Thousands of people are face-timing their personal grocery trips to express shock.
Jeffrey Hecker
@heckheck03.bsky.social
Poet, Teen Writers Fellowship Poetry Teacher (The Muse Writers Center), Poetry Staff Reader for Quarterly West
Feels like a dam is going to burst soon and the beaver kits are not going to rebuild.
Maybe instead of reading about OpenAI and data centers we could read a few news stories about how nobody can afford to eat in this country.
There is going to be Raising Arizona situation soon irl but it is going to be a billionaire and somebody who looks just like Nick Cage is going to take all the babies.
Just heard someone pronounce the word preface as pre-face. What state is this happening in?
The amount of bank robbers that are going to come out of Gen Z is going to make the film Heat look like a Three Stooges episode.
I think all of Gen X is going to pass away in forests by choice.
If that human sacrifice scene in Midsommar took place anywhere in America right now, Gen Z would not even have to shove their parents off the cliff. Their parents are leaping off on their own accords.
At least five different strata of income levels in this country are the same level of broke.
Why does MacArthur look like Sir Ian McKellen here?
This guy never served. He faked an injury to avoid the draft. None of his children have served. He called those who did serve their country "suckers and losers." He skipped the centenary memorial for servicemen who died in WWI because it was drizzling. This is more than usually repellent.
Wasn't Hasan Piker less than three years ago hanging out with Grimes and her dog in a podcast studio designed by crystal meth? And now he is walking around dressed like a Miami Vice villain? What happened to the studio? What happened to Grimes and her dog?
All prices are fucking insane but children's backpack prices are the most fucking insane. Parents if your kids are in my classes rest assured I am not giving them a textbook or any homework at all. None.
Watched a video of several people saying all their homegrown tomatoes died after rainstorms essentially saying rain poisoned their crops. After the sixth person said it, I was like maybe so.
<---has no tv so if the revolution comes please knock on my door four times.
I like my blurriness to be an earned thing. I don't want my waking to be a kind of sleeping, as Samuel Beckett would have it. I would sooner be awake and exhausted. I'll stand behind that. --Claudia Rankine, Triage. Wowzers.
I do not think the people who arrested Tony Romo were police officers at all.
Last of summer reading before new student wolves clean my carcass and talk over one another while doing it. I actually cannot wait to see them all again.
This makes me want to move to Tokyo even more than I already do.
Investors in Japan collectively own about $1 trillion in US Treasuries - no wonder the US had to intervene to save itself
The U.S. military crashing a civilian medical plane is exactly what is happening all of the time.
I like how Borges writes that dragons have to report within the third month of each year to their superior deities. In 2026 that report took all of March just to report I imagine.
Borges writes about how Dante Rossetti spent so much time trying to mythologize Lilith through poetry he may have actually reminded people in the 1800's of Lilith --because perhaps they forgot which is definitely likely. This is the kind of work poets do all the time and they do not even know why.
Kenneth Koch describes helping a nursing home patient named Margaret Whittaker edit her poem line "I wanted people to ask me to dance" to "I'm sitting here and wondering/How many are going to ask me to dance tonight."
It would be cool if the moon actually dodged the SpaceX rocket completely, like moved faster for a few seconds on its own.
ballast journal is edited by beautiful humans I can tell you that much.
Contributor features from ballast 4.2: Here’s Jeffrey Hecker from "Jane Byrne Interchange (Chicago, Illinois)" @heckheck03.bsky.social Read more in the issue www.ballastjournal.com/jeffrey-heck... #contributorfeature #poetry #poems #ballast #JeffreyHecker
During the haiku portion of Kenneth Koch teaching geriatrics at the nursing home, he creates a poem on the fly about some people in the class's lack of participation: No one spoke,/Kate, Suzanne,/The white chairs.
In 2027 every U.S. state, commonwealth, and territory should change its current name by one letter -- as a complete psychological refresh to the terror we have endured. Please feel free to comment with your new preferred place names. I will start: Virginit.
I saw Norman Dubie read some of his aphorisms in person and at some point during the reading he confessed (really to himself but everybody could hear him) he should have only written aphorisms. I agree with that.