Sam Rasnake
@samrasnake.bsky.social
1.6K followers 1.1K following 4K posts
Scribbler of words... Fallen Leaves (Ballerini Book Press, forthcoming), Like a Thread to Follow (Cyberwit), Cinéma Vérité (A-Minor Press), World within the World (Cyberwit), Inside a Broken Clock (Finishing Line Press).
Posts Media Videos Starter Packs
Pinned
samrasnake.bsky.social
I'm pleased to have a new poem at @harpyhybrid.bsky.social - "All That Disappears"
"Rivers, sunsets, mountains, highways find their end –"

Special thanks to the editors.
www.harpyhybridreview.org/hybrid_works...
All That Disappears – Harpy Hybrid Review
www.harpyhybridreview.org
samrasnake.bsky.social
A History of Violence / David Cronenberg, dir., 2005

An incredible ending.

📽️🎬
A History of Violence / David Cronenberg, dir., 2005

An incredible ending.
samrasnake.bsky.social
The distant mountains
are reflected in the eye
of the dragonfly

Kobayashi Issa
#poetry #writer
[Tr. Sam Hamill; painting of Iss by Yuki Bishu]
The distant mountains
are reflected in the eye
of the dragonfly

Kobayashi Issa

[Tr. Sam Hamill; painting of Iss by Yuki Bishu]
Reposted by Sam Rasnake
racheldeering.bsky.social
Autumn Morning, Adolf Kaufmann, 1918.
Autumn woodland scene, painting.
Reposted by Sam Rasnake
lisasass.bsky.social
I need a coffee machine on my nightstand.
☕️
Lacking elves or adorable woodland creatures to grind beans—didn’t Dorothy Parker once write about an attentive companion and unofficial Scrabble champ who swore the day wouldn’t dawn until the heroine was caffeinated…?
That could work! #needcoffee
Pop-art image of a woman half-awake in bed, eyes closed. Speech bubble:  “I need a cup of coffee…”
Reposted by Sam Rasnake
Reposted by Sam Rasnake
danbillyc.bsky.social
"If you ask me about love, I’ll show you late winter light on the farmland—some liminal thing."

I really love this extraordinary piece by @dinalrelles.bsky.social in @matchbooklitmag.bsky.social 💙💙💙
dinalrelles.bsky.social
it’s been a minute since i’ve published anything, so i’m especially grateful that @matchbooklitmag.bsky.social gave this little musing on love + leavings a home.

you can read the full piece here: matchbooklitmag.com/mb/relles/departures
Departures
by Dina L. Relles
    handed you the promised coffee with an apology: no sugar, no milk, I’m sorry.
 
I don’t need those things, you said, and I fell in impossible love with you all over again.
 
I’d come from my room carrying everything I wanted to happen that didn’t. Now the lobby was too bright and smelled like grapefruits and your face was weary in a way that felt intimate.
 
You spoke quietly to me in the taxi, then held me twice at the terminal, which I took to mean you loved me too, despite.
Reposted by Sam Rasnake
upfromsumdirt.bsky.social
Sudanese models Monica Majak (left) and Ajak Noi Dwol (slightly out of frame on the right) shot by Hart Leshikma for SSAW Magazine November 2022

if i recall, Monica was recently the youngest Sudanese woman to climb to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro.
photo of a dark-skinned woman dressed in a black sweater against a white wall. her hair is braided straight back into cornrows that band together into a delicate bun. photo of Monica (in the back) and Ajak (forefront, with her head bowed down obscuring her face). both women are dressed in similar black sweaters.
Reposted by Sam Rasnake
rfredekenter.bsky.social
Ty Lynne Lampe for her pre-writing on IN THE BLUEPRINT OF HER IRIS, collaborative-hybrid work by myself (art) & Vikki C. @vikkicwrites.bsky.social (poetry).
"an intricate piece of lace tatted from a single thread" - LJLampe.
Available @icefloepress.bsky.social
#books #collaboration #vispo @poetry
vikkicwrites.bsky.social
"From start to finish, In the Blueprint of Her Iris thrilled me with the mystery and electricity of its text-image pairings.."

Grateful to @ljensenlampe.bsky.social for her praise of In the Blueprint of Her Iris. 

Available from @icefloepress.bsky.social. Link below🔥

@rfredekenter.bsky.social
“From start to finish, In the Blueprint of Her Iris thrilled me with the mystery and electricity of its text-image pairings. This collaboration by Vikki C. (words) and Robert Frede Kenter (images) reminds me of an intricate piece of lace tatted from a single thread—necessarily connected, the collection loops and swirls. Individually and as a whole, the pairings captivate with repeating words, colors, textures, and themes. Each time I reached the end, I started over, looking for more connections and sonic play. I read Vikki’s words first silently then aloud, I basked in Robert’s vivid visuals. I felt upended in the best way, a “galaxy mouthing a name / it has not learnt to pronounce.” In the Blueprint of Her Iris won’t let me go.”
 
—Lynne Jensen Lampe, author of Talk Smack to a Hurricane
Reposted by Sam Rasnake
francesmeh.reviews
rereading a novel from the 50s set in the 30s and i know this passage did not hit as hard when i first read it in the 90s as it does now
Photo of a passage from "The Watch That Ends the Night"

Jerome stopped and stared at me with incandescent eyes.

"Try and understand this-the fascists have brought back tor-ture, and torture calls for martyrs. And what else is fascism but the logical product of the capitalist system?"

"What do you mean—torture calls for martyrs?"

"Simply this. Unless a man is able to stand up and look the torturer in the eye and say, 'I'm not afraid,' torture becomes the way of the world. It's as simple as that."

"Is it really as simple as that?"

"No." He shook his head impatiently. "No, because underneath it all is the plain economic exploitation of a rotten world.
The communists are the only people who understand that. How can you pretend they're not one hundred percent right when they say that at a time like this the life of a single individual isn't worth a snap of the fingers? Wasn't Debs right when he said that so long as there was a soul in prison he wasn't free?

What does a single marriage count in a balance like that? It isn't easy being me. I know what all this means. [Highlighted sentence:] This evil inside the human animal-the fascists are charming it out like a cobra out of its hole and the capitalists let them do it because they think it's good for business. You think I'm abandoning Sally by leaving for Spain. I tell you, if I don't leave for Spain then I really do abandon her to a future of fascism and concentration camps."
Reposted by Sam Rasnake
Reposted by Sam Rasnake
Reposted by Sam Rasnake
Reposted by Sam Rasnake
Reposted by Sam Rasnake
dinalrelles.bsky.social
“…the beauty of things that are ending.” — Annie Ernaux, Getting Lost
He didn’t say he would call. (In spite of myself, I think of my mother, the last time I saw her, in April ‘86. I said, “See you Sunday,” and she did not reply.) However, he did ask me if I was going to Salon due livre, meaning that we wouldn’t see each other before then.

And yet, and yet, what tenderness, the last time. But that’s just it: the last planned meetings have the beauty of things that are ending.

What if I were never to see him again, as with Claude G in the past? That is like death. I fear the worst (he’s leaving France, ditching me, etc.)
Reposted by Sam Rasnake
splitlipthemag.bsky.social
"I joke that I could die here, in my classroom, and the university would ask who I was and how I got there."

Check out contributor Danielle Shorr's new piece in @electricliterature.com: buff.ly/o015smo
Reposted by Sam Rasnake
Reposted by Sam Rasnake
eunoiareview.bsky.social
Not Chosen

Gray coat gathers flakes of snow that dissolve to clear moisture. For now she does not know a destination. Her steps cross a once known location, a campus with a large church where she prayed. She passes emptiness now that students are away. This is how she can accept the place. Softly…
Not Chosen
Gray coat gathers flakes of snow that dissolve to clear moisture. For now she does not know a destination. Her steps cross a once known location, a campus with a large church where she prayed. She passes emptiness now that students are away. This is how she can accept the place. Softly silent. Her face takes in the cold. Who was she then?
eunoiareview.wordpress.com
Reposted by Sam Rasnake
riverriverbooks.bsky.social
Bookshop has free shipping today! Find River River Book titles there 🌊 🌊 📚 #poetry #booksky
Our Poetry Catalog
Checkout out this list on Bookshop
bookshop.org
Reposted by Sam Rasnake
hanvanderhart.bsky.social
One must imagine Sisyphus unhappily foiled by large spiderweb decoration, flummoxed by seasonal domesticity, bereft by frugality of reducing, reusing, and recycling, and longing for his great, big, stone. 🕸️
Reposted by Sam Rasnake
chowleen.bsky.social
I, however,
Have such meagre power,

Clutching at a
Moment,

While you control
An hour.

But your hour is
A stone.

My moment is
A flower.

-Langston Hughes, "Poet to Bigot"
#everynightapoem As ever.
I have done so little
For you.
And you have do little 
For me.
That we have good reason
Never to agree.

I, however,
Have such meagre power,
Clutching at a 
Moment,
While you control
An hour.
But your hour is
A stone.
My moment is
A flower. 
-Langston Hughes, "Poet to Bigot"
Reposted by Sam Rasnake
stonecirclereview.bsky.social
All transition is a dying into life. We break through like rays in order to shine. The arrow flies, the bow shatters.

-– Hans Jürgen von der Wense