Tessera

Susan L. Leary

@susanlleary.bsky.social

1722 Posts2828 Follower 1738 Folgt

Susan L. Leary @susanlleary.bsky.social · 13h ago

Matthew Murrey ♥️ from LITTLE JOY (Cornerstone Press) Happy #smallpoemsunday! @mytwords.bsky.social @tomsnarsky.bsky.social

Before the Dancers,

their shadows.
Before the fire, the hanging
breath. Before the kiss, the toss
and turn. Before the poem,
the page. Before death, sleep—
or was it death, then sleep?
Maybe I've had it wrong all along:
maybe the dancers, then their shadows.

Susan L. Leary @susanlleary.bsky.social · 13h ago

Matthew Murrey ♥️ from LITTLE JOY (Cornerstone Press) Happy #smallpoemsunday! @mytwords.bsky.social @tomsnarsky.bsky.social

Sam Garvan @garvansam.bsky.social · 16h ago

Beautiful and enigmatic poem by Rilke ..

Before Summer Rain

Suddenly, from all the green around you,
something-you don't know what-has disappeared;
you feel it creeping closer to the window,
in total silence. From the nearby wood

you hear the urgent whistling of a plover,
reminding you of someone's Saint Jerome:
so much solitude and passion come
from that one voice, whose fierce request the downpour

will grant. The walls, with their ancient portraits, glide
away from us, cautiously, as though
they weren't supposed to hear what we are saying.

And reflected on the faded tapestries now;
the chill, uncertain sunlight of those long
childhood hours when you were so afraid.

Litbowl @litbowl.bsky.social · 2d ago

This poem forever. From Robert Bly's Morning Poems: bookshop.org/a/862/9780060928735 #booksky #writing

DJ Plague Mouse 💎🐁@rhinestonemice.wtf · 23h ago

Molly Brodak #smallpoemsunday #poetry

Photo of a book page with a poem:

How to not be a perfectionist

Molly Brodak

People are vivid
and small
and don’t live
very long —

Deborah @deborahzafer.bsky.social · 14h ago

Why won't you live in it

The Whole Thing Is the Hard Part
Heather Christle

Moby Dick @mobydickatsea.bsky.social · 15h ago

all this is both foolish and unnecessary

River River Books @riverriverbooks.bsky.social · 14h ago

Pour a second cup of coffee and peruse this new review of Jameela Dallis’s Encounters for the Living and the Dead featured in North Carolina Poetry Society! 📚💜 #poetry #booksky Read here: www.ncpoetrysociety.org/review-of-en...

Sea creature background and the text:

"[Dallis] transforms witnessing from passive observation into an active form of
remembrance."

Mary Maceda reviews Encounters for the Living and the Dead for North Carolina Poetry Society

Ursula K. Le Guin Bot @leguinbot.bsky.social · yesterday

That is between me and my shadow.

Lee Potts @leepottspoet.bsky.social · 2d ago

Please celebrate with me my friends! 🎉 My third chapbook, Sky In Some Mosaic, is now available for preorder from the wonderful Pinhole Poetry Press (@pinholepoetry.bsky.social). Each copy will be made by hand and beautiful. Link in bio. More information to follow.

Frog and Toad Bot @frogandtoadbot.bsky.social · 2d ago

Frog and Toad sat on the porch, feeling sad together.

Anteroom (formerly The Winged Moon)@anteroompoetry.bsky.social · yesterday

Continuing to share the beautiful work from #Biophilia, and today not one, but two poems from the very talented @jenwithwords.bsky.social. Read them here: www.anteroompoetry.com/biophilia/je...

Davi Gray (she/they)@davigray.com · yesterday

All the Lands We Inherit now available at the Hennepin County Library 😍 Thanks to @susanlleary.bsky.social for the lead

Screenshot from library app: 6 copies available, hold requested.

Darby Price@darbyprice.bsky.social · last yr.

They’re here and they’re stunning! Thank you so much to all who have supported so far, from preordering* to requesting copies at your local library and/or bookstore. Cannot wait to share this with the world. (Sound on to hear why I’m glad I didn’t catch the actual unboxing on video 😅)📚💙 #booksky

Pat Foran @pdforan.bsky.social · yesterday

“Sparrows asleep inside a glass violin.” @susanlleary.bsky.social and @darkwebtofu.bsky.social in @diodeeditions.bsky.social

Susan L. Leary@susanlleary.bsky.social · 2w ago

Tiny poem from our collaborative chap, BRINK WAS THE WORD I WAS LOOKING FOR: diodepoetry.com/leary_susan_... Love poem-ing with Jarrett Moseley! Happy #smallpoemsunday! @darkwebtofu.bsky.social @diodeeditions.bsky.social @tomsnarsky.bsky.social

Lost Couplet

When I die, let my body be donated to silence.
The final noise: when I'm clothed in ground.

Sparrows asleep inside a glass violin.
Bells with their throats cut.

The song went: plenty, plenty. I've plenty of bones.

Ian McMillan @imcmillan.bsky.social · 3d ago

A poem from my new @carcanet.bsky.social collection Red River Valley

Litbowl @litbowl.bsky.social · 4d ago

From Linda Pastan's book, Queen of a Rainy Country: bit.ly/lindaqueenLB #poem #booksky #writing

Burgi Zenhaeusern @burgi.bsky.social · 3d ago

I love the game of hide-and-seek the poems in BLOODSTREAM play with passion, how they spring their fire upon a reader. 😊🔥💖 BLOODSTREAM by Sarah Carey (Mercer University Press, 2026) #poetry #bookSky 📚💙

The cover of Bloodstream depicts a color drawing of a flowering passion flower vine winding around the title and the author's name and beyond the cover's frame, on a greenish white ground.

Globus

I wake hungry, restless, stuck–
something I can't swallow. Forgive me
wanting more than a god

can give, I pray. I want to believe
divinity lives–within my body,
out of my hands. Years ago, I passed

the peace of the Lord in a pew.
Now, I toss, I want
my peace back. I reckon with the arbiter

who shuffles order, the shark who deals
luck like cards. I turn,
I tuck my head, take from childlessness

a holy solitude, a shell. Call me
mollusk, crustacean, reptile-
in-exile. Imagine Marvell's drop of dew–

so self-contained! But I know better,
I know burrows, dreams beyond
the terminus of my ancestral thread.

Glass Poetry Press @glasspoetry.bsky.social · 3d ago

ICYMI - it's Thursday! Chapbook submissions are open!! www.glass-poetry.com/submissions....

Submissions Guidelines | Glass Poetry Press

glass-poetry.com

Glass Poetry Press@glasspoetry.bsky.social · last wk.

In case you didn't know, we open for chapbook submissions on (checks calendar) THURSDAY!!! (submissions, as always, are free) www.glass-poetry.com/submissions....

Perugia Press @perugiapress.bsky.social · 3d ago

Perugia Press’s annual prize is open NOW and through November 15. Open to women poets, inclusive of gender-expansive identities, who have not published more than one full-length collection. Full guidelines and submission info at linktree in bio. We look forward to reading your work! 💙📖🍂

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

Natsume Soseki, tr. Soiku Shigematsu

Vikki C.@vikkicwrites.bsky.social · 4d ago

Delighted to have a new poem "Queerness of Our Species" in @rowanglassworks.bsky.social Issue 33! Also a special "Looking Glass" feature with meta-discursive insights about my poem plus a video reading 🔥 Thank you to EIC Katie Budris for including me in this gorgeous issue! Link below 🤍 #poetry

Queerness of Our Species

Vikki C.

Male penguins raise three young, said the headline.
The two had chased the female off, right after she’d laid eggs.
By dusk, the couple had planned the whole family.

Another cruelty to convention. Another soft survival.

It isn’t for us to know if the mother is still alive,
so the story pickaxes at unknowns,
becoming thinner as days glow and contract.

The moment we chose each other, the soft down
between us began to molt, leaving the bare cage of our hands,
the bony lamps of our shoulder blades.

There’s no word for such quickening anymore.

My own weather froze the feather I witnessed on my
way out to Portobello—but never enough to fix it
to the icy ledge. The same ledge I was known

to lean out from—man-watching with a bear’s hunger.

The tiny plume lifted sharp on a white wind,
sailing off to the place where the tender ring.
Later, I read that the mother penguin was found,

circling her young—but now thinks them all corrupt.

The two males clean out of sight—still famed
for their strange deed. It’s unclear who abandoned whom,
only that things circled, our feet slipping beneath dun grass

—till we raised each other again, out of more-than-human nature.

That Sunday, armed with market flowers and brown paper bags,
I brought back your favourite fish for supper—though
you were unlikely to attend. I hoped we’d dine together again.

Late light flooding the kitchen. Scent of herbs and fatigue,

the fish glittering on the large wooden board.
Its one marble eye turning from clear to cloudy
—a small heaven, keenly looking out for your return.

That Sunday, armed with market flowers and brown paper bags,
I brought back your favourite fish for supper—though
you were unlikely to attend. I hoped we’d dine together again.

Late light flooding the kitchen. Scent of herbs and fatigue,

the fish glittering on the large wooden board.
Its one marble eye turning from clear to cloudy
—a small heaven, keenly looking out for your return.

Exact Editions @exacteditions.bsky.social · 4d ago

Happy #NationalPoetryDay! 'Orpheus in Spring' by Jenny George celebrates this year's theme "wonder," describing the human impulse to collect treasures, and the opposite action of admiring the world without taking. The poem is from The Poetry Review, official publication of @poetrysociety.org.uk.

Hannah V Warren @hannahvwarren.bsky.social · 4d ago

After travel & a new semester & deadlines &&&, I've whipped up a newsletter. New poem! Photographs of Parisian skulls! Writing prompt! And a reflection on how men insist on nurturing women's fear. Over the next few months, I'll use this newsletter to share info about...

Hannah V Warren's Newsletter

This is a meta description. This will often show up in search results.

hannahvwarren.eo.page

University of Akron Press @uakronpress.bsky.social · 4d ago

ICYMI: CONGRATULATIONS TO EMMA TRELLES WHO WON THE 2026 AKRON POETRY PRIZE! 🎉 Full contest announcement here: www.uakron.edu/uapress/akro...

Lisa Thornton @thorntonforreal.bsky.social · 4d ago

Showing her around

A copy of “We’ll Be Birds” flash chapbook out now with Sand and Gravel Press balanced on my trailer hitch in the side yard

Veronika Fuchs @veronikafuchs.bsky.social · 4d ago

There is, I know, a science of separation In night's disheveled elegies, stifled laments, The clockwork oxen jaws, the tense anticipation As the city's vigil nears its sun and end. Osip Mandelstam, from Tristia thanks to @samrasnake.bsky.social theamericanscholar.org/five-poems-o...

Five Poems - The American Scholar

Translations by Christian Wiman

theamericanscholar.org

Ursula K. Le Guin Bot @leguinbot.bsky.social · 4d ago

it seemed to him that he himself was a word spoken by the sunlight.

@poemtoday.bsky.social · 4d ago

To White Noise You are the sound silence makes in its sleep, air made visible by smoke, deepest breath with no breathing, O my personal ocean, O un- broken shush of mortality, O my digital sister, thank you, thank you for keeping the children from climbing over the fence of sleep. Carrie Fountain

~ Alison Peace @irishali13.bsky.social · 4d ago

Poem for October 1.2026 ~LEILA CHATTI Once in a While I Am Reminded —I am not at the center of anything. Seen at a distance, I am hardly seen./ I marvel at what I call my life/the narrative sags, and I each moment wondering if this is when the real story starts.

LEILA CHATTI
Once in a While I Am Reminded
I am not at the center of anything. Seen at a distance I am hardly seen. Excruciating, how here 1 am, how little
it means. I use my mouth to make sounds which approximate my innermost thoughts but often bungle it. I use my eyes when I need to be understood. Sometimes I tell the truth but only when I think I'll be valued for being interesting instead of good.
I marvel at what I call my life-ambulances, sparrows, clouds passing definitively by-amazed that it doesn't know it's mine at all, the minor characters don't look up, the narrative sags, and I each moment wondering if this is when the real story starts.

Ulrica Hume @uhume.bsky.social · 4d ago

the trouble with the dead is that sometimes they are the only ones who would understand.