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Jill Kitchen

@jillkitchen.bsky.social

3K followers 5.1K following 1.1K posts

poems, stories, music, landscape. in DC. co, nyc, & london hold pieces of my heart. writing in asterales, crab creek review, HAD, four way review, iowa review, poet lore, split lip. soon in AQR. social media manager @ SWWIM she/her linktr.ee/jillkitchen

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Jill Kitchen

@jillkitchen.bsky.social

OMG, awesome!!! I am hoping for this one:

December 8, 2025 at 8:34 PM

Jill Kitchen

@jillkitchen.bsky.social

December 7, 2025 at 2:38 PM

Jill Kitchen

@jillkitchen.bsky.social

Sorry, these were the songs

December 4, 2025 at 11:32 PM

Jill Kitchen

@jillkitchen.bsky.social

This is mine, I guess I’m as predictable as ever:

December 4, 2025 at 11:30 PM

Jill Kitchen

@jillkitchen.bsky.social

Somedays it helps to know that someone decided to build this in their backyard.

Image of wooden wall/fence and sagebrush with the word LOVE spelled out in large red-painted letters made of wood.

November 23, 2025 at 4:18 PM

Jill Kitchen

@jillkitchen.bsky.social

Hanging out with my friends.

View of a crow in a red-leafed tree beneath gold-leafed trees outside of a window.

November 13, 2025 at 4:38 PM

Jill Kitchen

@jillkitchen.bsky.social

In case you missed my Brooklyn ghost poem on Halloween, here is "after-midnight umbra" from Boudin's Ticking Clock Issue:

after-midnight umbra

Jill Kitchen

brick brownstone painted red on a busy avenue, top floor open to brooklyn sky. from the roof, a woven
cityscape of other rooftops, other chimneys, the scent of tar. manhattan’s lower skyline small enough to
hold in a hand, catch fireworks in july.

spiral staircase a tremble of iron, sunday goulash at the austrian restaurant on the corner. a bed shared
with a sleeping love and sometimes two cats when they aren’t chasing each other up and down the narrow
staircase, through pink dawn shadows on the floor.

when you are alone, another dark silhouette in the shower, shifting where there should be no shadow.
when your partner is alone looking out the window, a human-shaped reflection behind his own outline.

at three a.m. each night, both bedside lights turn on. some wiring glitch, perhaps.

one october night, a candle long unlit lights itself. you wake to your near-dreaming man standing in
trance, watching the flicker and burn, red shadows on his skin. another night, your long-unwound music
box starts to play musetta’s waltz into the sleeping dark. always as the clock touches three.

your love returns home late one night, ascends the stairs to find you asleep, curved into eyelash flutter,
while both bedside lamps put on a strobe-stuttered light show. your mouth open to a soundless cry.

you start to wake at three a.m. to the sound of a man’s scream in one ear. you think it must be the stress of
work weaving nightmares until your man tells you he wakes that way, too, and often.

you pack to move 2,000 miles away. the night before you leave, your partner wakes to a fist in his face, no
hand in sight. the room a shimmer of shadow mote.

black and white drawing of an analog wall clock with roman numeral numbers.

November 7, 2025 at 5:29 PM

Jill Kitchen

@jillkitchen.bsky.social

It's the marvelous @majda.bsky.social's birthday! Celebrate by purchasing her brilliant collection "In the House of Modern Upbringing for Girls" if you don't already have this beauty on your shelves! politics-prose.com/book/9798218...

The cover of Majda Gama's book of poems "In the House of Modern Upbringing for Girls"

November 7, 2025 at 2:21 PM

Jill Kitchen

@jillkitchen.bsky.social

Full moon in DC:

November 6, 2025 at 1:50 PM

Jill Kitchen

@jillkitchen.bsky.social

a twilight colorado mountainscape with moon, a few years back.

twilight snow-covered mountainscape with cloud and fragment of moon

November 1, 2025 at 11:31 PM

Jill Kitchen

@jillkitchen.bsky.social

In case you missed my ghosty poem yesterday in Boudin's Ticking Clock issue, the day after Halloween is a great day to continue your spooky reads! www.mcneese.edu/thereview/af...

Drawing of old clock with roman numerals.

November 1, 2025 at 3:46 PM

Jill Kitchen

@jillkitchen.bsky.social

I had sent a friend her COVID hedge apple:

Hedge apple decorated with cranberries to look like COVID structure

October 26, 2025 at 3:51 PM

Jill Kitchen

@jillkitchen.bsky.social

This guy had to pause in the tree with his load of snacks after tossing unacceptable acorns onto cars on the street below all day.

Squirrel in tree holding a branch with acorns on it.

October 23, 2025 at 9:19 PM

Jill Kitchen

@jillkitchen.bsky.social

In case you missed my poem "when the world did not feel like a crushing weight" in the beautiful @asteralesjournal.bsky.social:

when the world did not feel like a crushing weight / jill kitchen

in the black & white picture from the photobooth, we are laughing
to near tears, showing all of our chins. i can hear our snorts, see my hand
over my mouth. we didn’t feel steamrolled by the world then, did we?
not in that moment anyway. when did it shift? last night i dreamt
i was in montana again, 17 years old, about to start a 20-mile hike
uphill in the rain. i panicked to prepare, wrapping changes of clothes
in plastic, liner socks beneath the thicker wool, bandaids for the inevitable
blisters. sleepless in the tent because every raindrop was a bear, the bear
we had hidden our food from, trail mix & potato chips wrapped & hung
high in a tree. i had left my doc martens behind along with most of my CDs. did i really see the trail, the way the sky hinged into cloudmist? did i know

October 23, 2025 at 5:34 PM

Jill Kitchen

@jillkitchen.bsky.social

My poem "when the world did not feel like a crushing weight" is best viewed on a phone flipped sideways or on a computer browser. www.asteralesjournal.com/1-4-kitchen-...

October 21, 2025 at 1:04 PM

Jill Kitchen

@jillkitchen.bsky.social

Look what arrived yesterday! Can't wait to dive in to @djvorreyer.bsky.social's beautiful book!

Photo of the book Unrivered by Donna Vorreyer on blue fabric

October 16, 2025 at 3:48 PM

Jill Kitchen

@jillkitchen.bsky.social

Beautiful mail just in from Ireland. Thank you @poetryireland.bsky.social!

Image of a copy of Poetry Ireland Review issue 146 Edited by Stephen Sexton with a jar full of bright colored flowers.

October 6, 2025 at 4:24 PM

Jill Kitchen

@jillkitchen.bsky.social

Baby poet in the desert.

A woman with sunglasses and a denim jacket standing in front of a Joshua Tree and California desert landscape.

October 5, 2025 at 3:00 PM

Jill Kitchen

@jillkitchen.bsky.social

Shadow poem, DC morning light falling across a closet door.

Shadows of morning light fanning out across a door

October 3, 2025 at 5:54 PM

Jill Kitchen

@jillkitchen.bsky.social

Of course, there was also this:

Young woman dressed as Trinity from the Matrix with sunglasses, chin-length hair and vinyl coat.

September 30, 2025 at 1:59 PM

Jill Kitchen

@jillkitchen.bsky.social

Post a you from a different era

Smiling woman with long hair looking off to the side next to an image of a skeleton with fangs that reads ASYLUM

September 30, 2025 at 1:58 PM

Jill Kitchen

@jillkitchen.bsky.social

So sorry to hear of the loss of the great Claudia Cardinale. Pictured here in Sergio Leone's wonderful epic Once Upon a Time in the West, a film that wove through my childhood and adolescence. I liked to pretend I was named after her character, Jill.