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Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪

@neonpajamas.bsky.social

tiny poems & strange movies // 🚫🤖 // EIC at @pizamapress.bsky.social // chapbook out now with @gasherpress.bsky.social // writing prompt every Sunday via Substack (neonpajamas)

3459 Posts2082 Follower 935 Folgt

Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪@neonpajamas.bsky.social · 7h ago

introducing myself as the inventor of the sunroof shirt

Piżama Press @pizamapress.bsky.social · 8h ago

happy November to all who celebrate

Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪@neonpajamas.bsky.social · last wk.

a four line poem of mine, inspired by the writing of Patrick Lawler

NO ONE LIVES IN THE HEALER'S DREAMS
after Patrick Lawler

I died on your roof. A well

formed down my throat.

You died in my cloud. A river

disappeared in your ear.

Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪@neonpajamas.bsky.social · last wk.

F. Keith Wahle

HOUSE
for Mark Strand

I live in a house with no doors.
Getting in is difficult, but
getting out is even harder.

As I try to reach the windows
they chuckle in despair,
fifteen feet from the floor.
There is no furniture to climb.

Neighbors support me with
sandwiches wrapped in paper.
They throw them in each day.
I throw out poems to be mailed.

I guess this is one way to live
in a world encumbered by
the annoyances of perfection,
the inconveniences of death.

Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪@neonpajamas.bsky.social · 4d ago

the first prose poem in my new book, Uncle Time

At the Dinner Table

My mother sculpts a falcon from aluminum foil. My father forms a castle made of knives. I close my eyes and try to break free from the ropes I myself have tied. My sister sits beneath her seat. My mother's laughter licks the languor. Her aluminum foil falcon is finished. We wait for it to talk.

Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪@neonpajamas.bsky.social · 2d ago

holy shit this Philip Schaefer poem

I Want to Tell You

I have swallowed swords.
That I have swung and balanced
rings of fire around my neck, my waist,
like a lover. How my hips have been
bit into, tiger-toothed, pinched concentric
cuts of moon. Here is my body, pure gasoline.
Once, at Halloween, I wore a black plastic
pumpkin over my head—carved smile
inverted and upside down—and danced
like murder with candy falling from my ears.
Friends fevered around my spirit,
which is a bearded woman on stilts.
The truth is the truth most of the time.
Open its jaws and crawl in.

Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪@neonpajamas.bsky.social · 16h ago

Rick Bursky

The Knowing

At night the elephants thump their foreheads
against the wall. A slow steady thud.
They could bring down the house.
Instead, they shake the dust from books,
cups from the cupboard and me from my sleep.
I’ve never actually seen them, never actually
leave my bed once the pounding begins.
Not fear that keeps me in place, it’s not knowing
what to do that keeps me in my dark room.

In the morning I find deep their footprints.
Elephants, yes, elephants — footprints
in a line like people at a carnival
waiting to throw baseballs at milk bottles.

The man sitting at the counter in the diner is reading
the newspaper as he sips coffee and puffs a cigarette.
Without taking his eyes from the paper,
he singes the arm of the man beside him
with the cigarette’s burning cherry.
I didn’t see the damage but knew
it was shaped like a crow
circling a hospital at dusk, the last
of the sun’s blood seeping from the horizon.

Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪@neonpajamas.bsky.social · 15h ago

a tiny poem about a tiny man, from my manuscript of 88 miniature fables for #smallpoemsunday / @tomsnarsky.bsky.social

The Tiniest Man

To him, a toothpick was a telephone pole.
A cup of coffee was a water tower.
So often he swam in the sink and if ever
he struggled or started to drown, always
the tall man revived him with a flick.

Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪@neonpajamas.bsky.social · 13h ago

love love LOVE running a press

Piżama Press@pizamapress.bsky.social · 13h ago

Just sent 19 pages of notes (alongside an updated manuscript) to one of our 2027 authors It's all happening! I love this press. More info soon

Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪@neonpajamas.bsky.social · 15h ago

I submitted a chapbook for a contest back in August & just found out it's a finalist for consideration! Fingers crossed

Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪@neonpajamas.bsky.social · 15h ago

a tiny poem about a tiny man, from my manuscript of 88 miniature fables for #smallpoemsunday / @tomsnarsky.bsky.social

Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪@neonpajamas.bsky.social · 16h ago

Rick Bursky

Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪@neonpajamas.bsky.social · 18h ago

a stunning narrative poem by Rick Bursky as part of my ongoing poem + prompt series neonpajamas.substack.com/p/096-poem-p...

Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪@neonpajamas.bsky.social · 2d ago

goal in life is to get to where I own like a dozen really cool coats

Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪@neonpajamas.bsky.social · 2d ago

nailed it 😂

Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪@neonpajamas.bsky.social · 2d ago

holy shit this Philip Schaefer poem

Elena Zhang @ezhang77.bsky.social · 3d ago

Thrilled to have a new prose poem, “The Devil’s Lantern,” in the latest issue of @trampset.bsky.social www.trampset.org/post/the-dev...

In this movie, God falls in love with me. Our meet-cute is at the grocery store. I bump into Him and drop a carton of eggs. From the splattered yolk, God creates a dozen yellow-throated warblers.
They aren't exactly what I wanted, but He is so eager to please me that I take them home with me. God calls me the next day, even though I had not given Him my number, did not even have a phone. We go out to see a movie. His presence looms so large that the audience dissolves into dust. We are alone, and that is how I like it. In the movie, God gives birth to a girl. She looks just like my grandmother, except she has no eyes. We speak our vows. I cry. God shushes the baby.
Tells me not to be afraid. This is the happy ending. That night, I go home and find an empty cage. Yellow feathers on my tongue.

Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪@neonpajamas.bsky.social · 2d ago

just submitted a 1,400 word essay, something I’ve never done before

Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪@neonpajamas.bsky.social · 3d ago

Douglas Rothschild

A TRACT

A black plastic bag,
abt the size & apparent
bulk of a rat, skittered
across the street.

A car drove down
upon the bag, crushing
it to the ground.

Just like a rat, the bag
rose again & continued
across the street.

Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪@neonpajamas.bsky.social · 3d ago

An Duplan

Are you tired. Yes, everyday. You can write and write and still you are indefatigable. Deep well of a woman, step on my throat and tell me right, straight and true. My father the woman dances in a crowd. Is this fruitless. Yes, everyday. Continue on no matter what–because you are that body. That is a mistake. You are that and that, that is a body. So that you and the body are in a room together. And so, a kind of ecstatic union may emerge. We talked about that today, Dr. Addleson and me. Doctor doctor father daddy come to meet your maker! She put her head in the oven! She put her head in the oven! How long can you go on screaming like that.

Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪@neonpajamas.bsky.social · 3d ago

Uncle Time has been re-stocked so I decided to read a poem from the book to celebrate www.gasherpress.com/product-page...

Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪@neonpajamas.bsky.social · 3d ago

Thea Matthews @citylightsbooks.bsky.social

REVOLUTION IS THE HOPE OF THE HOPELESS

Says a piece of painted plywood in white on a wall
of an old empty family rec spot on Turk and Filmore,
the one time Black Harlem of the West, where jazz
once echoed on swings and blues once cooed on rooftops,
where slick shoes and permed hair charted their steps
to freedom. Boys would later skip school, laugh bullets,
clock paper, and girls would do their braids by passenger
side mirrors, together, jump rope in front of a police station,
paint the sidewalk black, holler with blunts on the corner
of what is now the Western Addition, Alamo Square,
where crack robs a home, and tourist bags are stolen,
where transplants eclipse black families. With each step,
my hands want to chip off the wall until I see light
glowing in the woodgrain. Revolution begins at rock bottom.

Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪@neonpajamas.bsky.social · 3d ago

when can I finally reveal this AWP offsite I'm cookin'?? my god

Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪@neonpajamas.bsky.social · 3d ago

great book

Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪@neonpajamas.bsky.social · 4d ago

Philip Schaefer @barrowstreetpress.bsky.social

Dear Satan

An octopus can taste with its eyelids when not busy transforming
its body at the very speed of thought. How beautiful
the rattle becomes when detached from the snake. A roll
of nickels, a single mariachi. I want to do the math that takes
two bad habits and fuses them into a miracle. A seahorse
floating in space, my mother on her deathbed, coughing out
gardens. There always was a tarantula sleeping in her lungs.
Tell me the story buried deep inside the Shenandoah Valley.
Pivot a knife between the strings of my flattened hand.
In the middle of every decay lies a chorus of goldenrod notes
hibernating in a baby grand piano. Extend a finger, even two,
and tell me you don't feel ivory skimming your skin like a canoe.
When I die, I want you to know I found you calm and exquisite.

Gary Barwin @garybarwin.bsky.social · 3d ago

For @neonpajamas.bsky.social

Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪@neonpajamas.bsky.social · 4d ago

this poem originally appeared (in a much different version) as part of a triptych via @tupelopress.bsky.social www.tupeloquarterly.com/poetry/benja...

Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪@neonpajamas.bsky.social · 4d ago

the first prose poem in my new book, Uncle Time

Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪@neonpajamas.bsky.social · 4d ago

six virtual work meetings today, with a Poetry Foundation rejection smack-dab in the middle ❤️‍🔥

Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪@neonpajamas.bsky.social · 4d ago

the first prose poem in my new book, Uncle Time

Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪@neonpajamas.bsky.social · 4d ago

Philip Schaefer @barrowstreetpress.bsky.social

Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪@neonpajamas.bsky.social · 4d ago

📚📚📚