Jessica Ballen

I like my solitude most of all, & this is why I’m a poet & not a journalist.

See picture (of my husband) for an accurate representation of my moon and mars in Aries season

Hi should I post here or no

Indeed! Yourself?

Just me and my GERD against the world

Fuckkkkk how are poets so hot?

NO CUTS to Medicaid! Cutting Medicaid—a state and federal partnership that funds health care for more than 80 million Americans, including older adults, children, pregnant people, and disabled people—would run counter to ...

please sign: sign.moveon.org/petitions/te...

An image of open submissions for Lunch ticket literary magazine

Submit to Lunch Ticket! lunchticket.submittable.com/submit

Shout out to the writers for accepting my brand of weird

Nerds

Crying bc the writing muses blessed upon me an epiphany to restructure my entire poetry manuscript, and all I want is sweet surrender!

Ilya Kaminsky’s Deaf Republic: Poems

Companies Scaling Back or Denouncing DEI

Amazon
Boeing
Brown-Forman
Caterpillar
Ford
Harley-Davidson
John Deere
Lowe’s
Molson Coors
McDonald’s
Meta
Nissan
Stanley Black & Decker
Target
Tractor Supply
Toyota
Walmart

Support who supports you ✨✊

One of these days I’ll butter my bread and think
“I’m good enough for this life”

Mary Ruefle:

Looking at my old community college transcripts and I got a B+ in The Holocaust.

haven’t worn jeans in years but i bought a pair yesterday. i feel like i’m wearing some kind of medieval torture device. i’m like if the man in the iron mask was a 21st-century woman. i feel like i’m living the premise of every Abramović endurance piece. this is me sitting in my jeans

“I saw the refrigerator glow” — the Jessica Ballen story

Dreamlight Valley’s a nightmare for someone with executive dysfunction 🙃

Love in the time of ozempic

Ahhh yes, the two genders:

From john compton’s “Melancholy Arcadia”

The Summer After Last by Michael Burkard I do not want to belabor invisibility, but if it isn’t there in the spaces among the people as a spiritual thread then I do not want to be there either. Sea or no sea, house or not. There is a useless rage in returning to the past. It is a labor not unlike labor among the stones, 5 years time and someone is made to break them for nothing. Sea or no sea, house or not. In the unrational time of the summer after last I found myself alone with the sun, simple night, water when I wanted water. My heart almost broke for not being used to this. It is amazing, the chains attempted upon the heart. Sea or no sea, house or not. —for Bill

just learned of Michael's passing. he was my favorite teacher at Syracuse. i’m heartbroken.

*

I do not want to belabor invisibility,
but if it isn’t there in the spaces
among the people as a spiritual thread
then I do not want to be there either.

—Michael Burkard, from "The Summer After Last"

I missed a purrfect opportunity :(

Fantastic!! Thank you for my book gifts @steventurrill.bsky.social

From Lena Khalaf Tuffaha’s “Something about Living”

From Cathy Linh Che’s “Split”

Yellow teeth and compression socks—I’m that bitch

Perfect! ♥️