Into every life a little ax must fall. Every dog has its choke chain. Every cloud has a shadow. Better dead than fed. He who laughs, will not last. Sticks and stones will break you, and then the names of things will be changed. A stitch in time saves no one. The darkest hour comes.
'Verities', by Kim Addonizio
#Poetry #PhilosophicalPessimism #KimAddonizio
Kim Addonizio's poem, "You Don't Know What Love Is" YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT LOVE IS but you know how to raise it in me like a dead girl winched up from a river. How to wash off the sludge, the stench of our past. How to start clean. This love even sits up and blinks; amazed, she takes a few shaky steps. Any day now she'll try to eat solid food. She'll want to get into a fast car, one low to the ground, and drive to some cinderblock shithole in the desert where she can drink and get sick and then dance in nothing but her underwear. You know where she's headed, you know she'll wake up with an ache she can't locate and no money and a terrible thirst. So to hell with your warm hands sliding inside my shirt and your tongue down my throat like an oxygen tube. Cover me in black plastic. Let the mourners through.
I love poems that surprise me. The opening image of this Kim Addonizo poem has stayed w/me for 20 years. The journey of this poem is long & fast.
"You don't know what love is
but you know how to raise it in me
like a dead girl winched up from a river."
#poetry #booksky #kimaddonizio #poemaday
You with the Crack Running Through You I can seep in, I can dry clear. And yes it would still be there. And no I couldn't hold you forever. But isn't it drafty at night, alone in that canyon with the wind of the mind dragging its debris— I wanted to put my mouth on you and draw out whatever toxin ... -but I understand. There are limits to love. Here is a flower that needs no water. It can grow anywhere, nourished on nothing. And yes. - Kim Addonizio
YOU WITH THE CRACK RUNNING THROUGH YOU
By #KimAddonizio
I can seep in, I can dry clear.
And yes it would still be there.
And no I couldn't hold you forever.
But isn't it drafty at night,
alone in that canyon
with the wind of the mind
dragging its debris—
Read this poem today at @oneart.bsky.social by #KimAddonizio and just LOVED it.
oneartpoetry.com/2025/06/25/n...
Poets! One week left to submit your manuscript for the Richard Snyder Book Prize.
Deadline: May 15
$1,000 and 50 author copies
Judge: Kim Addonizio
ashlandpoetrypress.submittable.com/submit
#poetry #poetrycommunity #poetrycontest #poetrysubmissions #bookcontest #kimaddonizio #may15
A photo Kim Addonizio's book "Lucifer at the Starlite" (W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 2009), along with a vintage ash tray and lighters.
Some men will want to fuck your poems, and instead they will find you.
Some men will say, "I'd like to see how you look when you come," and then hail a cab.
Some men are a list of ingredients with no recipe.
Some men never see you.
- Kim Addonizio, from "The Matter"
#kimaddonizio #poetry #poems
Happy May Day, poets!
Two weeks left to submit your manuscript for the Richard Snyder Prize.
May 15 deadline
Judge: Kim Addonizio
ashlandpoetrypress.submittable.com
Send us your work!
#poetrycontest #poetrycommunity #poetrysubmissions #bookcontest #poetry #kimaddonizio #poetryprize
One of our favorites from 2025 Richard Snyder Prize judge, Kim Addonizio: "The Singing" from her great collection, Tell Me.
Deadline: May 15
ashlandpoetrypress.submittable.com/submit
Send us your manuscript!
#poetrycontest #bookcontest #poetry #kimaddonizio #poetrysubmission #poetrycommunity
Hey Poets! The clock is ticking! Just a couple weeks left to submit to the Richard Snyder Book Prize.
Deadline: May 15
$1000 and publication
Judge: Kim Addonizio
ashlandpoetrypress.submittable.com
#poetry #poetryprize #bookcontest #poetrycontest #poetrysubmission #kimaddonizio #poetrybook #poem
“When I find it, I’ll pull that garment
from its hanger like I’m choosing a body
to carry me into this world, through
the birth-cries and the love-cries too,
and I’ll wear it like bones, like skin,
it’ll be the goddamned
dress they bury me in.”
#BookSky #KimAddonizio #Poetry
Deadline extended for the 2025 Richard Snyder Memorial Book Prize. New deadline will be May 15, 2025. The winner receives $1000 and publication of their book. The 2025 judge is Kim Addonizio. Submit at www.ashlandpoetrypress.submittable.com
Poets! Good news! We're extending our reading period for the Richard Snyder Book Prize.
New deadline: May 15
$1000 & publication to the winner
2025 Judge: Kim Addonizio
Find us at ashlandpoetrpress.submittable.com
#poetrycontest #bookprize #kimaddonizio #poetrybook #poetry #poetrycontest
The Ashland Poetry Press is reading manuscripts for the 2025 Richard Snyder Book Prize. Submissions are open from January 1 to May 1. The 2025 judge is Kim Addonizio. Full guidelines can be found at submittable. The URL is www.ashlandpoetrypress.submittable.com.
As long as we're here, we thought maybe you all could send us some poems, yeah?
Richard Snyder Prize
Kim Addonizio to Judge
Deadline May 1
Break our hearts, poets! (But, like, in a good way.)
ashlandpoetrypress.submittable.com
#poetrycontest #poetry #bookprize #kimaddonizio #ashlandpoetrypress
If you ever woke in your dress at 4am ever closed your legs to someone you loved opened them for someone you didn’t moved against a pillow in the dark stood miserably on a beach seaweed clinging to your ankles paid good money for a bad haircut backed away from a mirror that wanted to kill you bled into the back seat for lack of a tampon if you swam across a river under rain sang using a dildo for a microphone stayed up to watch the moon eat the sun entire ripped out the stitches in your heart because why not if you think nothing & no one can / listen I love you joy is coming
#Poetry
#Poem
#BlueskyPoetry
#KimAddonizio
To the Woman Crying Uncontrollably in the Next Stall by Kim Addonizio
Kim Addonizio reading for Smartish Pace at AWP 2024; her poetry appears in SP #30. Kim's recent books are Now We’re Getting Somewhere & Exit Opera / @wwnorton.bsky.social ** We're hosting a reading at AWP in LA on 3/26/25 - details soon! ** #SmartishPace #KimAddonizio #poet youtu.be/8WxQoxHz5V8?...
Photo of the book "Lucifer at the Starlite" by Kim Addonizio, featuring her poem "Feeling Sexy": "It makes me want to say things disallowed from serious poetry and employ instead the lexicon of porn spam."
Feeling Sexy: From "Lucifer at the Starlite" by Kim Addonizio, W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 2009
#kimaddonizio #poetry #poets #luciferatthestarlite #feelingsexy #valentinesday #poetrybooks #bookphotos
From Kim Addonizio's book, Tell Me: bookshop.org/a/862/978188...
#kimaddonizio #poetry #poem #books #writing
From Kim Addonizio's book, Tell Me: bookshop.org/a/862/978188...
#poem #books #writing #poets #kimaddonizio
Sei que minha amiga está partindo,
embora ela ainda esteja sentada
à minha frente no restaurante
e se incline sobre a mesa para mergulhar
seu pão no azeite do meu prato; sei
como o cabelo dela costumava ser espesso, (...)
#poema #kimaddonizio
wp.me/p7fifM-6vp
First Kiss (by Kim Addonizio) Afterwards you had that drunk, drugged look my daughter used to get, when she had let go of my nipple, her mouth gone slack and her eyes turned vague and filmy, as though behind them the milk was rising up to fill her whole head, that would loll on the small white stalk of her neck so I would have to hold her closer, amazed at the sheer power of satiety, which was nothing like the needing to be fed, the wild flailing and crying until she fastened herself to me and made the seal tight between us, and sucked, drawing the liquid down and out of my body; no, this was the crowning moment, this giving of herself, knowing she could show me how helpless she was - that's what I saw, that night when you pulled your mouth from mine and leaned back against a chain link fence, in front of a burned-out church: a man who was going to be that vulnerable, that easy and impossible to hurt.
Just— *gasps* 👌#poetry #KimAddonizio
Prayer (by Kim Addonizio) Sometimes, when we're lying after love, I look at you and see your body's future of lying beneath the earth; putting the heel of my hand against your rib I feel how faint and far away the heartbeat is. I rest my cheek against your left nipple and listen to the surge of blood, seeing your life splashed out, filmy water hurled from a pot onto dry grass. And I want to be pressed deep into the bed and covered over, the way a seed is pressed into a hole, the dirt tamped down with a trowel. I want to be a failed seed, the kind that doesn't grow, that doesn't know it's meant to. I want to lie here without moving, lifeless as an animal that's slaughtered, its blood smeared on a doorpost, I want death to take me if it has to, to spare you, I want it to pass over.
Oh my God. An ice kiss of a poem. I feel this in my core. #KimAddonizio
