R Henry
LightNews LightNews
banner
ronhenry.net
R Henry
@ronhenry.net
680 followers 800 following 390 posts
Tech writer, poet, editor, avid reader. I do not speak for my employer here.
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by R Henry
riggsveda.bsky.social
“You’re not permanent, you’re not the most important thing and you’re not separate.”
What a wonderful writer and person George Saunders is. His Road to Damascus moment, a conversion from Ayn Rand Republicanism to a reckoning with capitalism, is sad and lovely.
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/10/m...
George Saunders Says Ditching These Three Delusions Can Save You
www.nytimes.com
January 11, 2026 at 2:13 AM
ronhenry.net
It's the end of the world as we know it,
It's the end of the world as we know it,
It's the end of the world as we know it,
And I feeeeel fiiiiine....
Pope Leo in a crowd standing at a microphone apparently emotionally crooning.
November 23, 2025 at 6:47 PM
Reposted by R Henry
tomsnarsky.bsky.social
We are the case.

John Ashbery
When it was all over, a sheep emerged from inside the house. A cheer went up, for it was recognized that these are lousy times to be living in, yet we do live in them: We are the case. And seven times seven ages later it would still be the truth in appearances, festive, eternal, misconstrued. Does anyone still want to play?
November 22, 2025 at 7:47 PM
Reposted by R Henry
jolwalton.bsky.social
To go to sleep in an egg and awake in a murmuration
November 20, 2025 at 1:29 PM
Reposted by R Henry
maureenthorson.bsky.social
“The soul of the old dog won't leave her master.” A poem by Dean Young.
A Beginner's Guide to Endings So some mice decide to try climbing a mountain. An unexpected wedding guest leads the dance. Nothing pleases your father. A bundle of letters is found deep in a trunk. The soul of the old dog won't leave her master. The last task is to bring back a burning branch. A jug comes out of the darkness; take a swig and pass it on. The entrance is guarded by a beast that can take many forms. And this is why willow trees bend down. People say they saw worms crawling from the ground. In the courtyard, next to a beggar, an eagle drops a crown. The horse can go no further. The god has to be tricked to take the world back on his shoulder. It follows then that reality is intermittent. Goodbye mother, farewell home. And that is why the girl put on armor. And you and I have always known each other. And that is why the stars are drunkards.
November 11, 2025 at 1:32 AM
Reposted by R Henry
warren.senate.gov
15 million Americans are going to lose their health care.
October 31, 2025 at 10:04 PM
Reposted by R Henry
subpresspoetry.bsky.social
“Ethics” by Kyla Houbolt, from her forthcoming book, *Becoming Altar* asterismbooks.com/product/beco... @luaz.bsky.social
Ethics Is it ethical to be a frog when the snow is on the ground? To be a frog in winter, in a sound mind and body of amphibious elegance? It isn't right! sing the bugs in their dens, we never got a chance to have amphibious elegance, we only got chitinous chic which is far far less groovy. The bugs grouse among themselves, crowding the rotting tree trunks, clicking and whirring and taking committee votes. But the unconcerned frog, who is not hungry for bug at the moment, casts no stones. There is no call to fiddle with all them bugs! thinks the frog to itself, preening in its winter mudhole. Meanwhile, Creator, in the form of Raven, listens in with amusement. None of these creatures knows what's to come, or how blessed their lives are. Though that smug frog might need to be taken down a peg or two, he thinks. Maybe it's time to send in the crows. And of course the poets are listening to all this, and each one is writing notes, and all the notes are different. This is the blessing and the curse of poetry: that it never agrees and that it never agrees. Ethics? Maybe in the spaces between.
October 12, 2025 at 1:43 PM
Reposted by R Henry
georgetakei.bsky.social
Well said.
September 7, 2025 at 11:26 PM
Reposted by R Henry
maureenthorson.bsky.social
“Luck in this landscape lies flat.” A poem by Jorie Graham.
JACKPOT Halfway through Illinois on the radio they are giving away jackpots. I can hear them squeal as they win. Luck in this landscape lies flat as if to enter the ground and add to it as well. You can see its traces, milkweed caught in the fences, the sheen on the new grass that could be sunshine or white paint But the brushstroke is visible. We wouldn't believe anything we saw without it— the brown, the green, the rectangle, the overpass. I believe now that sorrow is our presence in this by default. In a little while I hope there will be shadows, the houses and these trees trying to bury half of themselves. “This could be your lucky day,” the day the roof is put on the house, and the willows once again resemble trees, and the bridge falls in, making the river once again sufficiently hard to cross.
September 8, 2025 at 12:55 AM
Reposted by R Henry
guygavrielkay.bsky.social
A genuine sorrow. A distinguished figure, and not just as an actor.
culturecrave.co Culture Crave 🍿 @culturecrave.co · Sep 1
Graham Greene has passed away at the age of 73
September 2, 2025 at 12:16 AM
ronhenry.net
Luke Kennard, "Notes on the Sonnets," no. 150
‘O! from what power hast thou this powerful might’ (150) The sun’s coming up but it’s still dark. I stop trying to explain that I’m not a landlord. I look up “where to buy window hinges” on my phone. What we’re dealing with here is a dangerous lack of self-awareness, which is what happens when you start to believe in your own innocence. A refusal to negotiate. You were trying to help someone but it was a glutinous, mushy kind of help and now you are backing away with your hands up and now you are a wolf. The fact is, nobody gets it right. The fact is, your people are angry, a leopard is watching their cities. The fact is a persistent imago. You don’t get to control that. I set up a table by the broken window and the beleaguered tenants form a queue. What are the soul’s borders? It’s like an answer on Jeopardy but you only just switched it on. Such and such things. We love you. The more of your flaws we become aware of the more we love you. But stop coughing up blood, it’s embarrassing.
August 24, 2025 at 4:55 PM
Reposted by R Henry
maureenthorson.bsky.social
“The elegies began writing themselves.” A poem by Mary Biddinger.
DEPARTMENT OF ELEGY The elegies began writing themselves. Naturally, this made us uncomfortable as cruising a breakfast bar in pajamas feels both warranted and inappropriate. I was invited to speak on public radio but every word had to be some sort of farewell, and I wasn't sentimental. No, this job was not about infrastructure as much as exoskeleton. Classrooms full of students groaned as I walked past. Dogs at animal control shushed howls. Trees just fell, embracing their fate so readily that I was tempted to evoke all the elegies of my predecessors. “What river is not reinvented every morning” asked the outgoing minister of elegy. But that was in a prior administration.
July 23, 2025 at 12:23 AM
Reposted by R Henry
maureenthorson.bsky.social
“Nervous habits extruded into plain sight” A poem by Martha Ronk.
HEARING THE SWEEP OF OARS: A DREAM all quiet after the storm surges through things, seaweed hair just under the surface, awake finally, dislodged by the sweep of oars intertidal filaments wavering like fingers pianoing the air, nervous habits extruded into plain sight, fanning open pages glued together by humidity, age, residue from the skin of hands turning each over slowly those days when she taught me how to open a new book leaf by leaf each day patches strewn across the sand imitate filaments, rivulets, branches, we hear too with other than our ears, the oars dipping in and out—the word “plash,” 1522 probably imitative
July 19, 2025 at 12:49 AM
ronhenry.net
My achievement of the morning is making a buzzing lip noise out the window toward a gray catbird that was doing its annoying whiny complainy call from a nearby tree -- and it immediately switched over to its chortling musical improv song in response. (...Yes, I know, I need a vacation.)
July 8, 2025 at 2:27 PM
Reposted by R Henry
catherineh.bsky.social
Who am I? Who do I welcome? Most Americans are immigrants. Love thy neighbor.
🗽🇺🇸 #NoMoreKings #NationOfImmigrants
Green lady with her right arm in the air holding a torch & her left arm holding a book and pointy things coming out of her head
July 4, 2025 at 10:41 AM
Reposted by R Henry
rbreich.bsky.social
"A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people."

—The Declaration of Independence
July 5, 2025 at 2:01 AM
Reposted by R Henry
tompkindivisible.bsky.social
NO KINGS!!!
June 14, 2025 at 7:32 PM
Reposted by R Henry
kairyssdal.bsky.social
Hello. I live in Los Angeles. The president is lying.
June 8, 2025 at 9:54 PM
Reposted by R Henry
bencollins.bsky.social
Elon threatening to just leave people on the ISS is making a pretty good case for why you nationalize your space program!
June 6, 2025 at 12:53 AM
Reposted by R Henry
tomsnarsky.bsky.social
John Ashbery
PORTRAIT WITH A GOAT We were reading to ourselves. Sometimes to others. I was quietly reading the margin when the doves fell, it was blue outside. Perhaps in a moment, he said. The moment never came. I was reading something else now, it didn’t matter. Other people came and dropped off their résumés. I wasn’t being idle, exactly. Someone wanted to go away altogether in this preposterous season.
June 6, 2025 at 12:17 AM
Reposted by R Henry
tomsnarsky.bsky.social
Barbara Guest
HEAVY VIOLETS Heavy violets there is no way if the door clicks the cushion makes murmur noise and the woman on the sofa turns half in half out a tooth slipping from velvet. The world makes this division copies by words each with a leaf attached to images it makes of this half in air and half out like haloes or wrists That separate while they spin airs or shadows if you wish, once or twice half in half out a real twirl jostles there lips creased with violets you wish.
June 2, 2025 at 12:18 AM
ronhenry.net
I know it's dorky but I can't get over saying to myself, "I'm in this photograph" when I see images lime this (i.e. that include eastern N. America).
dscovr-epic.bsky.social DSCOVR 🔴 EPIC (Unofficial) @dscovr-epic.bsky.social · May 22
2:42:40 PM on Tuesday, May 20, 2025, over the North Atlantic Ocean.
Earth from space, centered on the North Atlantic Ocean, captured on Tuesday, May 20, 2025 at 2:42:40 PM by NASA's DSCOVR EPIC camera.
May 22, 2025 at 2:21 AM
Reposted by R Henry
pastures.myatproto.social
We can take the quotation marks off now, to be honest. This is the most accurate and honest way to describe the situation
stano.bsky.social Stan Oklobdzija @stano.bsky.social · May 9
"Masked security forces captured an opposition leader in the coastal province of New Jersey as regime officials continue their months-long crack-down against pro-democracy elements in the embattled United States. The arrest comes as the regime issued calls for summary detentions without trial."
marcofoster.bsky.social Marco Foster @marcofoster.bsky.social · May 9
HAPPENING NOW: Newark Mayor Ras Baraka was just taken into custody while protesting outside the Delaney Hall ICE detention center
May 9, 2025 at 11:43 PM
Reposted by R Henry
tomsnarsky.bsky.social
I dreamed // of a high place,

RIP Martha Silano 💜
When You Didn’t Call I listened to a woman on the bus (“three billion heartbeats equal a lifetime...”), I fell in love with Puccini, every isole, every high-pitched wail. In a drugstore a man approached me, holding a bottle: “is this for the hair?” What confused him were the words builds body. “I can’t believe it,” I barely heard, beneath my bedroom window. Me neither! You didn’t call and I reached for my magic 8-ball. All it could say? Try again later. It poured. It poured and got colder. A flock of birds squeaked in a tree. I dreamed of a high place, miles of granite. We are like that, I thought, black like a starling, white like a flowering hawthorn.
May 8, 2025 at 6:53 PM
Reposted by R Henry
tomsnarsky.bsky.social
everytime i begin to do something / something else intervenes,

Bernadette Mayer
SUNDAY APRIL 13 a clear cold sunny day, beautiful to some, horrible to others. we’re making maple syrup again, smoke is rising from the evaporator, it’s hearty, everytime i begin to do something something else intervenes, i wouldn’t even think this if i weren’t in the mood to have the thought. bernadette mayer, in a rush to put down her weird thoughts, like everybody tells her to, writes down too much, only a fraction of which is even ever read because she is so disorganized, plus she has had a brain hemorrhage, rendering her even more mixed up in her constant thinking, and she has lost the fine motor coordination in her right hand—she can’t handwrite. she has to cook the chicken liver while phil is not in the kitchen. at the moment her left knee is so fucked she can barely walk, making the long bushwhacking walks in the country that were able to salvage her sanity, impossible. she tries to do what others suggest but now she just plods on. it’s the last straw, hobbling from room to room, hoping for change. she is lost but has no choice she can’t attempt suicide again for fear of failing. she will cook the liver. she also cooks two pierogi, eats them & sits in the sun
April 13, 2025 at 6:53 PM