

I mean all the rest

unarticulated with the mouth's
profane shape.

I mean to say how the body moves

is praxis, the paintings
on the stone were roped off to keep

pilgrims from touching-to preserve
what could be lost.

But when I say the bones
I mean the bones.

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Nicholas Yingling @nyingling.bsky.social · Apr 21

"I was often told to smile by complete strangers
as if a six-year-old girl in patched bellbottoms
& a Mork & Mindy t-shirt wasn't cheerful enough"
- @majda.bsky.social from IN THE HOUSE OF MODERN UPBRINGING FOR GIRLS @wapress.bsky.social

Cover of IN THE HOUSE OF MODERN UPBRINGING FOR GIRLS by Majda Gama

Tala (To the Girl Palm)

When I ate the fruit of the date palm delivered fresh
to me from an oasis in the empty quarter, admired

the gilt-twined bag the fruit lay in, & hesitated to disturb
this wonder of Arab irrigation, fruit bat pollination, & desert patience,

I knew why fathers send their daughters to the West
with kilos of dates: sukkary, khudry, segai, heavily wrapped

& suspicious in luggage; the care in the fruit meant to last us in places
where trees drop all their leaves & appear dead to the eye.

I eyed my gift, portioned myself one to eat on a balcony casting a cool
shadow over sand speckled with blood & feathers from a wild falcon kill,

knew I could have sent that falcon into the sky to feed, knew
that to the East, in the oasis, young girl-palms were sheltering,

growing, while men in white bathed & dressed them,
named them, then let the desert raise them.

Greek Gods, 1978

I was often told to smile by complete strangers
as if a six-year-old girl in patched bellbottoms
& a Mork & Mindy t-shirt wasn't cheerful enough
I had to dwell in their space just while passing them
on the sidewalk walking but in my mind gliding
in new sneakers that promised hermetic levels of flight
I knew Greek mythology could even pronounce the Gods
correctly they had names like my heroes
on Battlestar Galactica which I watched with my twin & parents
in footed pajamas after my father brushed my hair
to a stellar shine I'd open my eyes wide to receive
the feathered hair & sensational teeth of Starbuck my 1st crush
but he didn't like brunettes like me or dark jump-suited Athena
who served on the ship's bridge sending space warriors into battle
with a girl-next-door attitude & contoured cheeks she lost him
over & over again to Cassiopeia of the white-winged disco
dresses who was hopelessly blonde like my mother
who everyone eyed sideways when she walked by them
same for Cassiopeia no one seemed to breathe around her
& Starbuck never really had to choose but they fought over him
nonetheless while he just threw on his leather jacket & blasted
himself into space with a joystick off to fight Cylons in a fleet of jets
called Vipers I hated her (I loved my mother) I still don't trust blonde women
I had the power to dress myself & dressed for myself with Wonder
Woman Underoos underneath as armor for when neighborhood
boys thundered by in a gang of big-wheels catcalling
& that was all I knew of romance for an age.

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Vikki C. @vikkicwrites.bsky.social · Apr 19

A powerful and intimate exploration into the violence of loss within the female experience set against motifs of climate change, disease and generational trauma.

I, DIVIDED by @chelsdingman.bsky.social (@lsupress.bsky.social)

#NationalPoetryMonth Day 19 ❤️

#poetry #poetrycommunity #ecohumanscape

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Nicholas Yingling @nyingling.bsky.social · Apr 18

Thank you, Stefanie!!

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Stefanie Kirby @msstefaniekirby.bsky.social · Apr 18

This poem by @nyingling.bsky.social in the new Sixth Finch: 🔥🔥🔥
I'll be thinking about that ending for a long time.

Nicholas Yingling @nyingling.bsky.social · Apr 17

Grateful to @sixthfinch.bsky.social for publishing two of my poems. Check out the whole issue here:

sixthfinch.com/mainspring25...

BODY AS SONG, BODY AS BLOOD COUNT

Stress, a virus, a two-mile walk
home through wildfire
smoke when the busses shut down,
someone else’s mortgage
smoldering in my marrow, too much lead
from the mothball fleet or chromium
in the groundwater, until the next administration
raises the acceptable limit, a childhood
beneath the towers and test sirens
of a refinery, a city of employees called
to service, a rain like resin
eating through car paint, the tomatoes—
heirlooms sliced red to the seed—we were advised
not to grow, living along the border
of a class-action lawsuit:
to understand
the numbers inside me,
the hematologist plots my blood on a graph.
She draws a bell curve.
At both ends the distribution levels out
into pure sound, not the instrument but its toll.

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Sixth Finch @sixthfinch.bsky.social · Apr 17

Our spring issue is live: sixthfinch.com
Featuring @meganalpert.bsky.social @mikhailbazharov.bsky.social @timothyliupoet.bsky.social @thatjanemorton.bsky.social @katnuernberger.bsky.social @lisaallenortiz.bsky.social @dustinkpearson.bsky.social @dia-roth.bsky.social @pagestar.bsky.social and more

Sixth Finch

Sixth Finch: a quarterly online journal of poetry and art. The current issue features poems by Megan Alpert, Michael Bazzett, Matt Daly, Chris Haven, Rebecca Hawkes, David Dodd Lee, Timothy Liu, Malia...

sixthfinch.com

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Nicholas Yingling @nyingling.bsky.social · Apr 17

Grateful to @sixthfinch.bsky.social for publishing two of my poems. Check out the whole issue here:

sixthfinch.com/mainspring25...

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Rebecca Hart Olander @rholanderpoet.bsky.social · Apr 12

Gratitude to Nicholas Yingling for this gift of reading, seeing & sharing Uncertain Acrobats (CavanKerry Press, 2021). Appreciate this so much! 🌹📖💞 @nyingling.bsky.social @cavankerrypress.bsky.social

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Nicholas Yingling @nyingling.bsky.social · Apr 11

It was so nice seeing you again, Becky. And such a powerful, loving book you've written.

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Nicholas Yingling @nyingling.bsky.social · Apr 11

"We blend bone meal with soil at the base of rosebushes,
tendering roots with the dust of other lives"
- @rholanderpoet.bsky.social from UNCERTAIN ACROBATS

Cover of UNCERTAIN ACROBATS by Rebecca Hart Olander. Three dancers or one dancer in three positions, oriented so their bodies are horizontal.

The Cancer Is Back

We blend bone meal with soil at the base of rosebushes,
tendering roots with the dust of other lives.
It is this life I want, we seem to say,
with each swath of dead perennials we clear,
making way for what we assume will come.
But there is nothing to mix into this unspeakable void.
The cells are doing their dire multiplying,
and we already fed them all our best poison.
Can you stand to enter those changing rooms again?
The metallic pull across of the striped curtain,
the flimsy wraparound of a backwards robe?
Couldn't you go on seeking cyber chess domination,
tying up pork loins stuffed with apricots and sage,
wearing the vest you bought in Santa Fe
until the buttons all fall off?
No more pinpoint tattoos!
Your single lung has only just learned to live alone.

Find Alternate Routes

is what the digital road sign flashed
at me as I drove downtown,
as if there is another path through this thicket,
as if we are sleeping beauties
and can be kissed out of our darkness,
as if we can cut away kudzu
and it will stop letting down its insidious hair,
as if we can uproot bittersweet
and it will cease its blood red choking of the lilacs,
as if you will be unchanged,
robust like you were when I was seven
and we crouched together in mirrored pose
mimicking the stance of breaking into a run,
me in my burnt orange corduroy jumpsuit,
hair parted to the side and clasped with a barrette,
my blue Keds beside your running sneakers
still laced tight from the hometown 5K you raced
in your sweaty, sun-worn baseball cap,
your skin browned from being in the world,
early fall 1979, and every beautiful muscle showed
in your legs and your flashing smile,
oh, damn this route you are racing now,
all those other games gone,
your detour paved with brittle prognosis,
coasting swells nothing like the adrenaline
that used to course through,
making you feel every inch a man.

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𝕄𝕒𝕣𝕜 𝔸𝕟𝕥𝕠𝕟𝕪 𝕆𝕨𝕖𝕟 @markantonyowen.com · Apr 11

The Kari Ann Flickinger Memorial Literary Prize returns – and this time, it's for fiction.

Run by @ballerinibookpress.bsky.social with the support of Kari's family and her partner Bill Abney, the award this year will be judged by @rfredekenter.bsky.social.

Find out more here ...
bit.ly/3Raw18J

The Kari Ann Flickinger Memorial Literary Prize 2025

Submission open on May 5 2025

bit.ly

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Nicholas Yingling @nyingling.bsky.social · Apr 7

"No lungs, no heart, no breath-
irresistible now, what might you see?

A bird's dying shudder or

lovers knotted in a plotline of release?
You're an example now

of nothing, a fountain of nowhere-"

-Susan Rich from BLUE ATLAS @redhenpress.bsky.social

Cover of BLUE ATLAS by Susan Rich. Four potted plants ascending stairs. The pots are a deep blue against the turquoise stairs.

This Could Happen

If you kept walking, you would eventually step outside of yourself.
You would leave the bones of your body,

the bloodlines to all that you loved.

You would be free of breasts, liberated from the eyes of body admirers-

to travel this earth like a star lily or skunk flower

with the forbearance of golden bees. If you kept walking out of the self

you could begin again as seawater, as spindrift.

Don't worry, you'd say,
you're a virgin non-body, you're a witness

to ten thousand new worlds.

No lungs, no heart, no breath-
irresistible now, what might you see?

A bird's dying shudder or

lovers knotted in a plotline of release?
You're an example now

of nothing, a fountain of nowhere-

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🎃Monster Mashda🎃 @majda.bsky.social · Apr 5

My book is out wherever you like to buy books! In the Uk it’s online with @waterstones.bsky.social as well as @foylesforbooks.bsky.social in the USA I like bookshop.org/p/books/in-t...

In the House of Modern Upbringing for Girls

Check out In the House of Modern Upbringing for Girls - <p>Winner of the Wandering Aengus Book Award, <em>In the House of Modern Upbringing for Girls</em> is Majda Gama's first full-length poetry coll...

bookshop.org

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Nicholas Yingling @nyingling.bsky.social · Apr 3

So good to see you too! (I absolutely inhaled this book, couldn't put it down.)

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Nicholas Yingling @nyingling.bsky.social · Apr 2

"Now we are splayed out like dummies
in the mud, like shot soldiers, like angels telling lies about the stars."
-Joe Wilkins from PASTORAL, 1994 @riverriverbooks.bsky.social

Cover of Joe Wilkins' PASTORAL, 1994. A barbed wire fence at dusk or dawn, everything but the horizon still dark.

FABLE

Coyotes sleep nose to tail in dank caves. A lonesome
mountain lion lids the slats of her eyes. In the wind
yucca flowers dune and drift. I know the names of things
here, the very rise where my father's bones lie,
not so far from my grandfather's, and save a sad handful
of stories that's as far as we go. Like a city street
that ends in a high fence, and it is unclear what has been
fenced in, or out, and even here, in this nameless city,
you'll find coyotes snouting and slavering after grease
and trash, the odd housecat, and it's their recolonizing racket
that wakes the child, who rises, whose small hands tremble
against cold window glass, and the child's father, a man
whose daily work is to take work away from other men, leads
the child back to bed, tucks him in, blesses him, blesses him.

PASTORAL, 1992

My little brother & I are walking the irrigation dike.
The night moonless, overcast, no farmlights
for miles-this is true darkness,
the kind you might call ink or river bottom,
storm or stone, under the covers, up a cow's ass, closed
casket. My brother breathes wetly
behind me. Mud sucks at our sneakers. It is straight up & down
July 4 midnight. My fingers stink of gunpowder
& potato salad. When I close my eyes
firecrackers leap & pop, & all I want is more-
more spark & trace, whistle & bang-
but what I've got is a field flooded all to hell
& back, surely now a useless crop of foxtail, & my little brother
half-asleep on his feet & when I stop
running smack into me. Now we are splayed out like dummies
in the mud, like shot soldiers, like angels telling lies about the stars.

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Shō Poetry Journal @shopoetryjournal.bsky.social · Mar 31

Today is the last day to get your work in!

Subs close tonight at midnight (PT).

shopoetryjournal.submittable.com/submit/31379...

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Susan L. Leary @susanlleary.bsky.social · Mar 21

Really stoked to have a new poem in the spring issue of @theshorepoetry.bsky.social! I have long admired this journal, & I’m grateful to the editors for including me—& alongside so many poets I love! Happy World Poetry Day, too, friends! 💙

Read the issue here: www.theshorepoetry.org/issue-25

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Susan L. Leary @susanlleary.bsky.social · Mar 17

Dorianne Laux 💙

from WHAT WE CARRY

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