Tim Singleton

America likes to be the best at things. These days it’s living up to that stature, being the best at being stupid.

The morals of corporate America are non existent. Profit over everything. And this isn’t even an important example. Use your imagination and scale up.

Two opportunities to see Safia Elhillo -- author of the acclaimed Bright Red Fruit -- for #FREE tomorrow on the campus of Howard Community College.

12:30 p.m. Monteabaro Hall & streamed via Vimeo (link below).
6:00 p.m. Monteabaro Hall

All you need to know:
www.howardcc.edu/discover/art...

That day we look around and find we are all human.

There's a book festival in Baltimore tomorrow.

baltimorebookfest.com/full-stage-s...

New season of Wilde Readings launches Tuesday evening at Columbia's fantastic independent bookstore, Queen Takes Book (6955 Oakland Mills Rd E, Columbia, MD 21045). Featured readers and open mic. Starts at 7. We'd love to see you there.

Let's just call it by its full name, shall we: The Department of War on America, Peace, and Humanity. Who wants a peace prize only to go renaming things such? Nothing but a madman and his gathering of sycophant crusaders. We are in for it, folks.

In our latest issue, poet and essayist Molly McCully Brown unpacks the value of a creative writing degree, “Think of it in early readers accumulated: The one you’ll e-mail for the next thirty years with your earliest drafts and subject headings like ‘This may be very bad.’” at.pw.org/ValueOfADegree

Held annually in loving memory of HoCoPoLitSo’s co-founder, the 2025 Ellen Conroy Kennedy Poetry Prize submission window is now open.

hocopolitso.org/2025/08/08/t...

“There’s man all over for you, blaming on his boots the faults of his feet.”

― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

The pause and preen of a hummingbird, and then the explosion back into its hummingbird self.

Just saw Paul Revere galloping through the streets of Washington DC screaming out a warning to its citizens, "The Red Coats are coming! The Red Coats are coming...." after King Bozo's morning bloviation.

Watching America go nuts over the Cold Play & ignore daily atrocities this very country is participant in, well, that’s all anyone needs to know about US right now. We have transformed into a cohort of monsters supporting opportunist & powerhungry madmen. America, get your head out of Trump’s ass.

humidity and heat—
quiet as their shadows, crows
rising from a cornfield

In Hate we trust.

Wanting the same kind of @bsky.app attention as the catbird, a Carolina wren lands under my chair to chirp his case. A mocking bird takes them all on. Cooler air prevails, today, and the birds are on it.

That sounds a conversation not to miss, you and Abbott. Hopefully, I won't. And then there's the notion of a mystery writer casually walking the history of all their murders through the TSA, ho-hum, distracting away with jewelry. #fancydangerous

Summer suet feeder and the catbird meows and meows to keep all away. Or maybe it is just the feral joy of having this other personality inside a cage of feathers. Meow. Meow. It's a noisy boast, but the suet and the morning seem to be his, a slant of sun pointing this out.

Is it OK to read Infinite Jest in public? Why the internet hates ‘performative reading’ Posts mocking strangers for cracking open classics have become popular. So where are we supposed to read them?

Oh, good grief. "Reading in public – not cool. Or at least “performative reading”, as it’s been dubbed on social media, is worthy of ridicule." www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

Weatherchange and birdsong through the open windows.

The way an oscillating fan bullies the humidity this way, then that, this way, then that.

Love that, words carry a fragrance.

No one wins a holy war. All the gods know this.

Peace is such harder work than war. Leaders always cave to war, other people’s children and all.

Words can turn into poems themselves when a within word steps into view: colLABoration.

The air is full of insect hatches. A cloud of termites, perhaps, visits and moves along (am working at an outside table). How slight they are and yet they take on forests. Such a slow and clumsy energy at the moment. How so very many have set out, how few might survive this burst into the world.

There’s a pond out back with so many frogs. And they keep the chatter going, it’s like gossip screaming, but no meaning, all excitement and earnestness, but just the dark presence of sound/being. God, I hope the Universe can hear this over the constant sound of humans murdering each other.

‘Shakespeare would be writing for games today’: Cannes’ first video game Lili is a retelling of Macbeth Translocating the Scottish play to Iran with help from the RSC, iNK Stories’ version focuses on a Lady Macbeth contending with an oppressive surveillance state

Here's a thought: "Here's a thought: "Shakespeare would be writing for games today."

Keep an open mind and read more in the link.

www.theguardian.com/games/2025/m...

'Accidentally' fell into Donna Tartt's Secret History (was one of the myriad things within arms reach when I wanted to read anything but another student paper). Smitten and may have to move straight into and through the other two.

These times we are in. All you need to know to understand: Spurs win something (17th place). Wondering if had could been uglier. Probably not.