charlie hensler (@chaswriter) — Bluesky Profile

1 week ago

Poem With Tulips, Bowl, And Frisbee

This arrangement. Photos
arrive, vanish.

The red tulips. Because you
looked, collapsed.

As if the room collects
every word: a blue bowl.

Must each word embrace the one before
until silence arrives? Its large
velvet hands.

The street. From here.
To the park. The frisbee. The dog. The frisbee

soaring out of its plastic halcyon heyday arriving yellow
as the sun in summer.

a few years ago in Rust & Moth
rustandmoth.com/work/poem-wi...

#smallpoemsunday
@tomsnarsky.bsky.social

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1 week ago

The cover of MOUNTEBANK by Tom Snarsky, out March 31st from Broken Sleep Books.

hello everyone! today is #smallpoemsunday and it’s also the first day of March, the month at the end of which my new book MOUNTEBANK will be out from @brokensleepbooks.bsky.social :)

each day in March I’m planning to share a #soapboxpoem, a small series of poems(/etc.) named for the origin of the…

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2 weeks ago

the (to me) baffling obsession with replacing ourselves

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2 weeks ago

Last Journal | Charles Wright

Out of our own mouths we are sentenced,
we who put our trust in visible things.

Soon enough we will forget the world.
And soon enough the world will forget us.

The breath of our lives, passing from this one to that one,
Is what the wind says, its single word
being the earth’s delight.

Lust of the tongue, lust of the eye,
out of our own mouths we are sentenced…

Charles Wright

#smallpoemsunday
@tomsnarsky.bsky.social

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1 month ago

Photo of beach and pools of receding tidal waters, the sun and feathery clouds above.

beach walk and the delicious warmth of the sun in February

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1 month ago

In the Grove: The Poet at Ten | Jane Kenyon

She lay on her back in the timothy
and gazed past the doddering
auburn heads of sumac.

A cloud—huge, calm,
and dignified—covered the sun
but did not, could not, put it out.

The light surged back again.

Nothing could rouse her then
from that joy so violent
it was hard to distinguish from pain.

Jane Kenyon

#smallpoemsunday
@tomsnarsky.bsky.social

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1 month ago

THE END OF THE LINE ✦ Todd Dillard In this workshop, we will decouple the idea of a line break from historical influence and intuition, and explore a variety of craft strategies to use when considering how to break a line.

Hi friends! I am hosting a poetry workshop focused on line breaks via ONLY POEMS in TEN DAYS! Check it out! shop.onlypoems.com/products/end...

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1 month ago

wander indeed 😀. my pleasure.

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1 month ago

Vetiver | John Ashbery

Ages passed slowly, like a load of hay,
As the flowers recited their lines
And pike stirred at the bottom of the pond.
The pen was cool to the touch.
The staircase swept upward
Through fragmented garlands, keeping the melancholy
Already distilled in letters of the alphabet.

It would be time for winter now, its spun-sugar
Palaces and also lines of care
At the mouth, pink smudges on the forehead and cheeks,
The color once known as "ashes of roses."
How many snakes and lizards shed their skins
For time to be passing on like this,
Sinking deeper in the sand as it wound toward
The conclusion. It had all been working so well and now,
Well, it just kind of came apart in the hand
As a change is voiced, sharp
As a fishhook in the throat, and decorative tears flowed
Past us into a basin called infinity.

There was no charge for anything, the gates
Had been left open intentionally.
Don't follow, you can have whatever it is.
And in some room someone examines his youth,
Finds it dry and hollow, porous to the touch.
O keep me with you, unless the outdoors
Embraces both of us, unites us, unless
The birdcatchers put away their twigs,
The fishermen haul in their sleek empty nets
And others become part of the immense crowd
Around this bonfire, a situation
That has come to mean us to us, and the crying
In the leaves is saved, the last silver drops.

I often like Ashbery's somewhat longer, more meditative pieces.

"a situation / That has come to mean us to us"

#twopageplustuesday

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1 month ago

Uche Nduka

A Green Dream

Winter frock
marigold robe

between brownstones
where yearning
confesses its nature

when the mail
makes you happy
even

when this circle
begs to be part
of a square

it’s madness
to hate the visitation
of grackles

Deep in the cold season - today's PR daily poem.

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2 months ago

haha - I seem to learn this over and over again - or a first ending.

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2 months ago

a little girl is shoveling snow with a shovel and a bag . Alt: a little child is shoveling snow with a shovel and falls over, only to be righted by their parent.

My new poetry column is up, with a round-up of winter snow poems to consider - featuring poems by Louise Glück, Carl Phillips, @toddedillard.bsky.social, Alex Dimitrov, Emily Dickinson, Joy Harjo & other favorites.

stratfordcrier.com/a-kind-of-sn...

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2 months ago

AND YET THE BOOKS
And yet the books will be there on the shelves, separate beings, That appeared once, still wet
As shining chestnuts under a tree in autumn, And, touched, coddled, began to live
In spite of fires on the horizon, castles blown up, Tribes on the march, planets in motion.
"We are," they said, even as their pages Were being torn out, or a buzzing flame Licked away their letters. So much more durable Than we are, whose frail warmth
Cools down with memory, disperses, perishes.
I imagine the earth when I am no more:
Nothing happens, no loss, it's still a strange pageant, Women's dresses, dewy lilacs, a song in the valley.
Yet the books will be there on the shelves, well born, Derived from people, but also from radiance, heights.
translated by Milosz and Robert Hass

i imagine the earth when I am no more:
Nothing happens, no loss, it’s still a strange pageant

- Czeslaw Milosz

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2 months ago

Poetry
Wet food for adult cats, the stars you can't see, a cup of water after a glass of milk, finding the other glove, decommissioned death ray, calendar with no Tuesdays, the saint's finger bone accidentally transferred to the poorest church, finding something you had lost in the hiding place you were going to use for something else, surprise kheer with plenty of cardamom, a live version of that one song, space dust past our light cone, light touch of the regretful soldier, the many refusals that make us, hovering around the decision like a fly looking to leave and finding only glass, only glass

A prose poem of mine up at Soft Union

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2 months ago

#twopageplustuesday

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2 months ago

The Sensual World | Louise Glück

I call to you across a monstrous river or chasm
to caution you, to prepare you.

Earth will seduce you, slowly, imperceptibly,
subtly, not to say with connivance.

I was not prepared: I stood in my grandmother’s kitchen,
holding out my glass. Stewed plums, stewed apricots–

the juice poured off into the glass of ice.
And the water added, patiently, in small increments,

the various cousins discriminating, tasting
with each addition–

aroma of summer fruit, intensity of concentration:
the colored liquid turning gradually lighter, more radiant,

more light passing through it.
Delight, then solace. My grandmother waiting,

to see if more was wanted. Solace, then deep immersion.
I loved nothing more: deep privacy of the sensual life,

the self disappearing into it or inseparable from it,
somehow suspended, floating, its needs

fully exposed, awakened, fully alive–
Deep immersion, and with it

mysterious safety. Far away, the fruit glowing in its glass bowls.
Outside the kitchen, the sun setting.

I was not prepared: sunset, end of summer. Demonstrations
of time as a continuum, as something coming to an end,

not a suspension: the senses wouldn’t protect me.
I caution you as I was never cautioned:

you will never let go, you will never be satiated.
You will be damaged and scarred, you will continue to hunger.

Your body will age, you will continue to need.
You will want the earth, then more of the earth–

Sublime, indifferent, it is present, it will not respond.
It is encompassing, it will not minister.

Meaning, it will feed you, it will ravish you,
it will not keep you alive.

I think I generally may lack the attention span for longer poems, but, well, Louise Glück -

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2 months ago

made me think: maybe poetry doesn’t care if there are people trying to write it or not. a thing apart.

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2 months ago

😊

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2 months ago

somehow this perfectly describes the holiday season for me 🙏

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2 months ago

A poem titled Fairy Tale by Dorothea Grossman

A small poem by
Dorothea Grossman for #smallpoemsunday
@tomsnarsky.bsky.social

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2 months ago

Nowhere To Hang My Hat

Let the day tick—a clock, a string
drawn taut beneath a bow. I’ve hauled
my husk to the shore
of this white, wide page again.

Out of the sky, over the lake
an airplane falls—small, silver,
a samara spiraling into a blue mirror.

And tonight, the night
will wear your captain’s hat
high in the bare-branched maple.

a little poem about (when the tank is utterly dry) attempting a poem...
#smallpoemsunday, @tomsnarsky.bsky.social

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3 months ago

Passing

Sometimes you called on those
you’d never know
to come with you in place
of those you loved,
and talked to them
and touched them
and let them close purely
for sadness, for sadness
you’d hold them,
and you’d let them go.

for sadness, for sadness

Daniel Halpern

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3 months ago

I often think of this poem.

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3 months ago

photo of a trail in the woods. a leaning alder. sun through the trees.

sun out in november thus a walk in the woods

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3 months ago

Heimlich After I Eat Poetry Too Quickly Again by Todd Dillard It's all coming up now, milkweed and mango, grandmothers in kitchens with their stoic spoons, crows barking in alder trees, enough dead deer to overflow football stadiums, sad f...

I have a new poem in @havehashad.com that answers the burning question of "what is the opposite of an 'eating poems' poem"

"it's all coming up now,
milkweed and mango..."

www.havehashad.com/hadposts/hei...

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3 months ago

The Lampshade
At the gates of heaven they said
let's review: six snails eaten, but
no burning buildings entered
to save a child, a puppy, a mother's music box.
You splashed into a dozen rivers, but many more
you saw and never touched, never thought to touch.
And yet, you spent most of your life working
on this one species of looking.
You'd see a wooden door and make a face
from its knots and whorls. You'd find
a dead cardinal and would wonder
if the dead forget the color red first.
Mostly we were impressed with this hat
you made one night out of a lampshade.
Your toddler laughed so hard he nearly lost
his voice. After finishing his bedtime,
you turned to go, and he told you to stay.
We liked how he pulled an imaginary
string dangling out of your nose.
How you shut your eyes afterwards
and lay perfectly motionless beside him.
For years your son believed
light is something you become.
It's waiting, there, under your skin.

NEW POEM ALERT! got a couple new ones in the latest issue of @lamplitmag.bsky.social. Here's the lamp-iest one :)

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4 months ago

The Poetry Society was delighted to host Diane Seuss on Monday 10th November for the latest in the prestigious Kenneth Allott / Poetry Society Annual Lecture series

The lecture is now available to view on the Poetry Society's Vimeo channel at vimeo.com/1135802263 or see link in bio

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4 months ago

another good poem gone bad by morning 🙄

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4 months ago

I don't know if people know this but good poems are hard to write

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4 months ago

late fall foliage in the pacific northwest

last of fall around here

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