Category: Uncategorized

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THE PRANK IS I’M STILL ALIVE

At my mouse table

I don’t like the way I feel after I talk to her

the prodding into spaces where I fall down

People without stopping

There’s no rule I have to call my mother

I remember her washing my hair in the kitchen sink

There’s a reason an era when running away like Claudia Kincaid made sense

Three of us said at lunch we thought about it or had done it 

If we disappeared our parents would express concern

and reading that book aloud to a classroom made sense

I break a little

from being little

I am often alone

The years keep getting better

all the things I see so clearly now

political heat

similar things not happening

In the blockade or the fantasy of the blockade

If you are too perfect you will never start anything

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diary 1

[ w/ hot pink large format dot grid ]

taking risks after nonsense. last day in, first day in. sunslant, copper sun block, sticky circles. broke ten days
to be here. broke four months to be there. the bar is loud and i love that. sun in my eyes, sun on my page.
i’ve been thinking about it a lot more since paul died. i talk to paul about it a lot since he died. i wonder
about it a lot since paul died. paul died and then probably i had a drink. paul died, but not of drinking.
paul and i never talked about drinking in life.

paul’s blood in my cup.

somewhere, i’m pouring.

//

have kept pouring me out.

have remained a secret fan of naming.

having never talked about drinking in death.
will die, but not of drinking. will probably breathe out a fountain arc. oh paul, is there drinking in the
afterlife? how to speak to the dead having never believed in heaven. how to behold the dead after they
have died having never known them in life. moon eyes, moon sentences. nothing’s ever quiet when your
ears ring. broke ten days. broke four months. broke etcetera. the moon never really goes down, that’s nonsense.

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Spring


The pelicans are back. I wanted you to see it,
their wings scrutable and gliding in a way so

foreign to me, like machines cheerily producing.
I can’t bear who I’ve become. I am like the gular,

an ugly word for throat. Did you know they have ridges
atop their bills, knobs that look like the names of girls

I knew, those Daryl’s and Susan’s who would also glide,
how home is everywhere for the prettily rich? DDT

briefly extinguished brown pelicans, who stoop powerfully
now on Louisiana’s lethal bridges. Trajectory has been

on my mind, the knowing atoms ahead, already there
to shape us into a chemical choice. The lines of their forms

at sunset, both awe and not-. Memory is the hand
touching without consent, which I cave to and present

as a gift, my sundering. My misery, too, can glide
indelicately, and when it lands, all it can do is land. Is this

why I fail at love poems, for all I’ve never seen. No.
Love waddles by a garden window like an injured possum,

its gait so familiar, the mammal’s anti-grace. That it knows
its headed to die in the hedge, that it knows where to go.

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Dragoonfruit

Assume a pose
And hold it
Until

Adding red to the sorbet
Or it won’t taste right

Dragooned, I thought
Once the ship sails out of port what are you going to do?

The spacefaring voice continues
“Be polite and live best”

What did I forget since last season?

Spraying poison on poison ivy vines
As careful as an act of love

Careful, careless, carefree
I smelt in the smelter
And then
Exeunt

Assume another postulate
Well, when you put it like that,
How about,

…?

???.

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Easter

The Easter honey bee swarm then the hawk on the railing

this morning. A juvenile red-tail but I had to ask the tech folks

since they’re the only ones at work who reliably identify birds. Possibilities

like: cancel the meeting! cancel the rebrand! go talk

to the hawk. That one place in your neck connected to everything

that hurts or might hurt in the future, that’s possibility, too. Exhaustion like

baby’s after-midnight ear infection and lunchboxes half full

of rotting food left at school over the weekend. Persephone’s 

returned but what if her come back is moot. She’s back

but the weather is crummy. She’s back but a reporter still asks

a doctor who survived the Al Shifa hospital siege in Gaza if

her executed colleagues were terrorists. She’s back

and knows that post-resurrection is tender just like pre-resurrection

is claustrophobic, but I don’t know where we are in the cycle:

resurrection during apocalypse is reliably dicey.

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April 1

Did the library of Alexandria hold up
her arms and rustle as you jumped
books held in your soft mouth
or Eiffel a sick light that never stopped
spinning as glass slivers opened
along her iron arms such frothy
language held you as burnt goddesses
zipped past became statues
a game you played when you were a small
wolf caricature licking mercury
from a blue plastic bowl
that endless yelp in your sugar
frosted arms

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April

April is the cruelest month

The cruelest of the most cruel months month

Also National Load Heavy Cardstock Into Your Printer Month, Throw Your Dad’s Bandana in the Wash Month, and
Acknowledge Maternal Ass Duress Month

April is a mood

April is a mope

It’s the moo

It’s the fucking moo

Stirring mixing clutching breeding bleeding branches burning burning burning

Breeding and more bleeding and more warm dead branches more clutching and yeah: breeding

And drying

Don’t forget the drying

The drying tubers

And fucking lilacs

Fucking lilac snow and dead rain

And cruel mopeds

Fucking cruel mopeds neither living nor dead

How about a little drowning?

And bit of dull life in the drowning?

How about some Earth feeding on the drowning?

Some sweaty faces in the stony places and the shouting and the crying and the we who were living are now dying?

Or a fuckful forgetting with warm dead breeding fucking us dry in the ugly lilac snow?

And Death undoing?

Death — doing and undoing with cruel unstoppered unguents and strange  synthetic cruelty perfumes troubled confused and drowning in odours drowning fattening and flung into the dancery burning green and orange foaming fomenting more Earth and more roots and jesus h. christ more desire and lilacs and snow and dead rain

Don’t forget the dead fucking rain

And all of us breeding the fucking roots keeping us up with dead feelings and life stirring the withered stumps the chuckles canals and gashouses the whores morons and idiots a welcome indifference to whining mandolins fucking my humble beneficent spiders the lean solicitors everything fucking the life out of everything just fuckest me the fuck out hurry up please its time

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Because the ZZ Plant Loves Its Dreamlife

Because invitation I want to spell enchantment and necessary difficulty
Because ownership is delusion and so am I this setting its gangly underfeeling and laughter inside bubbles with hats and finery filched from the control machine too long ago therefore veer elsewhere 
Because I think this is the switch
Because I want liberation from resentment and
temporal upheaval of the disembodied otherwise
(anxiety)
Because it’s a family affair
Because the myth of the closed system eats its tale and recirculates
Because that Christ wound radiates like a vulva
Because unusual reds
Because the fool is in my mouth
Because the sensual surrounds
Because flaws are the escape hatch
Because I want to begin again
To think about unlived love
Because the unloved lives
Live your unlived life, little longing.
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Life Cycles: Summer & Spring

sometimes/ it re-enters as tender/                               dream stretched/ -out road to/Fort Tilden

never-ending/  burning thighs Sameer’s/         laughing chide I/ thought         we were going/

to lose you   sun-smeared/bikes in front me/  trailing distance/   clouds/pulled straight as horizon/

forcing another revolution/ of chain & tires     eventually/ sanded with            sweat/ running

down/face fat dark berries/     shoved in mouth only/ time saw/        this swathe of water/

above swarm/. of white-gray gulls mass/          of people in deep/ distance 10/            maybe 14 

bikes/  littered along beach/   footprints thru sand   many names   already/ forgotten              or I 

never/bothered   to hear careless/ adventure   to kill/             an otherwise empty/Saturday—a 

blank slate/ blue   iron &/salt   soft/. skin         some quiet/ gossip       about someone’s/ absence an

outstretched/ arm   in hunt/    of an airborne/                        frisbee Blonde Redhead   coming out/ 

of phone/speaker   empties tangled/with seaweed   can’t/ remember              if I/ swam Sunday/

in bed             with books until/ mid-afternoon          light/ falling in stripes/             upon sore 

calves/ out  window then/      a single tree &/   parking   lot full/      of risers/ Chinatown gloried/

in its afternoon hustle/ it re-enters a life away/  from a life yet /         there is no thru-line that/

life this life circles/    sadself revolving with/   smilingself a floating/  center to see/             light

falling/ in strips some gossip/  a memory/     of a bike ride   to a beach while/        now out/   my 

window/  aged red-bricked apartment/ buildings thin trees/  with hesitant buds cars/ sloshing        

along street/  afternoon footprints in drizzle/  below oversized/ shrubs of brilliant/ green/  

my desk cluttered/ with books by Morgan/ James & Joe my own/     book asunder somewhere/

in the mess/ a word  the sentence/ an em dash/ a phrase a/ line collaboration of/ days & nights/

real & imagined/    friends held closely/    in the distance—

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Holy Week

Easter Sunday at the little dog run,
& the dachsunds are dressed in their Sunday best.

I’ll admit, I’ve been forgetting what hope tastes like,
after six months of Saturdays spent in the streets,

even a Thursday locked in a jail cell,
my cries falling on ears tuned in only to empire.

Holy Week came early this year;
after six years on the East Coast

I still haven’t learned my lesson,
& I shiver when the sun ducks behind a cloud.

But then the wind turns
& all smells of lilac.

Not lilac-scented soap or deodorant,
but the sudden perfume of aliveness.

This is only the beginning.

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April is here? April is here!

And we’ll be digging in mud-season style here on the Bloof blog, dropping some poem bulbs into the muck. That’s as far as I’m willing to stretch that metaphor. The point is, it’s NaPoWriMo time.

What is NaPoWriMo? It’s an unofficial, noncommercial, sans-sponsorship, egalitarian, world-wide (that’s GloPoWriMo to you, bub) celebration of poetry that induces a 30-day fever of daily drafts.

NaPoWriMo started 21 years ago when Maureen Thorson gave herself the challenge to write a poem a day on her blog and jokingly called it “national” even though it was just her, after NaNoWriMo, the novel-writing month (and now nonprofit org) that has been held every November since 1999. Shanna and a few others joined her on their own blogs the following year, and well, then it was a whole thing somehow.

You can read more about it at the NaPoWriMo.net site, where Maureen also very generously offers (optional) daily prompts, podcasts, feature sites, and other resources. (Pssst, we’ve got a new book of essays by Maureen, available here.)

Bloof poets are invited to post with abandon here all month. It’s generally a bit of a mess and a ton of fun to follow along.

APRIL ASSEMBLAGE:

Peter Davis
Natalie Eilbert
K. Lorraine Graham
Steven Karl
Kirsten Kaschock
Becca Klaver
Rebecca Loudon
Sharon Mesmer
Danielle Pafunda
JJ Rowan
Katie Jean Shinkle
Nicole Steinberg
Irene Vázquez
Reagan Louise Wilson
Elisabeth Workman
Shanna Compton

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New! Romance in Twelve Lines

The linocut block in the foreground with two marked up test prints in the background and a small pile of linoleum scraps from editing the block.
Gold metallic printing ink rolled out on a glass inking slab and the ink-covered roller.
A large black Conrad etching press with ivory blankets flipped back sits in the print studio at Kennedy Press in Belfast, Maine, set up to print Bloof chapbook covers.
Several freshly printed covers for romance in twelve lines by Bruna Beber, translated by Sarah Rebecca Kersley, lying on a wire-shelved drying rack. The cover is dark gray with lettering and imagery printed in metallic gold, from a hand-carved linocut block.
The first sewn copy of romance in twelve lines by Bruna Beber, translated by Sarah Rebecca Kersley. A large eye with rays and three smaller icos of a cloud, a broken vase with wilted flower, and a flame are printed between the title and the author's name in metallic gold ink on dark gray paper.
Five copies of romance in twelve lines fanned out in my hand, showing the light reflecting on the metallic gold ink.

Bloof’s first release in the new year comes to us all the way from Brazil: Bruna Beber’s romance in twelve lines. We’ve been working as a guest printer over at Kennedy Press in Belfast, Maine to print up these covers from our hand-carved linoleum block in gold metallic ink on wrought iron gray paper.

This sequence of poems appears in both English translation by Sarah Rebecca Kersley and in the original Portuguese in the chapbook’s second section. As the titular relationship tumbles through its inevitable phases, Beber’s imagery shifts from the giddy tick tock of anticipation into days of “doubts and lilies” and metaphorically overdrawn accounts. We’ve all been there, and this handful of poems captures each point in love’s arc in deeply observed detail.

Chapbooks are in stock—take a look back at the process of printing and assembling them on Instagram—and are limited to 150 hand-sewn copies. Orders are shipping now, and you can mix and match it in your own custom chapbook bundle. You’ll also find copies at our partner bookstores like Woodland Pattern in Milwaukee, Grolier Poetry Bookshop in Cambridge, and Open Books in Seattle!

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1: Sample Post, tips for formatting

A black and white photo of Joyce Mansour, holding some glittery beaded decorations on sticks, and surrounded by more of same.
Joyce Mansour

Sample April post. This is my text. You can write
directly into the post, or copy/paste from elsewhere
(but weird things sometimes happen in the transition from MSWord).

Experiment! and let me know if you need help.

Single spacing between lines is shift + return.
Double spacing between lines return only.

If you want to use          variable spacing
or
   stagger
          your
              lines
use the Preformatted block option
(It will look gray in the editor but
        like this! when published!
The Verse paragraph setting
(shown here)
also lets you
manipulate spacing       as       much       as you like
and keeps all the lines in one box
instead of w
            e
             i
              r
               d
                l
                 y making each hard return into
a new spaced paragraph

Feel free to add media (Alt Text encouraged!)

Tags can be added by clicking the gear in the upper right
(That’s a bit different since April 2020)

—Shanna
PS: I expire my posts the day after they appear

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April is coming. So are the poems.

The NaPoWriMo graphic for this year is a black and white photo of a rock wall with a rainbow eye painted on it. It says NaPoWriMo at the top in black type, and at the bottom in white says (20 years of looking out for poetry).

What is #NaPoWriMo, you wonder? It’s an unofficial, unaffiliated poetry game played annually by poets all over the world (#GloPoWriMo). It grew, sort of accidentally, out of a personal challenge Maureen Thorson set for herself one April, many moons ago in the poetry-blog days of yore. I joined her the following year, and others did too, and soon it became an annual, organic free-for-all, a lively everybody-is-invited event. 

Maureen’s idea has proven so popular, people have assumed it’s hosted by some Official Org or Institution, but nope. It’s entirely noncommercial and unsponsored. She’s created a site—napowrimo.net—and accompanying Twitter account to share daily prompts and featured participants every day in April, which is really nice of her. 

Bloof always hosts a handful of our authors on our blog, and this April will be no exception. Wanna play? You can join in on your own site or social media account. See napowrimo.net for the details.

PS: This is the 20th year!

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AWP 2023: Where to find Bloof poets

Bloof, the press, will not be at AWP. But Bloof, the poets, will be! And you can still grab some bookfair deals online.

VIRTUAL BOOKFAIR at bloofbooks.com
March 7–13. All paperbacks in bundle deals: 2 for $25, 3 or more for $10 each.
+ Free shipping on all orders over $25 (US only).
This virtual bookfair is for everyone, whether or not you’re attending the conference.

Thursday, March 9

DANIELLE PAFUNDA
Family Trees in the Enchanted Forest: Fairy Tales & Intergenerational Trauma
12:10 p.m. Room 427

KATIE JEAN SHINKLE
Two or More Become One: Writing in Collaboration Across Genre
3:20 p.m. Room 337

KATIE JEAN SHINKLE
6:00 p.m. Slip In Beltown Gallery
2301 1st Street
Orchestrate Your Whole Fucking Life! reading

IRENE VÁZQUEZ
Muzzle Magazine reading
7:00 p.m. Loving Room
1400 20th Ave

Friday, March 10

IRENE VÁZQUEZ
10:00 a.m. Bookfair signing
Take Me to the Water chapbooks + broadsides of Glory from Above
Riot in Your Throat table (T1522)

KATIE JEAN SHINKLE
2:00 p.m. Museum of Museums
900 Boylston Ave
University of Louisiana Lafayette and Sam Houston University Graduate Student Reading

DANIELLE PAFUNDA, KATIE JEAN SHINKLE
7:30 p.m. Alley Mic
1922 Post Alley
Apogee, Diagram, March Fadness, Texas Review, TRP reading

Saturday, March 11

A pastel radial gradient background with white and lavender text giving reading details and readers’ names: Extravaganza, an offsite reading. Saturday, March 11, 3:30–5:00 p.m. at the Crescent Lounge, 1413 E. Olive Way, Seattle. READERS Ginger Ko Irene Vázquez Katie Jean Shinkle Natalie Eilbert Danielle Pafunda Min Kang Jessica Rae Bergamino Jackson Bliss Abby Hagler Megan Kaminski Nilufar Karimi Sarah Minor Olivia Muenz JD Pluecker Claire Marie Stancek Dennis James Sweeney + karaoke to follow!
Event graphic for Essay Press, Noemi Press + Bloof Books Extravaganza

KATIE JEAN SHINKLE, GINGER KO
1:45 p.m. Room 437
#FeelsBad: Writing Discomfort and Pessimism in Genre

GINGER KO, IRENE VÁZQUEZ, DANIELLE PAFUNDA, KATIE JEAN SHINKLE, NATALIE EILBERT
Essay Press, Noemi Press & Bloof Books Extravaganza reading
(see graphic above for the full list of readers!)
3:30 p.m. Crescent Lounge
1413 E. Olive Way

NATALIE EILBERT
6:00 p.m. Elliot Bay Book Company
1521 10th Ave.
Copper Canyon 50th Anniversary Celebration

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ON DREAMS by Maureen Thorson: Now available for preorder

22% off through March!

After being diagnosed, or misdiagnosed, with a rare, “invisible” eye condition that causes blind spots, Maureen Thorson set out to write a self-portrait in a broken mirror: a “mirror of my suffering,” wry and poignant, fragmented and necessarily incomplete. On Dreams is allusive, searching, and self-arguing, a lyric meditation on reality, truth, illusion—the warped reality of the mirror image and everything we “see”—and the illusion, “the dream,” of control. 

—Elisa Gabbert

After a pandemic delay and the intervening release of another book by Maureen last year (from our friends at Veliz), we’re finally ready to spring this fascinating book on you, dear readers!

On Dreams is as much a personal exploration on reality and illness as it is a richly documented commonplace book—the notes on the text are integral to the way the essays move, crisscrossed with rabbit holes and byways, with citations ranging from Aristotle to tweets. As Kwoya Fagin Maples puts it: “This work won’t allow itself to be pinned, even by its author. It follows its own north.” We can’t wait to get it into your hands.

Read “Confessions of a Pareidoliac,” an essay from On Dreams, in On the Seawall.

Preordered copies begin shipping in mid April, ahead of the official release in May. Read more about this fascinating collection.

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February Flash Sale! Nikki Wallschlaeger

From now till March 1, we’re offering both of Nikki’s Bloof books at a hearty discount—plus a limited edition art print!

CRAWLSPACE is “a series of sonnets that consciously disrupt their own formal limits, discovers the violence embedded in our most familiar structures: mortgages, meals, rooms, houses, family relationships, and language itself. Wallschlaeger’s poems feel timely, as the links between property ownership, alienated labor, and the history of black slavery in the United States (‘Greasy gangrene hamburger wrapper of a country,’ in her words) become clearer by the day. She deploys a new vocabulary for talking about the legacies of slavery and white supremacy as they manifest in daily life — a vocabulary that is as damning as it is lush, as rich with sound as it is bright with image.” —Iris Cushing, HYPERALLERGIC

I HATE TELLING YOU HOW YOU REALLY FEEL is a full-color hardcover version of Nikki’s groundbreaking meme-poem chapbook, first published by Bloof in our handmade series, which sold out almost instantly. This graphic chapbook features Julia, the 70s doll from Mattel based on Diahann Carroll, styled and photographed against colorful backdrops. “The writing in I Hate Telling You How I Really Feel is, by turns, thrillingly allusive and thrillingly frank. […] Wallschlaeger’s is a poetics of multiplication and plurality.” —Toby Altman, ENTROPY

I DO HAVE AN ABNORMAL AMOUNT OF DREAMS: A limited-edition print featuring one of the graphic chap memes! 12 x 16 inches in brilliant color on lightly textured 100% cotton fine art paper. A rare opportunity—available till March 1 only. Once they’re gone, they’re gone! FREE shipping on orders including this print. Enter FREESHIP at checkout to receive the discount. (Shipping on these is direct from our printer, approximately 2 weeks from order date.)

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Happy new year!

Huge thanks to all our readers for your support in 2022. It was a great comeback from our pandemic slowdown, and by our count we’ve handmade and mailed almost 500 new chapbooks! And there’s lots more to come.

As of December 19, all pending preorders were filled. We took a little break for the holidays (ahhhh), and now are shipping normally as of January 3.