Vikki C.

The Black Bough Poetry Christmas-Winter anthology 2025, volume 6.

Advent Snow falling in continuous tense as if nothing has strayed. And what to do but begin again, decorating this palace for you. Unpacking the tangled fable, choiring all the ways to give and give. The field off-white, its halflight a train carrying would-be joy towards silence. Who would have witnessed the blue horses candling the steps of my body? Or December’s thin bell we pretend is not the toll. Our feet invisible under white —but our prints everywhere on Earth. Vikki C.

The @blackboughpoetry.bsky.social Christmas-Winter anthology volume 6 arrived! Honoured to have 2 poems included with stunning work by poets worldwide & beautiful illustrations by Emma Bissonnet. Many thanks to EIC @matthewmcsmith.bsky.social ✨️

Order yours today 🎁

www.blackboughpoetry.com/news

The Black Bough Poetry Christmas-Winter anthology 2025, volume 6.

Advent Snow falling in continuous tense as if nothing has strayed. And what to do but begin again, decorating this palace for you. Unpacking the tangled fable, choiring all the ways to give and give. The field off-white, its halflight a train carrying would-be joy towards silence. Who would have witnessed the blue horses candling the steps of my body? Or December’s thin bell we pretend is not the toll. Our feet invisible under white —but our prints everywhere on Earth. Vikki C.

The @blackboughpoetry.bsky.social Christmas-Winter anthology volume 6 arrived! Honoured to have 2 poems included with stunning work by poets worldwide & beautiful illustrations by Emma Bissonnet. Many thanks to EIC @matthewmcsmith.bsky.social ✨️

Order yours today 🎁

www.blackboughpoetry.com/news

🔥Special SALE for 1 week only 🔥

STARTING TODAY Dec. 4-9th, purchase In The Blueprint of Her Iris and we will PAY SHIPPING and will send an exclusive complimentary PDF of a brand new Vikki C./Robert Frede Kenter collab.

icefloepress.net/in-the-bluep...

@icefloepress.bsky.social

The Red Poppy The great thing is not having a mind. Feelings: oh, I have those; they govern me. I have a lord in heaven called the sun, and open for him, showing him the fire of my own heart, fire like his presence. What could such glory be if not a heart? Oh my brothers and sisters, were you like me once, long ago, before you were human? Did you permit yourselves to open once, who would never open again? Because in truth I am speaking now the way you do. I speak because I am shattered.

Louise Glück ♥️

“I speak / because I am shattered.”

Always revisiting this poem.

Ballerini Book PressSlender. Never Spineless.Fallen Leaves by Sam Rasnake OFFICIAL RELEASE  FALLEN LEAVES is a collection of contemporary commentaries. It was conceived from Sam’s social engagement online and draws its inspiration and social commentary from quotes, poems…

I’m honored that Ballerini Book Press has today released Fallen Leaves, my new poetry collection, into the world. I hope those leaves drift your way.

Thanks to @ballerinibookpress.bsky.social & @amantineb.bsky.social

If you’re interested in a copy, order here:
ballerinibookpress.ch/product/fall...

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we have five gorgeous new Daniel Fraser poems! here’s one!

https://www.havehashad.com/sfm4q

I know, right?!

You are most welcome, Emma!! It's a favourite! x

Today's poem is by Emma Bolden Postdiluvian A flinch of sky shattered into an iridescence. A chill electric as a bad tooth shocked by ice. Above: the color of marlin. We could neither keep walking nor yield. & far past the fields the beasts we'd called wild marched to the forest's edge & stood, a collage of star glint gumming up their teeth. Once there'd been a story that grew a garden, that orcharded, innocent, & we turned the tangles of its vines into the snake we blamed for our propensity to abandon our weakest to the leaves. See we had lived for so long in gleam. See in the distance the gray sound of a bird without the gray bird. See we knew no longer the difference between disaster and decency. Above: the sky fluoresced & we were sore afraid of how every circle we made became a wheel. We were the ones, furred & unmercied, who stood outside of the garden & learned the world we lost was not ours to begin with. See. It was ourselves we feared so nakedly.

Revisiting this stunning poem –
“Postdiluvian” by Emma Bolden @emmabolden.bsky.social in @versedaily.bsky.social – originally published in Asheville Poetry Review 🤍

#poetrycommunity #WritingCommunity

Today's poem is by Emma Bolden Postdiluvian A flinch of sky shattered into an iridescence. A chill electric as a bad tooth shocked by ice. Above: the color of marlin. We could neither keep walking nor yield. & far past the fields the beasts we'd called wild marched to the forest's edge & stood, a collage of star glint gumming up their teeth. Once there'd been a story that grew a garden, that orcharded, innocent, & we turned the tangles of its vines into the snake we blamed for our propensity to abandon our weakest to the leaves. See we had lived for so long in gleam. See in the distance the gray sound of a bird without the gray bird. See we knew no longer the difference between disaster and decency. Above: the sky fluoresced & we were sore afraid of how every circle we made became a wheel. We were the ones, furred & unmercied, who stood outside of the garden & learned the world we lost was not ours to begin with. See. It was ourselves we feared so nakedly.

Revisiting this stunning poem –
“Postdiluvian” by Emma Bolden @emmabolden.bsky.social in @versedaily.bsky.social – originally published in Asheville Poetry Review 🤍

#poetrycommunity #WritingCommunity

“The heart is watching Lifetime movies / and wishing, and missing all the good / parts of her that she has forgotten.”

— Ada Limón

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This poem appeared in Guernica, 2011. Shared here with deep gratitude.

I am a big fan of László Aranyi’s poetry. He’s a surrealist of immense power. I love his subjects, mood, and creativity in both verbal and visual forms. He’s a kindred spirit to another artist here on 🦋, @rfredekenter.bsky.social and his imprint @icefloepress.bsky.social. Check out Aranyi’s work👇

Congratulations, Rachel. A moving and poignant piece.

Thank you, Dana! Great message for the season and beyond 💙📚💐

Start shopping!—indies like @icefloepress.bsky.social are where to put your book money, not in Bezos’s pocket.💙📚

Offer of sale price and special PDF new collaboration poem and art work Dec. 4th to 9th 2025

Arty image of the cover, a photo by Vikki C.

Its a special week sale @icefloepress.bsky.social IN THE BLUEPRINT OF HER IRIS is on sale, we pay the shipping. Additionally we are gifting a new beautiful poem/art collaboration by me & @vikkicwrites.bsky.social. Never been released, exclusive to purchasers this week who will receive by email.🎸🎁

@rfredekenter.bsky.social

🔥Special SALE for 1 week only 🔥

STARTING TODAY Dec. 4-9th, purchase In The Blueprint of Her Iris and we will PAY SHIPPING and will send an exclusive complimentary PDF of a brand new Vikki C./Robert Frede Kenter collab.

icefloepress.net/in-the-bluep...

@icefloepress.bsky.social

In The Blueprint of Her Iris – A Collaboration. Vikki C. (Poems) Robert Frede Kenter (Images) Now Available ! FOR ONE WEEK ONLY!DEC. 4th to DEC 9th., 2025, WE ARE OFFERING A SPECIAL SALE PRICE & A GIFT FOR PURCHASERS: Every purchase of IN THE BLUEPRINT OF HER IRIS will include FREE SHIP…

We have a SPECIAL SALE this week: Dec 4 to 9th, 2025
Buy this week & shipping is free. 💐
We are gifting by email an exclusive PDF of a new poem/art collaboration "For Love, We Attempt Another Ars Poetica" @vikkicwrites.bsky.social & @rfredekenter.bsky.social
icefloepress.net/in-the-bluep...

Thank you, Carolyn 💙

Oh yes, all too often 🖤

Thank you, Rachel! The topic is sad, as is our eco-crisis, but creatively, I enjoyed writing this one.

And a good week, also because I handed in a challenging "CNF" piece to a project. Not my usual genre but we must push ourselves, even if that means spending a few hours on research. Poetry and non-fiction demand different modes for me, but somehow one informs the other on many creative levels.

Delighted to receive an acceptance from Heavy Feather Review for an eco prose poem (with the longest title of mine) 🤍

My thanks to Editor Jason Teal for selecting "I read that butterflies are losing their colour, becoming more muted to blend into their deforested habitats".

#poetrycommunity

A Certain Kind of Eden BY KAY RYAN It seems like you could, but you can’t go back and pull the roots and runners and replant. It's all too deep for that. You've overprized intention, have mistaken any bent you're given for control. You thought you chose the bean and chose the soil. You even thought you abandoned one or two gardens. But those things keep growing where we put them— if we put them at all. A certain kind of Eden holds us thrall. Even the one vine that tendrils out alone in time turns on its own impulse, twisting back down its upward course a strong and then a stronger rope, the greenest saddest strongest kind of hope.

“Those things keep growing where we put them.” A poem by Kay Ryan.

Susan L. Leary Mouth Because you are physically worn down, I build a mouth for you from insufficient materials. I sew letters onto the wrong tongue & collect stray teeth like dice, string them awkwardly from a too-lit ceiling. Later, you spit into a paper bag, then bite down into a metal tray so someone can thieve an impression of your mouth in defense mode. There is a specific type of silence, you'd said. To survive this place you must be repressed. You must sink yourself into the hole of your own damage, strip the mind of sensory overload-drown out the noise so the noise is just noise: eat cake. Funny, your whole life everyone was yelling into that hole, offering you more mouths than limbs, offering you more "you's" than could ever be relevant. The construction of anything is complaint, is highway robbery, is unadulterated system. Without saying much, you say we are insufficient. With the page, you build yourself a replica & lie down in its body while it revs, inaudibly, for truth. You create your own mouth, a second mouth. You speak as it fills with water.

New poem in The Louisville Review from the new manuscript. I am grateful to the editors, especially Flora K. Schildknecht, for including this one: another poem for the brother. 💙

Thank you, Audrey!

Thank you, Sam! Always so kind.

Thank you, Elizabeth!