Liz DeGregorio
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lizdegregorio.bsky.social
Liz DeGregorio
@lizdegregorio.bsky.social
1.8K followers 4K following 260 posts
Poet, writer and editor with work in Electric Lit, Catapult, The Rumpus, Lucky Jefferson, Dread Central, BUST, Morbidly Beautiful, Ghouls Magazine, OyeDrum Magazine, SCARS Magazine... https://linktr.ee/lizdegregorio 🌈 💛
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lizdegregorio.bsky.social
One of my favorite TOXIC LOVE poems was published this autumn by Last Girls Club 🍁 😢 💔

Read it and more of their latest issue: www.lastgirlsclub.com/pdfcopy/p/fa... #poetry #lovepoem #brokenheartpoem
“Household Hazards” by Liz DeGregorio You take my breath away – but not like that – like it’s 3:31 in the morning, I sit up, every light in my house on & my guts inflamed. like I grip the edge of my chest of drawers, can barely stand up & still can’t prevent myself from scrolling to DO NOT ANSWER, thumb hovering. like I’m laying flat on my back & someone is pressing their heeled boot into my lungs, cracking my lower ribs one by one, pushing, pushing. like I can’t remember anything about the last movie I saw, but I remember you in every character. like I know better than to answer the knock at my door – But I do, I always do.
October 26, 2025 at 8:19 PM
lizdegregorio.bsky.social
I ❤️ Brooklyn Horror Film Festival 🐀
A person-sized giant rat sculpture, with the rat holding a beer in his paw.
October 18, 2025 at 2:30 AM
lizdegregorio.bsky.social
“Shelby Oaks” is the perfect scary movie - lots of jump scares, a great lead who brings you into her terror and trauma, and beautiful and eerie cinematography. (I never thought I’d be so taken with a shot of warm breath in flashlight.) See it ASAP! #horror #shelbyoaks @neon-rated.bsky.social
A movie screen showing a woman hidden by light, with the text “There’s something evil in Shelby Oaks.” A moderator and writer/director Chris Stuckmann sit in front of the screen during a Q&A.
October 16, 2025 at 1:24 AM
lizdegregorio.bsky.social
A long train ride is the perfect place for a reread of one of most well-loved books. If you’ve ever felt lovelorn, been confused, felt queer loneliness, lived in a gentrifying city, been depressed, been a waitress, wanted to become a better person… read Ali Liebegott’s “The IHOP Papers.” 💜 🥞 📕
[Black book cover of “The IHOP Papers,” title written in white text. Cover features a person with tattoos and wrist accessories holding onto a coffee cup]
September 20, 2025 at 6:01 PM
lizdegregorio.bsky.social
This book 🥺 The desperate yearning (especially queer yearning) in teen years is done so well here - it really brought me back to that (painful!) time. I did not see the ending coming, but also felt it was the only ending this story could have. Read Mac Crane’s #ASharpEndlessNeed
🏀 🌈 💔
Cover of Mac Crane’s “A Sharp and Endless Need,” featuring two teen girls lying down together in the sunlight.
September 1, 2025 at 6:31 PM
lizdegregorio.bsky.social
Read my review for "The Woods," a great (and heartbreaking - my fave combo) horror film by Sarah Lyons @citymystic.bsky.social - out now for SCARS Magazine 🖤

www.magcloud.com/browse/issue...
Movie poster for the Sarah Lyons horror movie "The Woods," featuring a person screaming in the shadows, with blood-read pine trees in front of their face.
August 26, 2025 at 11:58 PM
lizdegregorio.bsky.social
I thought I was prepared for Sophie White’s “Where I End.” I WAS NOT PREPARED. This book chilled me to my bones - loved it. 😱 🤩 #horror #horrorlit #scarybooks
Cover of Sophie White’s horror novel “Where I End,” featuring a fraying white rope on a dark gray background.
August 3, 2025 at 10:30 PM
lizdegregorio.bsky.social
I did NOT expect “The Body Keeps the Score” and C.S. Lewis’s writing on grief to make their way into the new #IKnowWhatYouDidLastSummer, but I was STRANGELY THRILLED.
Poster art for the “I Know What You Did Last Summer” remake. Featuring seven scared characters on a smoky gray background, with a killer fisherman looming over them.
July 24, 2025 at 3:02 AM
lizdegregorio.bsky.social
Am I am the only one who secretly stole their parents’ Erica Jong books as a kid AND HAD MY MIND BLOWN? How to Save Your Own Life isn’t perfect - some parts are very much outdated - but her writing is still so sharp, clever and full of beautifully, aching yearning. 🩷
July 21, 2025 at 1:58 AM
lizdegregorio.bsky.social
I absolutely loved “Shutter” by Ramona Emerson (@reelindian.bsky.social) and am SO excited to read the sequel. Beautifully written with characters I wanted to keep following, plus the perfect amount of suspense and eeriness, and Diné/Navajo culture underpinning it all. Read this book! 🤩
Cover of Ramona Emerson’s novel “Shutter,” featuring a camera capturing a woman walking down a dirt path in sepia tones.
July 3, 2025 at 12:17 AM
lizdegregorio.bsky.social
I’ve had the good fortune to read a lots of great books this year, but this one takes the cake (the snake?)… Silje O. Ulstein‘s “Reptile Memoirs” was such a twisted/twisty Nordic noir, featuring bisexual characters, a freaky snake obsession, and deeply insightful and gorgeous writing! 📕 🐍 😱
Cover of Silje O. Ulstein‘s “Reptile Memoirs,” featuring an upside-down picture of a freckled woman smoking
June 18, 2025 at 11:02 PM
lizdegregorio.bsky.social
One of my faaaavorite poems (Jack Hirschman’s “Path”) was included at a pivotal moment in the very sweet movie “Jane Austen Wrecked My Life.” (Strangely, I discovered this poem in another movie: the film adaptation of Janet Fitch’s beautiful novel “Paint It Black.”) 🖤
“Path” by Jack Hirschman Go to your broken heart. If you think you don’t have one, get one. To get one, be sincere. Learn sincerity of intent by letting life enter because you’re helpless, really, to do otherwise. Even as you try escaping, let it take you and tear you open like a letter sent like a sentence inside you’ve waited for all your life though you’ve committed nothing. Let it send you up. Let it break you, heart. Broken-heartedness is the beginning of all real reception. The ear of humility hears beyond the gates. See the gates opening. Feel your hands going akimbo on your hips, your mouth opening like a womb giving birth to your voice for the first time. Go singing whirling into the glory of being ecstatically simple. Write the poem.
May 31, 2025 at 3:13 AM
lizdegregorio.bsky.social
I’ve been on a nonfiction kick lately, but this novel broke through! So, so many things I love in here: a bisexual narrator, a campus setting, the feelings wheel, truly magnificent sex scenes and beautiful, honest writing. Highly recommend “But How Are You, Really” by @brosandprose.bsky.social 🩷💜💙
Ella Dawson’s book “But How Are You, Really” featuring an illustrated cover with a person wearing a blue collared shirt with a nametag and a bisexual pride pin.
May 29, 2025 at 12:56 AM
lizdegregorio.bsky.social
My mind was happily blown by the amazing panels of writers + editors at #OpenSecretsLive. I wanted to buy EVERYONE’S book - I got Minda Honey’s “The Heartbreak Years” + Kari Ferrell’s “You’ll Never Believe Me” 🤩 Rachel Kramer Bussel created a lovely, impactful event! @opensecretsmag.bsky.social
Beige tote bag with black and red lettering that says “Open Secrets Magazine.” Cover of Kari Ferrell’s memoir “You’ll Never Believe Me, featuring a drawing of a woman with short black hair and pink sunglasses, doing a “quiet” motion with her finger in front of her mouth; cover of Minda Honey’s “The Heartbreak Years” featuring yellow and white text, with blue, pink and green background.
May 5, 2025 at 11:02 PM
lizdegregorio.bsky.social
Frederick Seidel’s “People Walk Around”
People walk around With people in their head. What some lovely person did. What some lovely person said. Heartthrob in the head. I float to 86th Street with you in my heart. I’m a pigeon cooing to a crumb of bread, Except I’m kind of floating instead— And it’s not a crumb but a whole loaf of bread. I feel I’m in an ambulance and you’re about to save me With a Kit Kat And a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. I’m in an ambulance With my teeth comically chattering. And when I get inside your shop I have to stand in line and you’re behind a counter That sells the new and does repairs. And everybody stares. I stand there for years. I can remember when I first walked in the store, When aeons ago I first opened the door To feathered dinosaurs turning into birdsong, And you began to sing along, The first step to being human, But the planet continued to go wrong.
May 4, 2025 at 5:44 PM
lizdegregorio.bsky.social
If you’re a body horror fan, WATCHING “THE UGLY STEPSISTER” IS A NECESSITY. It’s grotesque and gorgeous (sometimes both at once), and I’ve never been in a screening with a more engaged audience. We gasped, we laughed, we moaned in disgust! Emilie Blichfeldt is an incredible filmmaker. 🤩
Young white woman with brown hair and bright blue eyes, wearing a gold contraption (held together with pink ribbon) over her nose. In front of her face is a foot laced into a delicate ballet pink shoe.
April 8, 2025 at 1:50 PM
lizdegregorio.bsky.social
For any other LOIS DUNCAN fans, there is a movie version of “Summer of Fear” streaming on Tubi FOR FREE. Thank you and YOU’RE WELCOME 🤩
The book cover for Lois Duncan’s YA novel “Summer of Fear,” featuring a redheaded teenage girl looking in her mirror, startled to see a similar but more evil version of herself in the reflection.
March 29, 2025 at 2:15 AM
lizdegregorio.bsky.social
“Real terror will always find its way through the cracks.” Get the latest issue of Scars Magazine and read my review of the chilling horror film “Children of the Pines.” 🫣 🖤

www.magcloud.com/browse/issue...
Magazine cover featuring a disturbing disintegrating face. Page from Scars Magazine, featuring shadowy images of character from the film “Children of the Pines,” with text throughout.
March 10, 2025 at 7:37 PM
lizdegregorio.bsky.social
I ❤️ NY
A toy of Ernie from “Sesame Street” playing a guitar, attached to the handlebars of a bicycle, with a concrete building in the background.
March 9, 2025 at 8:53 PM
lizdegregorio.bsky.social
“I’m not going to let all this f**king soot taint that terrific blue.” My all-time favorite poem is Jim Carroll’s “Love Rockets” 🖤
Love Rockets Wet leaves along the threshold of the mid-day and I’m off to rescue the sky from its assassins jogging and screaming and launching my clean mortars into the March obscene air…the enemy. I suppose I’d rather be sitting in Samoa now sipping a quart of Orange Julius and being fanned by Joey Heatherton in black tights and white glossy lipstick. but I’m not. I’m here. and I have something to say, as well as something to take care of. And that something is probably more important than you realize. I like the sky (don’t you) its warmth, its friendliness, I’m not going to let all this fucking soot taint that terrific blue. battle the filthy airs with your mortars and your prayers. you’ll soon be overcome with lovely sensations of the sky. you’ll be thinking of me as this happens.
March 1, 2025 at 7:22 PM
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“Love Poem” by Megan Fernandes 🌊
“Love Poem” by Megan Fernandes Sometimes, I wonder if I would know a beautiful thing if I saw it. So often, I was miserable when I was young, even in California with the ocean close and fat seals munching flatfish, tonguing urchins in their molars, sunning themselves pink by the sandy primrose. I ignored the whistle of the rock-faced mountain and her chorus of dry hills, walked past the blazing stars and lemons in dramatic ripe. I was so sad out west. The truth is I am most exquisite on the east coast, meaning I am in rhythm. I do not track the world by beauty but joy. That first bite into the soft carrot of tagine stew while a storm wailed over the East River. The misfit raccoon bouncing on trash bins in Central Park after we saw a Japanese play. We almost crashed a wedding that night at the Boathouse but lost our nerve. We were not dressed for the caper, but even this felt like rogue joy. Yes. It was joy, wasn’t it? Even if it was ugly, it was joy.
February 25, 2025 at 5:29 PM
lizdegregorio.bsky.social
Iced Mexican latte and Ana Castillo poetry… a perfect afternoon in ABQ ❤️
A picture of Ana Castillo’s poetry collection “I Ask the Impossible” - sepia-toned author photo (she’s smiling with her hair down) on the cover. Am I as Mexican later with a red straw and a blue booth in the background.
February 24, 2025 at 9:54 PM
lizdegregorio.bsky.social
The poem down the hall at my haunted hotel 💙
For Once, Then, Something BY ROBERT FROST Others taunt me with having knelt at well-curbs Always wrong to the light, so never seeing Deeper down in the well than where the water Gives me back in a shining surface picture Me myself in the summer heaven godlike Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs. Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb, I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture, Through the picture, a something white, uncertain, Something more of the depths—and then I lost it. Water came to rebuke the too clear water. One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom, Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness? Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something.
February 24, 2025 at 5:45 PM
lizdegregorio.bsky.social
SAY HIS NAME: SAM NORDQUIST 💔
Picture of Sam Norquist wearing a white teeshirt, a chain necklace and a baseball cap in front of a lake and rocks.
February 16, 2025 at 9:08 PM
lizdegregorio.bsky.social
One of my favorites from Alex Dimitrov’s “Love and Other Poems” 🖤🩶🤍
River Phoenix In my own private Idaho I’m in bed with River Phoenix chain-smoking and talking about the afterlife. He’s about to give up being famous, I’m about to make him one more drink. When I die, he says, looking at the way I look at him, it’ll be a glorious day. It’ll probably be a waterfall. And because there’s so much water in living, I help take his shirt off right here on the earth. Me and him. You and you. Reading this to see if I’m acting, if I’m really myself, if I’m good at pretending. Why would we be here then, in bed together, asking each other what the way back is in case we happen to change our minds.
February 10, 2025 at 11:10 PM