David Harrison Horton

Cover picture of +doc.10, featuring a picture of Taco Bell Mild sauce

The latest issue of my little magazine, +doc, is now available! Featuring four longer poems by @unionherald.bsky.social, Leela Raj-Sankar, and Maggie Chirdo.

For more info or to order a copy: nullpointerpress.blogspot.com/2026/02/doc1...

When the Qing dynasty folk rolled in, they called it the Guilty Tree and handcuffed it (somehow). The handcuffs were stolen around 1900. The tree itself was Cultural Revolutioned. There is a tree now in Jingshan Park that may or not be located in the suicide tree event.

That said, I often go to the "Wen Huai" (Scholar) Tree in my area. It's said an important poem was written here and also that the guy who wrote the Dream of the Red Mansion spent a lot of time under this tree. The tree looks scrappy and nobody seems to care about it.

When Susan Schultz was in China, she talked about trees, which got me to appreciating the trees in my area. In Jingshan Park, behind the Forbidden City, is an imposter tree stand-in for the suicide tree that ended the Ming Empire. It's a fake of a fake. There are many other fake trees the city.

Sometimes what feels like minimally adequate to you might be received as pretty darn good by some students.

In whatever small scene poetry community you are in, you can buy a $10 stapler and make zines of your community's stuff, like a yearbook. That is real cool. And/or you can decide to ask poets you super admire, out of your league even, for some work, and some just might give it to you. Just saying.

comes with staples even

A Deli long-stapler is $9.99 on Amazon. Just saying.

I think my absolute panic about it helped me to double down.

Notes from my math notebook. Shows the steps to find standard deviations, the formula for slopes, permutations and combinations, and how to convert Fahrenheit temps to Celsius.

Results from my Reading test (200/200) and Math test (190/200).

I took time off in January to relearn math for a teaching certification test. I hadn’t done geometry, statistics or algebra in literal decades. I needed to get 150 for math, got 190 (95%). A few more tests to go, but passing this one is a huge relief.

I’m on it.

Make zines

@julianday.ca has a pretty great poetry zine specifically for long poems called +doc.

5 authors by whom I've read at least 5 books:

Balzac
Amiri Baraka
Camus
Chrétien de Troyes
Jackson Mac Low

(didn't count the handfuls of single volume collected works I've read, Shakes, Carl Sandburg etc...)

No cheating, your last saved picture of a celebrity is your therapist.

(Not sure I'd go to him for therapy, but I would definitely listen to his life advice.)

Y'know, I think I have only ever heard this coming from someone in middle management and usually for something that ended poorly.

Air quality Index meter reading 31, humidity 24%, 32ºF, winds at 10 mph

Global Air Quality Rankings with Beijing circles at the second worst with AQI of 725.

The morning walk after an evening sandstorm always feels extra refreshing.

I build these days into my monthly planning. I give myself one or two a month.

Cover of Zi Huayuan's book Dancing: Art & Theory. Mostly black with a squiggly Chinese character written in orange.

Have decided it's time to learn a few things about dance. Zi Huayuan looks at dance in China, from neolithic times to about the late 1990s. Most looking forward to her "A Comparison Between Dance and Non-dance." Hopefully, this will give me a basic vocab to discuss an art form I enjoy watching.

The grammar mathematics I learned while living in the Deep South:

I will do it. 100%
I might do it. 50%
I might could do it. 25%

Modal exponents should get standardized.

A facial portrait photo of the famous racehorse Man o' War.

Me and Man o' War here wishing you guys the focus, energy and stamina to accomplish the things you're working on in the Year of the Horse.

Born in 1958, not sure we do. But hey, just add that to the disappointment pile.

If you have a book coming out in the next three months (or it came out in the last year) hurry before they give me new responsibilities at work and my busy season takes over the whole calendar — dm for mailing address

Nine Inch Nails Pretty Hate Machine cassette cover

This cassette lived in my car until it wore out. Pixies Doolittle also in the mix

I got the Handbook used, and the only highlighted sentence in the whole thing was "The singsong poem is a dull poem" (44).

Cover of Mary Oliver's A Poetry Handbook.

Cover of Mary Oliver's New and Selected Poems, volume one. Has a black and white picture of Mary Oliver on it.

With Chinese New Year break coming up, I've decided to get more familiar with Mary Oliver. I've only read single poems here and there. Wish she hadn't started off her craft book with this sentence: "Everyone knows that poets are born and not made in school."

» 16 Places that Publish Writing About Writing

Publications paying writers up to $150 for writing about #writing.

Many #writers have successfully promoted their work over the years by writing about writing and #publishing.

🔗 authorspublish.com/16-places-th...

That said, I used to do a 100 letters projects for many years. For most years, I managed 50-60 actual in the mailbox letters. I would love to start a new 100 letters project. If you would like an actual letter in the mail, DM me your addy. I don't expect reciprocity, but an email would be nice.

Reminding myself that rather than scrolling endlessly here (which, sorry to say, looks more and more like why I left the last place) I could read one of those books nearly falling off my shelf or write a letter to a dear friend.

That is a fantastic sweater.