HALSEY Literary Reader

And the hellebore!

Just the most awkwardly aggressive and intrusive encounter I've had since the last time I was in public with a small child.

My son running in circles at the flower farm, giggling, taking in the sunshine, happiest he's been this week.

Older white woman scolds me for not bringing him toys, "not even a ball!"

As if it's my fault, not only that I've brought a child to a public place but also that he's so happy.

Strategy over earnestness - this is the truth

This makes sense to me. Unfortunately

When politicians don't honor their promises, our work is to make them. To do that, we have to build enough power to make them. I understand why people get disappointed but this is unfortunately how things work in politics.

I didn't go this year. I think I need to find them at AWP in Chicago

Maine - If you don't want your next Senator to possibly be a Nazi, then I would encourage you to follow and support @andrealaflamme.bsky.social .Please give this a boost folks!

It's OK to admit that you were wrong.

😂🤣

The Epstein Saga Is Not a Game. It’s About Protecting Women. Donna Ladd reflects on her own story amid the still-unfolding Jeffrey Epstein saga of rape, retribution and the protection of sexual predators.

But, people, sexual predators inhabit and hide in both political parties. We support sexual abuse when we give “our guy” a pass. Stop it. Now. www.mississippifreepress.org/democracy-th...

So yeah I really liked @donnerkay.bsky.social piece

A white woman NEEDED to write that piece

And it’ should be embarrassing that it’s so rare at this moment

As opposed to pop girly pieces/ and meditations on “bad men” on racist substacks

But that avoidance is why MAGA is winning

Re-upping my Epstein essay from August as new information emerges today.

Caution: disturbing descriptions of my and others’ sexual assaults.

Release all the damn files. This is the ultimate test of this nation’s useless partisanship.

Resisting Empire Study Guide A new study guide for the book Resisting Empire is shared here for free download.

One of our more popular titles now has a study guide!

Off to War, Daughter: Poems by Trapper Markelz — Rockwood Press Though rooted in a father’s experience raising his daughters, these poems reach far beyond parenthood itself, speaking to the joy and wonder that naturally accompany loving others deeply.

—Anne Marie Wells, founder of The Joy of Poeting, author of Survived By: A Memoir in Verse + Other Poems

www.rockwoodpress.com/bookstore/p/...

Though rooted in a father’s experience raising his daughters, these poems reach far beyond parenthood itself, speaking to the joy and wonder that naturally accompany loving others deeply.

Off to War, Daughter: Poems by Trapper Markelz — Rockwood Press Though rooted in a father’s experience raising his daughters, these poems reach far beyond parenthood itself, speaking to the joy and wonder that naturally accompany loving others deeply.

In Off to War, Daughter, readers will accompany Trapper Markelz as he looks back on the tenderness of early parenthood while reckoning with the uncertain world his children will someday inherit.

Write about a cause close to your heart and why it is so important to you #writers #writingprompt

Erasing Time and Space: Poems by K. McCreary — Rockwood Press Time and space are erased by the power of deep feelings shared by two who remember and who delight in making new memories

I don’t know why we are here on the edge of mortality,

and I hope when we leave these bodies

we find each other

and live in a place of poetry and music

with a bit of laughter and humor

and a few other things.

—BDW

The soul
that is one
with you.

"When I Grow Up" by Norbert Krapf, Spirit Sister Dance (Fernwood, 2022)

from "When I Grow Up" by Norbert Krapf

I want to be
the words that
speak your language,

the translator
who ferries you
over from spirit

to flesh but allows
you to remain
in the original.

I want to speak
your language
of spirit.

Be the voice
that sings your
gospel tune.

What advice would you give your 20-something self? #writers #writingprompt

the dimmer switch of Heaven would be turning
down to lavender rose and deeper rose, and then
the voices of the mothers streaming in
through the darkening air
to come home, come home.

"Summer Childhood" by Andrea Potos, Her Joy Becomes (Fernwood, 2022)

from "Summer, Childhood" by Andrea Potos

Hours and hours of taffy pulled and stretched
to the furthest reaches of neighborhood lawns, universe
of grasses cool and tickling, cushions
for our bodies somersaulting and cartwheeling, tagging
you’re it, while somewhere above us

What is one thing no one knows about you? #writers #writingprompt

And to you, breathed into being out of eternity:
feel how Second Wind fits itself to your bones.

"Second Wind" by Franchot Ballinger, Crossings (Fernwood, 2022)

and Wind sustains him.
Wind comes to the lonely woman at her window,
she who lets Wind in at her breasts,
she who feels like an immaculate mother.

(delirium of light).
And, too, it curls itself up, tumbling through passes
where birds muscle their wings against its thrust.
For what, after all,
is smooth sailing that takes you nowhere?

Wind comes to the man in his bed,
defeated but listening, worn away but lifted
suddenly as if he were prayer,

Wind dances down in little dust devils,
awkward name for the raising up of earth.
It scrapes a door on a settling sill;
the door will always open.
Regardless,
it wears a film of dust from rock and us,
sings through wires and grass
(such a hymn)
and sets the aspen quaking in the moon

until the iterations became pillars holding a temple roof,
until we lost the breath of life,
until there was only the sound of still water,
Which is nothing.

And then new breath.
Now Wind is always—
like prairie wind.
Wind beats a branch against the dark;
you can hear the light seeping through.