Tessera

Paul Hlava Ceballos

@paulhlava.bsky.social

Author of banana [ ], winner of AWP Prize & PSA 1st Book Award. Finalist for Kate Tufts & National Book Critics. Editor Seattle Met, CantoMundista, echocardiographer

78 Posts1334 Follower 1447 Folgt

The Slowdown @slowdownshow.org · 3d ago

“Today’s poem is a celebration of creatures we tend to overlook or even disdain. It invites us to reconsider our perspective,” shares @maggiesmithpoet.bsky.social in today’s encore episode. Read “I Find Myself Defending Pigeons” by Keith S. Wilson: bit.ly/4AhN3XG 📖: @coppercanyonpress.bsky.social

Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · last wk.

(42/61) “You are no one’s enigma / or experiment.” —Amy M. Alvarez, “How to Date a White Boy” (Makeshift Altar) @kentuckypress.bsky.social #61WomenPoets #WOC #61Books61Days #TheSealeyChallenge #SeptWomenPoets

The cover of Amy M. Alvarez’s Makeshift Altar: a photograph of an alter with black African mask, two small golden bowls, gold chains, and a headdress of black plants, white feathers, and red roses, against a pink background.

Katie Campbell, KUOW @katiecampbell.bsky.social · 2w ago

Now I am become meeting, the destroyer of spirits.

Poetry Foundation @poetry.foundation · 2w ago

The Poetry Foundation is proud to announce the recipients of the 2026 Pegasus Awards! 🎉 Robert Pinsky 🎉 Nikki Grimes 🎉 Luis Javier Rodríguez 🎉 Meg Day 🎉 Jason Schneiderman For more details, visit our website https://bit.ly/4x9ME6N Congratulations to this year's honorees!

Paul Hlava Ceballos @paulhlava.bsky.social · last wk.

Congrats to Meg Day for winning the Pegasus Poetry Book Prize! 🏆 I am on pins & needles to read Sound Lasso, much love ❤️ Also I am the one finalist, which is exciting—my own book is close! 😊 Thank you judges, thank you poetryfoundation & Graywolf & congrats to the winners 🙏

Tom Snarsky @tomsnarsky.bsky.social · 3w ago

today’s #twopageplustuesday in memory of Wendell Berry — “This work of love rhymes / living and dead.” 🐎

Horses
When I was a boy here,
traveling the fields for pleasure, the farms were worked with teams.
As late as then a teamster
was thought an accomplished man, his art an essential discipline.
A boy learned it by delight as he learned to use his body, following the example of men. The reins of a team were put into my hands
when I thought the work was play.
And in the corrective gaze of men now dead I learned to flesh my will in power great enough to kill me should I let it turn.
I learned the other tongue by which men spoke to beasts
—all its terms and tones.
And by the time I learned, new ways had changed the time.

The tractors came. The horses stood in the fields, keepsakes, grew old, and died. Or were sold as dogmeat. Our minds received the revolution of engines, our will stretched toward the numb endurance of metal. And that old speech by which we magnified our flesh in other flesh fell dead in our mouths.
The songs of the world died in our ears as we went within the uproar of the long syllable of the motors. Our intent entered the world as combustion.
Like our travels, our workdays burned upon the world, lifting its inwards up in fire. Veiled in that power our minds gave up the endless cycle of growth and decay and took the unreturning way, the breathless distance of iron.
But that work, empowered by burning the world's body, showed us finally the world's limits and our own. We had then the life of a candle, no longer the ever-returning song
among the grassblades and the leaves.
Did I never forget?
Or did I, after years, remember? To hear that song again, though brokenly in the distances of memory,

is coming home. I came to a farm, some of it unreachable by machines, as some of the world will always be. And so I came to a team, a pair
of mares—sorrels, with white tails and manes, beautiful!— to keep my sloping fields.
Going behind them, the reins tight over their backs as they stepped their long strides, revived again on my tongue the cries of dead men in the living fields. Now every move answers what is still.
This work of love rhymes living and dead. A dance is what this plodding is.
A song, whatever is said.

Stacey Burns @wentrogue.bsky.social · 4w ago

Jennifer Nelson’s entry to this year’s Minnesota State Fair crop art

A localized version of Guernica with a loon at the center and a person holding an ICE OUT sign

“My piece was inspired by Picasso's Guernica, a work that was his response to the Nazi's bombing of the Basque town. I thought there was a fitting parallel between these incidents about the high price paid by ordinary people when aggressive regimes try out new tactics of war, as well as a fitting juxtaposition of the darkness of living such an experience and the light we shone through it in our own resistance and care for one another. The patterns near Renee Good and Alex Pretti’s mouths are actually their last words in Morse code: ‘I’m not mad at you,’ and ‘Are you okay?’”

Jennifer Nelson

The Jack of Kingfield@thejackofkingfield.bsky.social · 4w ago

The world’s leading crop art website did a feature on resistance crop art this year: www.cropart.com/Resist.pdf

Pearl Pirie @pearlpoet.bsky.social · last mo.

#TodaysPoem by Kabir, trans by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra

It take a man that have the blues so to sing the blues.
—Leadbelly
O pundit, your hairsplitting's So much bullshit. I'm surprised You still get away with it.
If parroting the name Of Rama brought salvation,
Then saying sugarcane
Should sweeten the mouth, Saying fire burn the feet, Saying water slake thirst, And saying food
Would be as good as a belch.
If saying money made everyone rich, There'd be no beggars in the streets.
My back is turned on the world,
You hear me singing of Rama and you smile.
One day, Kabir says,
All bundled up,
You'll be delivered to Deathville.
KG 179

Brandon Menke @bamenke.bsky.social · 4w ago

Hey hey hey! Check out this smart, savvy, and positively glowing review of @franciscondine.bsky.social's brilliant COALITION LITERATURE (Stanford UP, 2025) by Grace Tierney up now at @asapjournal.bsky.social. It's front and center—you can't miss it! 🧡

Dr. Han VanderHart @hanvanderhart.bsky.social · last mo.

You can read “Charm Before Sleeping” alongside poems from Muriel Rukeyser and Jean Valentine! www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazi...

Full text of Martha Zweig’s poem:

CHARM BEFORE SLEEPING

You are of my species
Against the ocean's inroads
Upon the ringed kingdom
Of recognition: among all
Mixed daily things I know you.

Whatever the dreams do, may
The constant bodily keeping
Involving us now within
The waking coincidence
Maintain you nearby, while we

And all who have held tight
Relax to sleep, and through these hours,
Difficult to remember, when death will
Undo each double helix and
Comb the loose strands, like the sea.

Poetry magazine from January 1968. Dark blue or black, classic Pegasus, and the text:

POETRY
VOLUME 111 NUMBER 4
JANUARY 1968
MARK VAN DOREN
Slouly, Slowly Wisdom Gatlers
JEAN VALENTINE
Three Poans
VERNON WATKINS
Gremydycinu Elegiacs
MURIEL RUKEYSER
Delta Poems
TURNER CASSITY • MARGARET RANDALL
DAVID MUS • FREDERIC WILL • DABNEY STUART MARJORIE HUNT • MARTHA MAc NEAL ZWEIG DAVID ROSENTHAL •KATHLEEN SPIVACK
LISEL MUELLER on GARY SNYDER FREDERIC WILL on ROBERT CREELEY TOM CLARK on EDWIN DENBY RICHARD MOORE on WILLIAM BLAKE WILLIAM HUNT Poetry Without Letters
MARVIN BELL Four Anthologies

Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 2mo ago

(6/61) “after you died / I remembered / Odysseus / and his bowl of blood / so he could speak / to his mother” — @estherwslin.bsky.social, “Up the Mountains Down the Fields” (Cold Thief Place) @alicejamesbooks.bsky.social #61WomenPoets #WOC #61Books61Days #TheSealeyChallenge #SeptWomenPoets

The cover of Esther Lin’s Cold Thief Place: a painting of a hand with multiple gold rings folded over another hand against a black background

Ally Ang @theoceanisgay.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Thanks to @pleiadesmag.bsky.social for publishing this review of one of my favorite poetry collections of 2026: Ampersand Organ by heidi andrea restrepo rhodes! (@milkweededitions.bsky.social) pleiadesmag.com/everything-i...

Everything is an Opening: Ecstatic Invitations in heidi andrea restrepo rhodes’s “Ampersand Organ”

heidi andrea restrepo rhodes "unfixes the reader," blurring the boundaries between bodies and language, cell and song, in their kaleidoscopic new collection.

pleiadesmag.com

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

a poem of mine is now up on Penn State's website

Simply Following Instructions

Simply
following
corporate
instructions
I dump
stuff
into
the machine.

We need
more stuff,
my boss yells,
dumped
into the machine.

He looks at me
and when I do not
respond quickly enough,
he throws me
into the machine.

I'm honored,
really, but I
barely
move
the needle.
The machine
needs
more.

The Slowdown @slowdownshow.org · 2mo ago

"When the words themselves are lost, so much can be lost with it: oral histories, traditions, and unique perspectives," @maggiesmithpoet.bsky.social shares in episode 1565. Read “bilingual” by @mrmack88.bsky.social from SIPÈSTISYON: bit.ly/44Om9Z1 📖: @@yesyesbooks.bsky.social

graphic featuring a portion of Mckendy Fils-Aime's poem

Chelsea Dingman @chelsdingman.bsky.social · 3mo ago

My new poem is up at The Los Angeles Review this week:

The Face-to-Face Encounter by Chelsea Dingman
Twenty minutes away from this house is a house without rooms and cabinets and foal-dark carpeting and a woman who wears my mother's face to clean the dishes and the linoleum floors and the delicate white lace underclothes
that she wears on special occasions and the problem of loneliness in the form of a crawlspace. In some ways, I lost my mother when my father died. Before the house was gutted. Before someone changed the locks. Before she began disappearing in front of me, like her
mother, as I told her about my day from the kitchen
doorway. Sometimes, I think writers are just
people who weren't listened to as children, and so remain strange everywhere but in language. Sometimes, when I say mother I'm speaking about my father. I'm trying to figure out what I owe a future where 1 am not, and that is different. My grandmother,
in the years before she died, endured the slow siphoning of her mind. How sad but maybe kind, I'd thought, not to remember being cruel or rash, nor the cratered body in the bathroom mirror, Christmas
baking and days out by the lake, playing gin
rummy or solitaire, knowing that she was dying, that she would die in a strange room in her mind. In a care facility, how fast she forgot
to feed herself, the names for her children. Their faces. Is one life
exchanged for another when one retires, or might retiring be
how one turns away from a life, from aging, from aphasia, from winter's slag? My mother picks my daughter up from school
every Thursday. Early retirement she took after her mother died and her partner retired. I wish we were closer, but I don't say that. I wish I'd let her know me instead of what she imagines
of me. My young sons left home this year to imagine a life
apart from mine, which is all I've wanted for them amid the waiting mothering amounts to. The indignity of days where they are not not breathing or eating or fighting now I face. The presence of their absences, deathless as a dream I…

StoryStudio Chicago @storystudiochicago.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Even magic must have a few rules! 🪄🔮 In this four-session online workshop with @ruthjoffre.bsky.social, learn how about magic and how it can shape your story. Starts August 4. Register now! buff.ly/JCecaCn #writingcommunity

D.S. Waldman @ds-waldman.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Many thanks to @heidiseabornpoet.bsky.social and @adroitjournal.bsky.social for this walking conversation through @moma.bsky.social theadroitjournal.org/2026/07/01/a...

ART WALK: A Conversation with D.S. Waldman

D.S. Waldman is the author of the poetry collection Atria (Liveright/WW Norton, 2026). His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Los Angeles Review of Books, ZYZZYVA, and many other…

theadroitjournal.org

Dr. Han VanderHart @hanvanderhart.bsky.social · 3mo ago

I do not struggle with the poem, but with my own attentions. —@robmclennan.bsky.social

4.
I do not struggle with the poem,
but with my own attentions.

Valzhyna Mort: Sometimes our words can cut meat
The back of fire, curved. From one language

to another. I slip out, step away. The outdoor view, so Alta Vista smooth. Cars trundle, bus.

And for a spell,
all else is quiet.

12

Ryan Packer @typewriteralley.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Holy shit. (From Reddit)

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

Anne de Marcken @annedemarcken.com / @spuytenduyvil.bsky.social

The cloud of each breath hangs for a few seconds in the air. A bird moves in the underbrush. It makes sense to me.

Cory Oldweiler @coryoldweiler.bsky.social · 4mo ago

For @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social I wrote about Mónica Ojeda’s latest, ELECTRIC SHAMANS AT THE FESTIVAL OF THE SUN, trans. by Sarah Booker, a rewarding if elusive novel of spiritual awakening that draws heavily on myths and traditions of several Indigenous Andean cultures.

A Life Less Governed by Death | Los Angeles Review of Books

Ecuadoran author Mónica Ojeda’s new novel is a celebration of the transfiguring power of dance, music, and neo-shamanistic knowledge.

lareviewofbooks.org

@cantomundo.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Tick tock! The countdown is on—submissions for the CantoMundo Chapbook Prize close May 30th. Level up your poetry and seize this opportunity to be published and translated. Submit now!

Paul Hlava Ceballos @paulhlava.bsky.social · 4mo ago

“and snakes / shed sheathes are hollow as music” Now, with AI and the dismantling of the NEA, etc, I am thinking how our call as artists is to make something beautiful against “state art”

Susan L. Leary@susanlleary.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Paul Hlava Ceballos from banana [ ] Happy #smallpoemsunday! @paulhlava.bsky.social @upittpress.bsky.social @tomsnarsky.bsky.social

Blossom Is Pollen in Transit

Immigration is not a void
of desire nor long histories
of dropped fire that blossoms in air
not free of science nor state art

that swings verity to wing-beat
to sweet hose-fed lawns can you hear drums explode on the other side
of hummed anthem and carefree dance

an agreed upon fog settles
beading cacti needle and snakes'
shed sheathes are hollow as music

can we plumb blue depths of these shared years to be not-numb not-nothing
whole as a neighbor as a kiss

Susan L. Leary @susanlleary.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Paul Hlava Ceballos from banana [ ] Happy #smallpoemsunday! @paulhlava.bsky.social @upittpress.bsky.social @tomsnarsky.bsky.social

phillip crymble @phillipcrymble.bsky.social · 4mo ago

A favorite poem by Robert Creeley, on this, the day of his centenary.

OLD SONG

Take off your clothes, love,
And come to me.

Soon will the sun be breaking
Over yon sea.

And all of our hairs be white, love,
For aught we do

And all our nights be one, love,
For all we knew.

ROBERT CREELEY

Tom Snarsky @tomsnarsky.bsky.social · 4mo ago

happy birthday Robert Creeley 🎈

Sit. Eat
a doughnut.

Love’s consistency
favors me.

The Needling @theneedling.com · 4mo ago

Millionaires Tax Payers Assured They Only Need to Cut Back on Lattes to Afford Fifth Home: tinyurl.com/3mjbuhy9

Stressed out man looking over budget on laptop near a pool in a luxury home's back yard on a beautiful evening

Keith S. Wilson @keithwilsonpoet.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Check out this brilliant writing about my book Games for Children by Noah Warren in the latest Cleveland Review of Books. None of my screenshots give it justice: clereviewofbooks.com/poetry-and-t...

Photo of Games for Children, Rock Flight, and the other books mentioned in this essay.

Keith Wilson: if (form===trap)

Keith Wilson's background in game design is reflected in Games for Children's flowcharts, matrices, and rogue sine waves. As such, the algorithm, for Wilson, signifies as a tangible series of operations and
logical moves, not as a mystified code. Indeed, the book functions as a primer in learning to think like a machine, prompting the reader through nested binary conditions toward aporia that reflect on the
conditions of American subjectivity.

The simultaneity of vacuousness and motion seems to be the point. Inherent in the diagrammatic form is the argument that
experience is ultimately diagrammable, permutations of a few variables, a repetitive paint-by-numbers affair.

The disorientation of encountering a poem that looks like this, and then trying to locate ourselves in its centripetal space, is its central emotional fact.

Divider Decider 👩🏻‍⚖️🌊⚖️(Renee GOOD, ICE BAD)@dividerdecider.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Uniter Anti #MetGala ✨ @riseandresist.bsky.social ✨ @seiupres.bsky.social’s Ball without Billionaires Mary Hill: “Most of my co-workers work 2 jobs. Why is that, when we work for 1 of the richest people in America?” 📸Dave Sanders; SEIU www.nytimes.com/live/2026/05... www.nytimes.com/2026/05/04/s...

Rise and Resist’s “Resistance Red Carpet” woman in black tee shirt with Climate Emergency postered dress holding a red sign saying, “Bezos Greenwashes his Clinate Crimes” Photo Dave Sanders/NY Times

Woman in pink dress with a tussle holster and a Quiet Piggy flower hat on the Resistance Red Carpet. Photo Dave Sanders/NY Times

Woman wearing an Eat the Rich hat, blue feather jacket and green sequin dress on the Resistance Red Carpet. Photo Dave Sanders/NY Times

Mary Hill, a 72-year-old Amazon warehouse worker from Raleigh, N.C., walked the runway dressed in burgundy pants with flowers and navy blue jacket outfit by Labyrinthave. Photo: the Service Employees International Union

MOYA 🍒🎧🌙| Fujo in a Lab Coat ™ | GOING TO SEE DICK AND PISS @moyaoyaoya.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Even tho the looks are nice at the met gala pls talk about the workers rights protest that’s happening rn ahead of the met gala! “Ball without Billionaires”!! Spread the word!!