4 months into 2026, we're ahead of schedule & planning 2027. Please say hello (again) to Christopher Klingbeil & Ben Tanzer, who will kick off the year with poetry & stories, respectively. Next summer, we're happy to introduce Heain Joung to the TW family with her debut story collection. Exciting!

The image is a digital graphic featuring a poem by Christopher Klingbeil, titled "Western Sugar Cooperative." The title and author's name are prominently displayed at the top in bold black text. - *Title and Author* - *Title:* "Western Sugar Cooperative" - *Author:* Christopher Klingbeil - *Poem* - The poem is written in black text and reads: - "I'm worried if one day you'll leave this could be the season I remember when it happens when I tell you another story" - "about foxes leaving burrows with my hands shaped in the shadows of your nightlight it won't be coincidence" - *Illustrations* - A small gray razor is positioned above the poem. - A teal sugar bowl with gold handles and a gold lid is centered below the poem. The word "Sugar" is written on the side of the bowl in cursive. - *Background and Attribution* - The background of the image is a light mint green color. - In the bottom-right corner, the text "ballast 3.3" and "ballastjournal.com" are displayed in black.

Contributor Features from ballast 3.3:

Next up: Christopher Klingbeil with “Western sugar cooperative” @cklingbe.bsky.social

www.ballastjournal.com/christopher-...

#contributorfeature
#poetry
#poem
#poems
#ballast
#ChristopherKlingbeil

· Kelly Gray (@k-gray.bsky.social)
· Peter Milne Greiner
· Daniel Hales
· Jake Hargrove
· Alec Hershman
· D.J. Huppatz
· Stephen K. Kim
(@skimperil.bsky.social)
· J.I. Kleinberg
· Christopher Klingbeil (@cklingbe.bsky.social)

Be at Leso A Dream Story by Julián Martinez

Dreaming of Greece and the Beatles with Julián Martinez’s dream story, “Be at Leso”. 🎶 🏝️
Only on Afterimages.

open.substack.com/pub/thirtywe...

Putting out a radar ping to authors from ELJ to see if any wish to submit their manuscript to us for 2026/2027. No promises but willing to try.

Goodtime Jesus Jesus got up one day a little later than usual. He had been dreaming so deep there was nothing left in his head. What was it? A nightmare, dead bodies walking all around him, eyes rolled back, skin falling off. But he wasn’t afraid of that. It was a beautiful day. How ’bout some coffee? Don’t mind if I do. Take a little ride on my donkey, I love that donkey. Hell, I love everybody.

James Tate #smallpoemsunday

Why Bother? Because right now, there is someone out there with a wound in the exact shape of your words.

Poem by Sean Thomas Dougherty.

An author photo of Christopher Klingbeil announcing the title of his poetry book, Landscape, Dad! coming in 2026 through Thirty West.

Christopher Klingbeil's elongated bio, similar to the post.

Welcome @cklingbe.bsky.social to TW with a poetry collection, LANDSCAPE, DAD!

Christopher Klingbeil is the author of the chapbook, Evaporatus. His writing has appeared in the Denver Quarterly, Painted Bride Quarterly, & Salt Hill. He worked as a government lumberjack in the Western United States.

Boy, these last eight days feel like a good reminder why democracies generally avoid letting people who attempt a coup come back to power….

Yo!

not Lynch's movie, I know, but god, what a sendoff

🥳

hey there fella, got a lil sumpin sumpin over at @vol1brooklyn.bsky.social today. give it a readski, huh? a widdle minute for a story? pweez daddyyyyyy??

fr fr thanks to @troyjamesweaver.bsky.social and @wadrewhawkins.bsky.social for helpful notes here.

www.vol1brooklyn.com/2024/12/29/s...

RIP

When you read you are in a fog. You are led by echoes. You don’t know your head from a hole in the ground. When you read you have one eye on the world and one eye on the story. You are all at sea. Your eye is an ear catching ocean sounds in an empty shell. Can’t you hear rumors of other voices within mine?

Emmanuel Hocquard, trs. Waldrop & McGrath

This is good

Jesus Christ Applies for VP of Student Success To the Hiring Committee: My name is Jesus Christ, and I am applying for the posted position of Vice President of Student Success. While I have no p...

"Your list of responsibilities includes fantastical paradoxes such as 'removing all barriers to admission while significantly increasing retention and graduation rates.' This would strike a lesser administrator as an impossible task, but I love paradoxes."

YES!!!

On the Report of Poetry’s Death, or: What Does That AI Poetry Study Really Tell Us? A newly published report from the University of Pittsburgh that claims “AI-generated poetry is indistinguishable from human-written poetry and is rated more favorably,” has sent a swarm…

Before anyone outsources poetry, the new report that claims algorithmically-generated texts are preferred over actual poems? It has some weaknesses. Thanks @literaryhub.bsky.social for publishing my piece that points to just a few. @nature.com.web.brid.gy @pitt.bsky.social lithub.com/on-the-repor...

photo of a parking lot with a few vehicles, behind which are a couple of white industrial-looking buildings (ice plant / fish processing) and a gathering storm cloud which is tinted pink from the setting winter sun. There also appear to be a bunch of 24x48 inch fluorescent ceiling light panels, which are actually the reflection of the ceiling of the store in which i took this photo

just found this pleasantly weird photo i took of an incoming storm from inside my old workplace

Don’t get me wrong, this one is cool, but does someone have the bears radio call?

How do you face fascism? I like Orwell's version: ground yourself in direct and immediate experience, trust your senses, find some joy, turn back to face the fascists and tell truths to combat the lies.

"If we discover that the yeti in the wilderness
is only a bear, then we have discovered nothing.
The yeti we imagine still evades us."

#TodaysPoem #poetry
The Animals We Imagine by Paul Vermeersch (2022 The /tƐmz/ Review) https://tinyurl.com/bdfmtm9m

I Know You Know: Diane Seuss On “Ballad,” Negative Capability, and the Duende Christ was laid out in a glass coffin, like Snow White. I visited and re-visited him. He looked so much like my father on his deathbed.

This is an essay on my poem "Ballad," Keats's notion of Negative Capability, and Lorca's Duende, with a prompt and a link to the original poem. I'm happy to share it with you.

If this gets 45,000 reposts, I’ll post tomorrow’s data dump on this app.

Here’s Why a Second Death Star Won’t Be That Bad “Mr. Trump’s first term was better than expected… the authoritarian rule that Democrats and the press predicted never appeared. Mr. Trump was too u...

“Sure, the complete destruction of Alderaan wasn’t great, but can you really blame people for being a little nostalgic for the first Death Star? Some folks don’t care about billions of souls crying out in unison as long as the interstellar transports run on time.” www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/her...