Andrew Hemmert 💙

Local TV leads its Iran coverage by saying the "deal" includes "reopening" the Strait of Hormuz, but then adds that Iran will manage the Strait and charge fees. So, the Strait is *less* accessible than before the war. Media outlets don't need to accept the administration's framing of this ceasefire.

Andrew Hemmert 💙

Highlighted section of the Copilot ToS which says "Copilot is for entertainment purposes only"

www.microsoft.com/en-us/micros... is it good to build an entire economy and software infrastructure on this

Andrew Hemmert, our Poet of the Week 💙

You wouldn't be ”asking ChatGPT” anything if Max Zorin had managed to flood Silicon Valley in 1985

HOMAGE TO WILLIE MAYS I used to go to games in Candlestick Park Just for a little rest, a little solitude Away from her voice so I could write A poem for her. The poem I never finished. I didn't like or dislike baseball, I simply Didn't understand it. It was a good place To work until it got too exciting. I mean, Sometimes the game got too exciting: you'd See Mays trotting in from the outfield, This relaxed look on his face, & suddenly You knew the exceptional was about to happen. Even after we broke up, agreeing we were just Too different (she liked money; I preferred, In those days, drugs), I still went out there, Such was the nature of my devotion to This task, all readiness with my fountain pen- Modest in size but everlastingly erect- A Parker 51 with a gold nib where My angel resided, & a yellow legal pad With no left margin, the pages faded a little By the sunlight, just the way I liked them, And I was in the middle of saying something Important about the way her bare shoulders. Looked in sunlight as she strolled up Telegraph In the bottom of the seventh when Mays stepped up And connected, & mailed one to Oakland, And then another, later, to the mudflats On the river beyond Martinez, & then Everyone was standing up, cheering him, And suddenly I was aware that I, too, Was standing up, whistling & applauding A man whose swing was sweet dignity, And one who'd liberated me forever From writing a lament so unforgettable Soft light fell through that perfect air And the English language had no words for it.

For Opening Day, a baseball poem by Larry Levis

A selfie of me wearing a white t-shirt that says “do not talk to me about AI I will kill myself”

I bought a new t-shirt. www.etsy.com/listing/4371...

Porco Rosso is my fav Miyazaki film bc it features an expressly antifascist protagonist and because it doesn't feature an overtly cute central character that can be merchandised, which is a nice filter that lets you connect w ppl who see something deeper in Miyazaki's films. ALso the cigarettes

Hasbro’s CEO on J.K. Rowling. We just published our new Decoder interview with Chris Cocks, the head of Hasbro. I asked him directly about how he thinks about author J.K. Rowling’s politics and what it’s done to the Harry Potter f...

cannot stress enough that "separate the art from the artist" was meant for private individuals reconciling the art they love with its flawed creators and not meant for the ceo of a company driving a dump truck of money up to a bigot's front porch

www.theverge.com/podcast/8914...

The motto of the modern tech industry is "You can just do things to people"

Glyphosate in bread? It’s sprayed by the pound in Florida waters State health officials aren’t calling to stop the practice.

People who are appalled to find out weedkiller glyphosate in bread may not know that it's sprayed by the pound in #Florida waters (and has shown up in manatees) www.tampabay.com/news/florida... via @maxchesnes.bsky.social

In the semidark we take everything off, love standing, inaudible; then we crawl into bed. You sleep with your head balled up in its dreams, I get up and sit in the chair with a warm beer, the lamp off. Looking down on a forested town in a snowfall I feel like a novel — dense and vivid, uncertain of the end — watching the bundled outlines of another woman another man hurrying toward the theater’s blue tubes of light.

You sleep with your head balled up in its dreams.

- C. D. Wright, "Hotels"

A book cover. Two black birds of unknown species ponder a flash of light rising from horizon. One bird says "The Smallest Mistake We Call Human." The cover is lovely and everyone you know will like it.

PRESALE TIME!!

The best time to order small press books is during presale, when there are author incentives and awards buzz begins.

So order one, or order ten for all your friends. I mean look at that cover — who wouldn't want this on a coffee table.

blacklawrencepress.com/books/the-sm...

well i for one couldn’t be more excited for the possibilities of AI. finally a technology that answers the age old question ‘what if clippy was wormtongue’

Submissions Close March 15 2026 Raz/Shumaker Book Prize in Fiction and Poetry Manuscripts will be accepted between January 15 and March 15. Winners receive $3000 and publication through the University of Nebraska Press. Prairie Schooner prairieschooner.unl.edu

Submissions are open until March 15 for the 2026 Prairie Schooner Raz/Shumaker Book Prize in Fiction and Poetry! Two winners will receive $3000 and publication through @univnebpress.bsky.social.

Read our full guidelines and submit: prairieschooner.unl.edu/book-prize-g...

A Boat Named Hard Times The boat, dust-covered, was left on the roadside under a sheet of sun-pummeled blue. It reminded me of a dead shark I saw half-buried in beach sand, the ants processioning from its eyes and belly like negative stars. Maybe the trailer had a flat. Maybe the owner, aghast at the name, abandoned it, because really what times could be hard in which buying a boat is possible? I've never leapt from a sinking ship, though I've floated out to open sea with two dead engines, watched the coast grow small. Too far from land land feels imaginary, as do the radio’s voices saying where are you, where are you. I was escorted away from everything I knew by a school of spinner sharks, named for their habit of leaping and pinwheeling while trying to shake a hook. What’s in a name? To suffer and fly.

Front cover of new issue of Cherry Tree. Green thorny rose pattern on white background.

Back cover of new issue of Cherry Tree, featuring various author names including Andrew Hemmert

I'm thrilled to be back in Cherry Tree with a new sonnet! Thanks as always to the editors for including me. It's fun getting lost at sea for about ten minutes. After that it's dull and terrifying. I do miss the ocean though.

I’m at Apple HQ standing at the center of a massive space-agey amphitheater saying “Let’s make it WORSE” to rapturous applause

A Boat Named Hard Times The boat, dust-covered, was left on the roadside under a sheet of sun-pummeled blue. It reminded me of a dead shark I saw half-buried in beach sand, the ants processioning from its eyes and belly like negative stars. Maybe the trailer had a flat. Maybe the owner, aghast at the name, abandoned it, because really what times could be hard in which buying a boat is possible? I've never leapt from a sinking ship, though I've floated out to open sea with two dead engines, watched the coast grow small. Too far from land land feels imaginary, as do the radio’s voices saying where are you, where are you. I was escorted away from everything I knew by a school of spinner sharks, named for their habit of leaping and pinwheeling while trying to shake a hook. What’s in a name? To suffer and fly.

Front cover of new issue of Cherry Tree. Green thorny rose pattern on white background.

Back cover of new issue of Cherry Tree, featuring various author names including Andrew Hemmert

I'm thrilled to be back in Cherry Tree with a new sonnet! Thanks as always to the editors for including me. It's fun getting lost at sea for about ten minutes. After that it's dull and terrifying. I do miss the ocean though.

Blue Origin plan puts Indian River Lagoon at serious risk | Opinion Opinion:Blue Origin wants to dump 500,000 gallons of untreated wastewater daily, a move environmental experts say could be catastrophic.

Op-ed: "If it is Blue Origin’s mission to 'build a road to space for the benefit of earth,' one has to wonder why they are applying for permits to dump 500,000 gallons of untreated industrial wastewater into #Florida’s marine environment every single day." www.palmbeachpost.com/story/opinio...

Clapping my flippers together and honking like a harbor seal when a Super Bowl ad for a condiment or gambling app featuring two celebrities unexpectedly reveals a third celebrity as its punchline. Bouncing a ball around on my snout. My wife has to throw me a herring to get me to calm down.

the only literary race I’m running is trying to get all these damn books outta my head before the icy hand of Death takes me to that big kayaking spot in the sky

Big game AI ads encouraging you to build like the geniuses that came before you by using their technology. Proceeds to show a montage of humans doing smart and creative things without once touching said tech.

It's almost as if the miraculous human brain is the tool and not a slop machine.

ah i can answer this trick question actually. novels are not a race

For decades the Right has daydreamed about saving their country from monsters, they finally got the chance and it turns out they love the monsters. The monsters are even monstrous in the exact ways they fantasized about! You never have to listen to these guys about anything again

Special Call for Submissions for the 100-year anniversary issue Awakening Submission window: February 1 to February 15 or until submission caps are met. Prairie Schooner prairieschooner.unl.edu

The Spring 2027 issue will mark the 100th anniversary of the first issue of Prairie Schooner, so we are seeking poems, short stories, and essays on the theme of Awakening. Awakening, awareness, revival, rebirth. Our centenary coincides with overwhelming challenges to our freedoms, our cultures, our progress, our expression, and the next 100 years will be informed by the wisdom and invention of writers and thinkers, by strong voices, creative vision. We seek inspiring work that will carry us forward, or reflect on the past, work that will pose questions, or suggest answers. We want work that will invigorate with new understanding or break our hearts with it—all with insight and perspective, whether lyric or bold, quiet or insistent.

Special call for submissions: Awakening, the 100-year anniversary issue (Spring 2027)

Submission window: February 1 - February 15, or until submission caps are met.

Read more: prairieschooner.unl.edu/submit/

The cognitive dissonance of constantly reading that I need to spend some time mastering generative AI while not knowing a single person in my industry who uses it to do good work 🤙

We're reopening submissions at Gone Lawn. Same old thing, you know what we like & you've got it.

& as always (not to be judged!), please consider a donation to keep a struggling mag afloat, if you can. Bad times, bad times.

And come the next full moon, dance under it!

gonelawn.net/journal/glj_...