HALSEY Literary Reader

What is something you would love to learn how to do? #writers #writingprompt

Social media can draw attention to atrocities – a key factor in reducing risk of recurrence Scholars studied hashtag campaigns in Canada and Syria.

"Social media is often blamed for stoking violence. But it can play a positive role by drawing attention to atrocities – both past and present – which research suggests can make them less likely to occur."

It wants these waves to toss up blast powder
and spice, a harvest shrapnel thrown and lodged
at our ears and mouths. But we know better.

"bird rock avenue" by Adam Deutsch, Every Transmission (Fernwood, 2023)

Some of the birds gather and become
an Apache helicopter, all dogged
on defining a plainness of our day.

I yell the last song I know to seagulls, take
a photograph with a phone
because they don’t listen
as much as they stay supple
and pull crabs from evaporite residue
and low tide’s exposed body.

There was once a land bridge here
since crumbled by erosive storms
and swallowed—a path for the mist.

from "bird rock avenue" by Adam Deutsch

There’s the shore, actual rocks,
each with its very own bird.

A resident, beyond an altar for hot coals,
sun-salutations atop a bench in each
gazes’ arrival and departure. Utility
repair men line their trucks on the curbs,
tear the brush, and install signal.

I'm napping first, hoping I'll have that spark of motivation later

FTR, there are banana slugs that know/have known bananas. I have a little one who loves to mash bananas in his hand and then "feed" them to the neighbors (a category that also includes crows, squirrels, and ants [he really loves ants])

An author I worked with, Nadia Arioli, is joining other poets for the Hilbert Space Poetry Reading Series, coming up next week Wednesday, March 18, at 4:30 p.m. Pacific. And it will be online, so anyone can come!
us06web.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

Write the words you need to hear right now #writers #writingprompt

Off to War, Daughter: Poems by Trapper Markelz — Rockwood Press Though rooted in a father’s experience raising his daughters, these poems reach far beyond parenthood itself, speaking to the joy and wonder that naturally accompany loving others deeply.

these poems keep close to what might otherwise be missed.

—Susan Michele Coronel, author of In the Needle, A Woman (winner, 2024 Donna Wolf Palacio Prize)

www.rockwoodpress.com/bookstore/p/...

Off to War, Daughter: Poems by Trapper Markelz — Rockwood Press Though rooted in a father’s experience raising his daughters, these poems reach far beyond parenthood itself, speaking to the joy and wonder that naturally accompany loving others deeply.

Off to War, Daughter is a beautiful tribute to fatherhood and raising three daughters, while skirting the fragile boundary between love and impermanence. Written with lyrical precision and rooted in everyday life—clothing, routines, small exchanges—

Women's preaching still justified For International Women's Day, Rhiannon Grant reflects on early Quaker support for women's religious leadership ahead of a modern translation of Margaret Fell's seminal text.

“If the Seed of the Woman speak not, the Seed of the Serpent speaks”

lose count of our caresses, so we are conjoined
here in worlds of that mystery called love.

The rising moon now says too: Hurry there to him,
your longing lover, enprayer your soft body with his.

"Hurry Here to Me" by Ed Higgins, Near Truth Only (Fernwood, 2023)

Hurry here to me. Under the star’s
wide quilt we will warm away

the loneliness of you not here
beside me this sleepless moon-rise night.

Hurry here to me, so we may count
with laughter the countless stars of our dreams,

from "Hurry Here to Me" by Ed Higgins

“Hurry. / What matters is to be / inside the prayer of your body.”
—Sandra Cisneros

Hurry here to me
under this quilt of Milky Way stars

where we will embrace the galaxy
of our dreams in one another’s arms.

Introducing Living Gems: the world’s largest collection of Thich Nhat Hanh’s teachings. | Plum Village The Plum Village community is delighted to launch Living Gems. After nearly three years of careful collecting, restoring, and organising Thich Nhat Hanh’s teachings, the archive is ready to be shared…

"There is also a quiet joy in unexpected discovery–coming across a teaching you didn’t know you needed, yet somehow speaks directly to your life."

through the new, sleepy grass and then
the trees, summer-thin and full of breath.

"Prophecies before Spring, in Red and White" by Sarah Etlinger, The Weather Gods (Fernwood, 2023)

A cardinal’s chirring in the air:
blood within us, blood around us—spring.

Spring’s promise comes and goes and comes.
Winter kicks off its boots to run barefoot

from "Prophecies before Spring, in Red and White" by Sarah Etlinger

I’ve been saving some things for you.

A white feather from the day we saw the goose on the roof.
You said maybe things were coming true.

A single scarlet tulip
in a creamy white patch of late daffodils.

Exactly!

My mom did just about every multi-level marketing scheme she could find in those days - Tupperware, International Toy, Avon, Shaklee, Pampered Chef - and she had a secret investment account that my dad didn't find out about until after she died

Yale study challenges notion that aging means decline, finds many older adults improve over time Aging in later life is often portrayed as a steady slide toward physical and cognitive decline. But a new study by scientists at Yale University suggests an

"nearly half of adults aged 65 and older showed measurable improvement in cognitive function, physical function, or both, over time."

Wind

A random tapping

around our midnight

conversation,

or was it prayer?

Memory, a backward story,

a slippery thing

like goodness

or evidence.

Once we were.

Was beautiful.

—Elizabeth C. Herron, In the Cities of Sleep (Fernwood, 2023)

What scares you? #writers #writingprompt

Off to War, Daughter: Poems by Trapper Markelz — Rockwood Press Though rooted in a father’s experience raising his daughters, these poems reach far beyond parenthood itself, speaking to the joy and wonder that naturally accompany loving others deeply.

these poems ask to be carried and returned to like any book you’d never leave “outside in the rain.”

–Candice M. Kelsey, author of Another Place Altogether

www.rockwoodpress.com/bookstore/p/...

Off to War, Daughter: Poems by Trapper Markelz — Rockwood Press Though rooted in a father’s experience raising his daughters, these poems reach far beyond parenthood itself, speaking to the joy and wonder that naturally accompany loving others deeply.

Off to War, Daughter is a poignant ode to fatherhood, where tenderness and self-reckoning move alongside exquisite imagery. Universal to any parent—or anyone who has loved a small, beautiful thing meant to leave—

Erasing Time and Space: Poems by K. McCreary — Rockwood Press Time and space are erased by the power of deep feelings shared by two who remember and who delight in making new memories

These are a few, in which time and space are erased by the power of deep feelings shared by two who remember and who delight in making new memories.

www.rockwoodpress.com/bookstore/p/...

Decades later, K began looking for her lost beloved. In the winter of 2023, she found her, and they immediately renewed their old and undiminished love with phone calls and letters. Reunited now in their home in the woods, K tells stories in poems, as she has done most of her life.