Month: April 2026

No more day trips
No more gadding about
No more pioneer shit
No more EXT. ARMY AMMUNITION PLANT – DAY
No more loitering while the coal train passes
No more fights on the walkway over the interstate
No more Sunday small towns shut down for God and football
No more EXT. UNDER THE BRIDGE OVER THE MISSISSIPPI – DAY
No more bookshop rack full of gun magazines
No more muscle-shirted men loitering between empty shop windows
No more cafés with manic blonde “welcome in!” echoes
No more EXT. ABANDONED HIGH SCHOOL – NIGHT
Let’s go back home to our sunset walk down the hill
Let’s go back to the nature trail by our old house
Which isn’t the same since they hacked the overgrowth
Instead of sneaking away, you see houses across the creek
And they see you
And you are overgrown
No more crosstown haunts, either, then
I’m calling it
Let’s go home
Before it’s time to leave again

Dear harpies, hello
Are you spooling obliviously 
in longitudinal lines
or a stack of little belts

Summering so voraciously it felt
like it fell from the pocket
of Long Overdue & a rando
kindly handed it back to you

Your kick pleats are so cute
& your silver curls little cups
of needle shine that smell like sage
& cedar or pine & lavender or seawater & hay

They shine like turquoise tinted glass in the sun
or the stone with the white veins running though it
or that time we came upon each other in the woods
behind the house each thinking the other upstairs

I’m sorry I putter I’m sleepy not sorry
to be soon sleeping so sleeping so so
so shuteye so moondrool so deeply lapping
the plum-colored lake into which
I now deliciously drop 

There is chaff around my rags
and a swoon in my nodal moon.
A deep horror of petrichor
greets me daily at the bar.
I don’t go to San Diego
for burritos anymore and
Ikea’s cult-fave bookcase
sits undelivered on my porch.
A friend said there’s no code for rolling
from The Darkness to The Flood 
though we both know full well
what black be the beauty of
this last rain date in April.
Maybe I do make magic bad 
and if true I want a tattoo of that 
to rouse the piss out of this 
slow-dance/burn tune
of foopah cosplay musing.
On the other hand
my other friend said
puddles and slush
still prism the sun
to weather the scent
of wet cement 
and there are twenty-seven
as-yet-undreamt-of 
broad transcription diphthongs
left to invent.
And because of all thus
I will continue to wonder
what bright flux
might come.


(I just want to thank everyone for this month of incredible poems! Every year I’m so happy and honored to be joining in here — and maybe this year especially, with all the daily — hourly — attempted whittlings-away of our souls by the forces of freakin’ evil. I wish you all beauty and success in whatever ways they sustain you. Personally, I will have some [hopefully] really good news tomorrow. Shine your light-thoughts my way, please?? THANK YOU ALL again and again.)

It’s the final day of April! I just wanna jump in and say THANK YOU and OMG to all of you who have been absolutely on fire this month. What a delight & daily pleasure to come peek and your genius. (And thanks to our readers too, and everyone who shared a poem on socials.) April poems forever!

PS: If you’re on a streak and want to continue beyond today, please feel free. The space is yours. ❤️

—Shanna for Bloof

grief is a giraffe who
glides among the grove in a gangly
and gentle gloom, gnawing
leaves, stripping uppermost
green with its greedy lips
its black tongue

through the gaping all
good goes, longing
clinging to
margins in sluggish ghost
everything weighs, nothing aggregates

agony is a gift            the galaxy is

divulged in that
gap—gutted
glistened

 

First town then town again then hotel key what comes next 
First town then town again then pie & coffee also Bob also terror 
Next town remains first town once quiet town a missing person town
A missing key town a folksy kind of town a weird town then a terror town 
A once quiet town with a mill a mill town with typical stratification of teens 
Then becoming a terror town a terror again in the first town the town again 
First town then town again then hotel key what comes next 
First town then town again then pie & coffee also Bob also terror 
Next town remains first town once quiet town a missing person town
A missing key town a folksy kind of town a weird town then a terror town 
A once quiet town with a mill a mill town with typical stratification of teens 
Then becoming a terror town a terror again in the first town the town again 

A lake nestled deep in a trail dotted with firs That melody in the distance do you hear it too

First a town then a town then a terror a terror town of bored kids with unspoken
  desires 
It was as if a terror had settled into the town the town with peculiar tourists 
The town with decent cup of coffee the town with lake where bored kids maybe swam 
Maybe did lots of things their parents shouldn’t know owl shadows upon an evening
 lake 
An evening lake as if terror had settled in a backwoods kind of terror a terrible
 kind of terror 
As if the town was now terror town body washed against shore body dragged along
 shore 
A murder in a once quiet town a murder of a girl an attempted murder of a girl
Misunderstood kid a murder of secret desire a secret desire washed upon shore
 lust of terror 
Sound at the edge of a lake in a town of weird tourists peculiar pies cold coffee
 stratification of teens 
Some shook by murder others enthralled by murder others too busy just being teens
 a melody 
In the distance a Bob in the distance a town encased in trees a mill in flames 
Where does this leave me 
First town then town again then a secret then what came next 
Once quiet town then terror then coffee & pie then again town 
Then town first next come what then pie then again town 
Then town first then terror Where does this leave me

Sorry, been busy with end of the semester grading, etc. so I just decided to try and revise an older poem that I’ve been fussing with for the last year or so. Obv. shout-out to Twin Peaks.

Yesterday, whine and ebb of happy birthday
beyond the bridal bush. Billiards rack of black-clad
post-grads picked over the pillowy stash
I hid near Vonnegut’s house. Battered vole,

battered for hours by the tortie with tags. Don’t touch
the doorknob, the clutch of dresses. This month is to nuzzle
or let fly: handfast the loosening green. I’m ready or not
                   under the phlox rug. Over the blue-black beyond.

*composed by playing Poetry Mad Libs with Molly Brodak’s poem “Going Back to Sleep” from A Little Middle of the Night

Up the hill & down
the hill    

The hill 
is a mountain

The mountain
is 976 feet above sea level

Sea level is a lever 
to pull in case of emergency

a switch to flood the darkness
with light 

a parallel understanding 
to hills & the way they part

along one side & bristle 
with evergreens amid fallen trees

One year half the island burned
but the other half held its breath

& today the old growth
looks around

shakes its heavy limbs
& wants nothing more 

than to stride
off into the sea

beyond the green bell buoy
beyond the green ringing of the bell

I am elated because spring, because love, because good God my friends

are amazing. Creativity and the shape that contains it, the way that distance

exacerbates insecurity and how a look, not even a touch, can help attend

to the tender details, a preference for in-person interaction, an insistence

on bodies as the shape of creativity, on bodies as bodies. I want you, it’s simple,

and all these flowers and all this work just makes it worse, more salient, 

i.e. better. I like the sharp cut of desire as much as the soft unfolding, the ample

radiating outward of alient energy, gallant passes at some kind of brilliant

unfolding into all that we are in the moment. And this one, too. I worry

that you are too overwhelmed to connect with me. With work, babies,

and the basic challenge of leaving the house each morning. Surely my worldly

concerns concern you equally, how the crazy phases of life and their rhythmic

changes pulse with possibility. You are in over your head with me. Anyone 

would be. Is. Except Jessica, maybe. I’m in over my head with myself.

It’s still spring, but now it’s Monday and I am quite undone by the fleeting

nature of both feelings and existence. Instead of elation, anxiety. Chaff at

the edges of what little attention I have–attention as a field that should be

sorted, but isn’t, anxiety as a kind of energetically thwarted love that stubbornly

refuses to leave the solar plexus. “I’m going to put my feet in the toilet,” says

Desmond, fully serious, slowly walking up the stairs, then suddenly declaring

it a joke. But is it? I go upstairs to check, just in case. I love my friends. 

Desmond sits on top of me so it’s pretty much impossible to type, and I spend

the next five minutes telling him to get off of me. When I get to this line,

it’s tomorrow, and I extend my emotions once again, pretending I’m in control 

of my love and creativity, my ability to not obsess over whether or not my lover 

will message me back, whether they’ll tell me their dreams or tell me they’re 

tired, hopefully both, but however it goes, I’m gone. Obsessing about however

it felt to do this and that and that and that. I prepare for tomorrow’s workday

and sigh. Trevor says he likes it when I sigh as I write poems. There’s a romance

to the moment that I believe in but don’t feel, not right now, even though it’s still

spring, and my friends are still amazing. I’m still hanging on your every word,

sweet one, and the semblance of something between us, among humans, among

feelings, exhausted by my own elation and swoon and by the basics of the day,

now several days, of trying to write this poem while mostly parenting and working. 

My legs ache from hauling boxes up and down the steps to my new studio, disarray

a necessary precursor to order, all the weird and necessary objects lurking in boxes,

phrases lurking in emails. Why don’t you watch my instagram stories? They are 

for you, in part, for all of you. For excessively late nights and early mornings,

the challenge of getting the grown ups and the babies out of the house at the same

time. I am aware of my indiscretions, have declared them to the proper authorities,

know that all these yearnings are ridiculous. There’s some kind of luchador horror

film on at the bar and I’m remembering a particular burrito place in San Diego,

site of many now-distant loves that I don’t want to wait another decade to see again,

the hollowness of middle age followed by overwhelming abundance. Behold, 

all my loves! Ill advised and otherwise, marked and unmarked. Have you ever

been to Sky Zone? I want to dive into that pool of styrofoam with you and survive.

Look at you
Look how you look
On that hilltop
By that meadow
Spatulating the exchange rate
With bees
Saved-up salisbury steak grease
And fried chicken gristle
From the ‘70s

Just look at you
Steve of Queens
Doompollening the lagoon 
Where the boys are
But the girls aren’t
Where shit happens in the real
And everybody’s dragging their spinning rims
Uphill for no good reason
So mouthy
A lout 
All chinos and cake
All boots on the ground
Trippin’ balls
And shit outta lunch

headless box turtle is in fidelity

with the spring ephemerals    rib cage 

of a water bird is in fidelity 

with the actualized understory   

congressional movement of the meat

body   least attractive stretch

of neck    violets creating 

a permeable membrane  (redundant but

necessary)   a developing 

flush of golden

oysters   who else has tried 

to clock what the hour was 

withholding    I will eventually

stop refracting but for all 

you know this

is diamond class 

the hairs stand 

even in 

full sunlight   

the blood 

loss is

all mine