Todd Dillard

AT TENDER MERCY O lone streetlight, Trying to shed What light you can On a spider repairing his web This autumn night, Stay with me, As I push further and further Into the dark.

The final poem in Charles Simic's Scribbled in the Dark (2017)

the worst!! sorry!!

it was unclear to me you were talking just about plagiarism since a golden shovel, for example, borrows language from a poem too, and other poems also "borrow" lines etc. my bad

Scientists Discover "Universal" Jailbreak for Nearly Every AI, and the Way It Works Will Hurt Your Brain A simple trick involving poetry is enough to jailbreak the tech industry's leading AI models, researchers found.

POETS! OUR
TIME IS
NOW!

futurism.com/artificial-i...

Thanks!!!

"I crave more. I want to be alive
so I must want to suffer a little."

thank you! :)

I Kept Eating Anyway I didn’t know--no one told me-- you don’t eat beets like apples, so what I remember of that first beet was the red velvet gloving my hands, the maraschino beard on my chin. I thought: Eve's fruit could have tasted like this, the border dividing freedom and Styx, frost and nectar. And yes, hours after my body became the thickest string on a slap bassist’s guitar: I quaked, red erupted from places where red never erupted before. But I crave more. I want to be alive, so I must want to suffer a little. The heat a cigarette irons onto an esophagus, the thumb's paper cut ignited by salt. I want to rip a heart from the earth and devour it whole, Grendel-lipped, moon-licked, Nosferatu fingers writhing as inside me hunger waves its scarlet flag. I've always been a monster, blood-drizzled and earth-drunk, full of flesh yet eager for meat. Like a blade ringing, scraped gentle against skin I have licked death from my hands and I have found it sweet.

when I say you can write about anything I specifically mean you can write about a night ruined by eating a whole, raw beet

I more think* of it...

Is "better" the aim of an "after" poem? I have never thought about it like this, I more of of it like "the poem localized me here, and here is where I went afterwards." Less like a band covering another band's song. I *very* rarely reuse language in an "after" poem because of this though.

instead of “weekend” my toddler says “family day” and his first question every morning is “is today a family day” and I dunno why but it is so sweet to me

just a weirdly haggard looking dog staring over a fence

the poem’s “Listen” after it survives fourteen drafts

verify it's me by sending me your cc info and address

honestly, the scam emails that use my name as the emailer are the ones I am the most likely to fall for because I believe in myself

Sending you light, when I was a finalist for the Donald Hall this year I was so pumped and getting the pass was such a let down. Both our collections will see the light of day!!! <3 <3 <3

thinking about conceits again and how landing one really lets the piece do whatever the hell it wants, like it's been a quarter of a century and I still remember the short story someone read at an open mic about the Kool-Aid Man getting dumped and only saying "oh" and "yeah"

when I post about my acceptances I assume people see a burned quesadilla gasping

Southern Review—just got the proofs for the front and back matter, didn’t know who else was going to be in the issue!

SO COOL

I feel just so lucky and sometimes confused about it tbh! but I just keep working on poems and sending stuff out

love to get those proofs where my name is like. right there. by Sharon Olds.

I truly wish our culture didn't move so fast because a good many lines that should become permanent are gone by lunch. "ha ha b*&$%es, I got a new scooter" should be a hall of fame entry into the lexicon.

No Place Like Home: Writing Domestic Fabulism with Amber Sparks Learn to write domestic fabulism with author Amber Sparks. Transform ordinary home and family stories with fantastical elements in this online seminar.

Friends! I am teaching a workshop in December that I am so excited about! I’ve been writing and writing about domestic fabulism forever, but I’ve never actually fashioned a workshop around it before. I think this is going to be so much fun - I hope you’ll join!

tweet by me that reads: lit world drama is so funny like “don’t post your acceptances” I was abandoned by my mother

lithub’s bracket got me thinking about lit drama and I remembered this tweet which I thought was from 2019 and it’s actually from last year 😣

everyone is (rightly) applauding this response but it is also funny the AI user misunderstood the point, summarized it incorrectly, misunderstood what “gatekeeping” means, and from this drew a wrong conclusion… exactly like AI

ten year old went from “what should I do with my life” to explaining why she likes blackouts, honestly great job poetry workshops for preparing me for this

remembering when my kid's class was talking about family traditions and all the kids talked about Christmas things or Hanukkah dinners and my kid said "every Friday we go to McDonald's"

sure was!

yeah I thought CX was one of the ones emailed but maybe it was CX being targeted too??? good times!

it was the year before MS wrote that poem calling me Todd Dullard in that defunct journal!! self care is blocking that out though