The last couple readings I did were at bookstores that were well prepared, which is very cool but also means I didn't need backup copies to sell & now have extras. Anyone want to buy my book straight from me? If yes, DM for Venmo, where to mail, etc.!
Oh, by the way, this poem's in my upcoming book "It's Easy To Lose Your Breath"! You should all pre-order it today if you haven't yet ;-)
@matchfactoryeds.bsky.social
matchfactoryeditions.com/books/Its-Ea...
And one of the three Midland Authors honorable mentions for poetry goes to Domestic Corpse by Paul Martinez Pompa!!! Congratulations!🔥
Anyone off to the New Orleans Poetry Festival? We're tabling at the Small Press Fair on Friday and Saturday🔥
Midland Authors have announced the finalists for their 2025 awards and Chad Heltzel and Paul Martinez Pompa are two out of five in the poetry category! Surprised yet not surprised, and hella proud!
Emily Hall gets it, and I'm grateful. Also excited to read more of her work. Look at us rippling a little bit in the literary waters! 🔥
Cover of Domestic Corpse by Paul Martinez Pompa
Apparition As if I could mend the mountains, the lakes, the baby trees. As if I could mend the doorway your breath enters and exits. It's easier to die than feel the magnitude of probability. Maybe it's the wind drifting like mouths to obscure some darker cold sure to come. I wander into another daybreak and return having so much and so little to tell. Apparently, the sun. Apparently, the moon. Apparently, the sincerest of faces happening on children until their land is shoveled from beneath their torsos and replaced with a longing for plastic bags. Of weaponry. Of personality disorders. Of pharmacies hustling the latest cave. Soon we saw wolves and knew only the softest hearts would make it through winter.
Improvisational Corpse Our bodies arrive already sliced into zeros and ones and speech itself rivers toward loss. If there were a name for this it might sound like an empty chair or a hand squeezing yours one last time before our mouths part and night swallows everything. We know this city will end but wander on as if there were a way around each other's darkness. The bedroom a rehearsal for letting go. The moon the distance between my head and my heart. We wake to our children's bodies, reduced now to a breathing. It piles like fire under night.
Hey, I finished another @matchfactoryeds.bsky.social banger. All these books are so good.
The other day, I got myself a Charm transit app, had a pass on it, but my attempts to get the Baltimore metro Sesame to open kept failing. A kind lady, obviously the spirit of Baltimore personified, swiped her card, held the gate open for me, and I caught the train. Baltimore=solidarity.
Lots of @tefftdawn.bsky.social and @mitchnobis.bsky.social fans at #AWP in Baltimore! I’m glad they love @matchfactoryeds.bsky.social books as much as we do!
Find us at the book fair, table 413!
No way of knowing... 😥
Find us at NAWP: Open Mic Reading on March 5th at 7pm. The rest of this poster is silly things we always do: "Parenting as Poet: How to Write through a Sh*tstorm" and "Virtual Salon: Fighting FOMO with puns!"
Hey, if you are not going to AWP (NAWP), you can find me @mitchnobis.bsky.social and the rest of the NAWP gang here. If you are going to AWP but find in person stuff daunting and want to zoom in, feel free!
You have the best anxiety dreams 😆
"Travel from ancient Greece to modern tarot via / the ruinously young Bob Marley, and / you may find truth." matchfactoryeditions.com/books/The-Sc...
"Can we shatter this cynical yoke, / be dismantled, let shards poke and pierce, / be the parts of a sum?" matchfactoryeditions.com/books/The-Sc...
Happy pub day to Kathie-Louise Clarke's debut poetry collection The Scarred Peach Is the Sweetest! Expansive love poetry for the non-sentimental.
matchfactoryeditions.com/books/The-Sc...
Happy pub month to The Scarred Peach Is the Sweetest by Kathie-Louise Clarke! Out later this month, you can pre-order it today. matchfactoryeditions.com/books/The-Sc...
I'm not one for false optimism. But what I witnessed today in Minneapolis was tremendous, both in scale and exuberance. It was a stunning answer to the federal assault on Minnesota, a show of solidarity that gives us something to hold on to during times that are unforgiving.
I, Sneža, am thrilled to be reading this Sunday at The Hungry Brain with Mary Ardery and Donna Vorreyer as hosts Simone Muench and Kenyatta Rogers guides us through the night. Doors at 6:30pm, readings start at 7pm. The address is 2319 W Belmont Ave, and there's no cover.
The poem: "It’s Easy to Lose Your Breath" -after The National- It’s easy to mishear. How often it’s happened as blue light echoes solitude at 2 a.m. Ants crawl all over me left over from the last time an apocalypse ate cities bone clean. I’ve deftly avoided the world for years now and now I’m ready to fling everything against the wall. Each time I walk into a crowded place the warring slide projectors hum and it’s 1997 again. Jump through Time like a makeshift Dr. Who like I’ve borrowed a DeLorean for the evening. I’m leaping through hoops, headed back, I’ll be surrounded by the sea where it should never be. I shouldn’t be here. I’ll hold my breath and save it for when I’m snorkeling through the corals before they bleach before the rainbow fish dart all around me, set off and never come back. Note: The title is a Mondegreen of a lyric from “Wake Up Your Saints” by The National. The actual lyric is: “It’s easy to lose your grip.”
I have some new poems for the New Year! Three have been published by antonym journal, and they're all in my upcoming full-length by @matchfactoryeds.bsky.social! Here's the titular poem.
"I’ve deftly avoided the world /
for years now /
and now I’m ready to fling everything /
against the wall."
Screenshot of a post by Road Less Traveled bookstore. It says: Mark your calendars! Road Less Traveled books will host a local Poets-palooza on Saturday 24 at 4:30 PM! Hear readings from four different poets with recently published collections, who will sign copies we'll have for sale, too. Why wait for national poetry month when you can have a cozy celebration of poetry in January?!
Hey! I'll be in the lineup a week from Saturday in my town's awesome new indie bookstore. Come by Farmington for me and 3 great poets, including friend of @matchfactoryeds.bsky.social, Cal Freeman!
We'll be hibernating for the next three weeks. Happy solstice, writers and readers, see you on the other side!
Happy anniversary (plus a week because I only vaguely remembered it happened in December) to my thread that led to me connecting with the amazing Sneza & RD at @matchfactoryeds.bsky.social. What an astounding, wonderful turn of events that turned out to be!
Happy anniversary to a happy coincidence!
There's a whole world of mostly Italian comics that were huge in Yugo and Italy and that's it. But Corto Maltese is known in the Anglo world. Enjoy!
Corto Maltese would be a good poet who works as a good bartende, lives down the street minding his own business
