Rejection erasure.

I think the Sealey Challenge is great, but I can never participate because I can’t and won’t read poetry that quickly.

“We loved reading your work. It was a transcendent experience and literally perfect in every way possible. Unfortunately, we are not worthy of it and so we’re going to have to pass. Best of luck placing it elsewhere.”

I posted a new blog yesterday: summer musings, our first avocados, cat walks, writing updates, trying to go more analog. You can read it here: josephdante.com/2026/07/were...

We’re All Punks Now

It’s July again, almost August, and I’m sweating and sneezing and sleeping. We got our very first batch of avocados from one of the trees in the backyard. They’re small and not re…

josephdante.com

RIP, Benjamin Alire Saenz. Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe remains one of my favorite queer coming of age books.

“Everywhere I go I’m asked if I think universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them. There’s many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.” —Flannery O’Connor

Social media really has made so many people so literal-minded and reactionary. It’s exhausting.

Some very good writers are very bad at titles.

Kitties collecting their sunbeams.

Recent library borrows.

I’ve not been feeling poetry lately, although I have been writing it. Strange. Back to prose.

This is one of my favorite poems and I’m posting it for Marjane Satrapi www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46464/...

My poem, “On the Playing Field,” was published in the newest “In Between” issue of FOLIO. It’s a poem about childhood and the battlefield that is traditional gender roles. If you’ve ever felt like a misfit, maybe it will resonate. You can read it here: www.folioliteraryjournal.com/on-the-playi...

On the Playing Field — FOLIO Literary Journal

folioliteraryjournal.com

New #poetry from Anthony Frame: "On Silence".

On Silence | Rust & Moth

“In music, silence is more important than sound.” —Miles Davis Let me tell you something true: when I was thirteen, a man put his hand over my mouth and I lost my voice for a decade. Is it grief...

rustandmoth.com

Spent some time with words by @stephendelaney.bsky.social. His new chapbook includes a collab between us! A curious collection of defamiliarizing, semi-fabulist flashes and prose poems. You can get a copy here: bottlecap.press/products/our...

Grades have been submitted. Time to cocoon.

Getting bored with rejections. I’d like to be surprised for once.

I’m so allergic to whimsy in poetry. It reads to me as insincere so often, like a defense mechanism. What are you really hiding, poet?

Claire Wahmanholm from 32 Poems No. 45

I am very burnt out from this semester. It’s always people. People are exhausting.

This place has two modes: bleak or boring.

I want to do rejection erasures but most of the form rejections are barely a sentence long. At least give me something to work with!

My chapbook OUR PLACE IS IN BETWEEN is now available from Bottlecap Press. The pieces explore marginal life and have magical or fantastical elements. They're sad but I hope you enjoy them. #booksky #fiction #bottlecappress bottlecap.press/products/ourpsd

Me on spring break.

It’s my spring break. I’m going to get a haircut, work on poems, and go to the library.

Friendly reminder I got laid off recently & want the bookstore to be my main job alongside Amanda. Spent the last week brainstorming how to make it happen. Some cool things you could do to help: -Buy books at @eveninghouse.bsky.social, in-person or online -buy Boxcutters or Feast -hype either 🍻🙏🫡

My poem in the latest Hayden’s Ferry Review. Grateful to the editors, who also nominated the piece for Best Small Fictions. You can grab your copy of the issue here: haydensferryreview.com/issue-77

My poem in the latest Hayden’s Ferry Review. Grateful to the editors, who also nominated the piece for Best Small Fictions. You can grab your copy of the issue here: haydensferryreview.com/issue-77

I don’t really care about ekphrastic poetry and there is so much of it.

I did an in-class handwritten essay with my class and I am way happier reading these than all the AI slop I got last semester.