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18.01.2026 19:29
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Thank you! 💕
The final SIR fall 2025 Ruth Awad Poetry Pick is Emily Skaja's "Personal Weather":
www.usi.edu/sir/ruth-awa...
I’ve been giving myself permission to complete some essays on my first love, music. Thanks to @oxfordamerican.bsky.social for running this piece about how the blues can become a sanctuary & rallying cry, an outlet for communal joy in a moment of political tension. oxfordamerican.org/oa-now/a-blu...
I'm thrilled to announce that @emilyskaja.bsky.social has won the Copper Nickel Editors' Prize in Poetry for issue 41! Here's her stunning poem, "Goodbye to All That."
Volume 22, Issue 1 is in PRINT! ✨ Featuring work from 23 writers, this is an issue you want on your book shelf. Check out the contents list on our website, and order your copy today! Link in bio 💚
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#litmag #poetry #creativenonfiction #shortstory #creativewriting #literaryjournal
Today’s poem is selected by Emily Skaja (@emilyskaja.bsky.social) as part of the 20th anniversary of Read A Little Poetry.
It appeared in The Master Letters by Lucie Brock-Broido, published by Alfred A. Knopf, 1995. Shared here with deep gratitude.
My favorite poet showing out, showing her whole heart❤️ @emilyskaja.bsky.social
“What will I do with my days / now that my nights / are sublimely alone / and how will I make use of this wound / I carried like a map / so that I would never, never / lose you?” — @paulmguest.bsky.social, “In Praise of the Defective” thediagram.com/7_4/guest.html
Black lake, black boat, by Emily Skaja. 'Black lake, black boat, black fog I can't find my way through. Black trees, black moon. I once knew the sky from the water. This course I remember, its narrowing. How I crept my way down the ladder like clutching the gluey rungs of a throat. I know you know how I've been. Like you, like blood sucked from a cut. A hot metal gash, a beat of alarm, too late. The water is listening. That's my name in its mouth.'
'Black lake, black boat,' by Emily Skaja was published in The Poetry Review Spring 2025, which is out now and available for purchase via the link in our bio, and is freely available to read on our website.
Like God, I will leave an arc of implication
happy #smallpoemsunday from this snippet by Rae Armantrout @armantrout.bsky.social 🌈
Natalie Shapero’s poems never not stopping me in my tracks (in this morning’s @kenyonreview.bsky.social newsletter)
TALE She is beautiful, the workmanship of her fur. When I think of her, my body aches in small lights. I want to be where the owl is from, where a year is four thousand days, where there are no more countries, where everyone gets away.
Victoria Chang
The Trees Witness Everything
But sometimes it’s warm enough for the neighbors to stand in the field and brush out yer horses tail. She knows the sun slips through it. The hoarse is two-toned, losing a winter coat, the day like a world slipping through its own hands dusk will lead them out to a road that leads out of town, and she’ll teach it to walk this way, through shadow.
Jill Osier
IN THE MORNING, BEFORE ANYTHING BAD HAPPENS The sky is open all the way. Workers upright on the line like spokes. I know there is a river somewhere, lit, fragrant, golden mist, all that, whose irrepressible birds can’t believe their luck this morning and every morning. I let them riot in my mind a few minutes more before the news comes.
Molly Brodak
Friends & beloveds are worried abt what’s coming, from detentions to disruption of healthcare to denial of rights. Friends abroad are terrified too
Know you are not alone. We are here for you—in any way we can
Here is a link to a poem I go to when lost:
www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48501/...
Then came the darker sooner, came the later lower. We were no longer a sweeter-here happily-ever-after. We were after ever. We were farther and further. More was the word we used for harder. Lost was our standard-bearer. Our gods were fallen faster, and fallen larger. The day was duller, duller was disaster. Our charge was error. Instead of leader we had louder, instead of lover, never. And over this river broke the winter’s black weather.
I keep rereading this solstice poem by Catherine Wing, “The Darker Sooner.” (h/t @jessejohnson.bsky.social )
“More was the word we used for harder.
Lost was our standard-bearer.
Our gods were fallen faster,
and fallen larger.”
THE YOKE don't worry. I know you’re dead but tonight turn your face again toward me when I hear your voice there is now no direction in which to turn I sleep and wake and sleep and wake and sleep and wake and but tonight turn your face again toward me see upon my shoulders is the yoke that is not a yoke don't worry. I know you’re dead but tonight turn your face again
“turn your face again” A poem by Frank Bidart.
What a nice surprise to be on this terrific list of poets & poems with my favorite @emilyskaja.bsky.social ✨✨ lithub.com/49-contempor...
Who should you ask about the best poems of 2024? Poets, of course. And their picks are all available to read online for free.
To the young who want to die.
Thank you so much ❤️
Thanks, Jill! I’m so glad to hear that. ❤️
Thought about sharing this elegy (cw: miscarriage) on X last month, but it felt too chaotic over there even then. Grateful to @ampoetryreview.bsky.social for seeing me. www.aprweb.org/poems/dear-a...
Longing, we say, because desire is full
of endless distances.
—Robert Hass
#fromthearchive
poems.com/poem/meditat...