Audrey Hall

@weathermansam.bsky.social @iamchrisscott.bsky.social @shaylafrandsen.bsky.social @taralabovich.bsky.social @dinodysphoria.bsky.social @thehagsoup.bsky.social @mylifeiswrite.bsky.social @catherineweiss.bsky.social

First time doing this, but -- here's our BOTN nominations for 2026! If you haven't given any of these wonderful pieces a read, you should check them out :)

Spirals by Natalie Wallington I am nine when I see the lights in the sky. I crow to Mom from the back seat that there’s a triangle over the field, moving away from us. She says she needs to keep her eyes on the road, but …

"I start drawing the spiral on the back of my hand in crusty ballpoint pen, refreshing it whenever it fades, so when the aliens come back they'll know right away who to trust."

"Spirals" by @narwhallington.bsky.social, new flash fiction out today at OKD:

It’s a great day to send us your ✨chapbook manuscript!✨

Amazon is helping fund a $300 million build of a ballroom for the White House.

Independent bookstores are donating to food banks and organizations that help with food insecurity.

They are not the same.

October 31, 2025 Blood Moon Katherine Oung I have dreams of war but only dreams. Come morning my body turns, kinetic. Trying to catch up with the sky. Window left open; it’s rattling. Dogwood carcass, American robin. Chest split open by red light.

Happy Halloween, from us, and Katherine Oung, and the blood moon!!

👻 🎃 🩸 🌑 💀

https://www.havehashad.com/ll0sy

I don’t know how to write this; another month in his quicksand palm, where I lie freely, or would if I could. I think of summer’s end, of my grandmother teaching my mother to dry figs in the sun, and me sitting by the window wishing literature would die or kill me or both. I didn’t understand then that pistols aren’t loaded with words. It doesn’t matter. The sand exfoliates my pores and crystalizes on my eyelashes.

"Perhaps in the distance waves sweep across the sand, or someone walks barefoot on the floor above. "

A poem by 𝗡𝗶𝗻𝗮 𝗭𝘂́𝗻̃𝗶𝗴𝗮​ (transl. 𝗠𝗲𝗴 𝗖𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗲𝗿) in the Fall 2025 issue

bit.ly/AmsterdamReview

#poetry #poetrycommunity #translation

The entire point of doing reviews is for us, the scholars, to THINK and read, and write and learn at the same time.
Why are we devaluing all of that in academia?
Shameful piece.

Psst: 👇

Today on #BetwixtTheSheets I am talking to the utterly spectacular Emily Van Duyne about her research on the legendary poet, Sylvia Plath.

shows.acast.com/betwixt-the-...

LOVING SYLVIA PLATH by Emily Van Duyne appeared on @readbookpage.bsky.social's list of 12 best biographies of 2024.

Available now wherever books are sold.
wwnorton.com/books/loving...

A scene from Seinfeld where George Constanza says “I've been suffering for the past 30 years up to and including yesterday.” to Jerry

the millennial experience of living in America

The first Senators to actually do anything about the Trump admin

I would love some recommendations for ecologically and environmentally-focused poems, poets, and collections! Anyone got anything for me?

“if you’re interested” is such great phrasing 😂 of course!

yeet | interjection | used to express surprise, approval, or excited enthusiasm

A tan fluffy corgi-Pomeranian cross sleeping on a purple text blanket. She looks so serene.

May this pup bring you good luck

man me neither 😂 I’m here and I’m no more witty than I was there! but I’m pissed! so there’s that

Bishop at inaugural service pleads for Trump to ‘have mercy' on LGBTQ people, migrants At the inaugural prayer service, the Right Rev. Mariann Budde, the Episcopal bishop of Washington, made a direct appeal to President Donald Trump to have mercy on the LGBTQ community and undocumented ...

THIS (some of) IS WHAT CLERGY ARE TO DO NOW

(video at link)

You don't cozy up to power

You speak prophetic truth to those who have power when you have the mic

You use your voice and position to demand moral reckoning, safety, care, love, protection.

YOU. TAKE. RISKS.

It's your damn job.

Text of Wendy Cope's poem "The Orange"

the world feels impossibly heavy for all *the reasons* and a few more, but there's always Wendy Cope's lovely poem

IN THE MORNING, BEFORE ANYTHING BAD HAPPENS The sky is open all the way. Workers upright on the line like spokes. I know there is a river somewhere, lit, fragrant, golden mist, all that, whose irrepressible birds can’t believe their luck this morning and every morning. I let them riot in my mind a few minutes more before the news comes.

Molly Brodak

Over the course of the year, I looked through hundreds of poetry books to write my monthly roundups for @literaryhub.bsky.social. It was immensely rewarding and pleasurable and time-consuming. I approached each book I reviewed as a conundrum to be transformed into a reflection of some kernel

Looking to do more poetry book reviews in 2025! If you’ve recently had a book published or have one forthcoming in the new year, please drop it in the replies! I’d love to consider your work and will reach out for an ARC if I think it’s a good fit! 🥰📚

The Test by Ashley Varela It's not a test, you say, but what would you do with me as a worm, as a single ice cube, an escaping gas, a fleck of glitter on your thumb. I know it's hard. You couldn't introduce me,

"It's not a test, you say, but
what would you do with me

as a worm, as a single ice cube,
an escaping gas, a fleck of glitter

on your thumb. I know it's hard."

❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥 today from Ashley Varela

https://www.havehashad.com/w58nc

The Third Thing: Poet Donald Hall on the Secret to Lasting Love “Third things are essential to marriages, objects or practices or habits or arts or institutions or games or human beings that provide a site of joint rapture or contentment.”

We lived in the house of poetry, which was also the house of love and grief; the house of solitude and art; the house of Jane’s depression and my cancers and Jane’s leukemia.

Donald Hall

In "Interrogating the ‘African troupe’: The construction of Africanness and Blackness in Chinese consumption of K-pop videos," Xu and Wilson analyze Chinese K-pop fan responses to ‘Rica Rica.’ Read their analysis now: