Shannon St. Armand

Clear days bring the mountains down
to my doorstep,
Calm nights give the rivers their say,
The wind puts its hand to my shoulder
some evenings,
And then I don't think,
I just leave what I'm doing,
And I go the soul's way.

John Moriarty

This is so moving, beautiful. Thank you.

Exquisite, heart-wrenching.

Of course the elite who harm women and children for fun also plan and execute heinous war crimes and crimes against humanity including genocides at unimaginable scales for their day jobs!

We must connect the dots on how personal and political are inextricable.
#Epstein

A picture of a watercolor painting with a fire in the hearth, a brick fireplace, six Christmas stockings hanging, and various Knick knacks atop the mantle. The walls on either side are orange. The poster’s thumb is in the bottom left hand corner of the photo.

My four young children caught me so off guard today by their reactions to this miniature watercolor painting I did — they were astounded, mouths open. They were amazed and speechless. I teared up. I think I’ll keep going. #watercolor #painting #art

The way these men live/d: do they not care for any warmth? Any form of humanness? I can barely fathom it. Water striders know more depth.

I’m swooning over this

#BlueSkyPoetry #SkyPoet

This is where I am. I have poems coming out of every crevice of my home. Now I need to organize. But I don’t know how to stop writing to do so.

Black background with white text: Trigger warning (unaliving oneself)

Black background with white text, a poem: Trying to Die The reality, o god, is that you did not let me perish. Was it my guardian angel who foiled the plan, sured up my foibles, or was it the blackness of the night that rescued me, my trouble seeing the very fault that saved me.

Black background with white text, a poem continued: For weeks I’d searched for ways to die without causing too much trouble. Once, lying down in the garden, I placed a kitchen knife to my intestines, but stopped short. Too gruesome, I knew, and not definite. I brushed the dirt off my pants, returned the knife home, so my husband could cook dinner, so the angels could take their well-deserved break, smoking cigarrillos probably in the front seat of my car.

I have not written much about postpartum psychosis, only the aftermath. I’ll
admit I’m not sure how to go directly into the bleak parts, but this poem came to me a few weeks ago and now I know, should I examine them fully, I have a little bright thread to lead me back out @blueskypoetry.bsky.social

When the Black Lives Matter movement picked up in 2020, and white people started actually thinking about diversity again, I remember everyone talking about the children’s book, We’re Different, We’re the same. Very cute book. Helpful. But THIS book?! Written in 1980, it deserves front and center.

"There are great powers, outside the government and in it, trying to legislate the return of darkness. We are not great powers. But we are the light. Nobody can put us out. May all of you shine very bright and steady, today and always." From “The Princess,” 1982, by Ursula K. Le Guin

While independent bookstores are giving out free whistles, hosting protest sign making events, and donating proceeds to mutual aid, Amazon is *checks notes* providing technology that assists ICE in their terrorizing of communities.

Independent bookstores deserve your support. Amazon does not.

The biggest risk in this moment is something sociologists call “symbolic compliance.”

That’s when an institution that is violating civil rights gives the public just enough symbolic victories that accountability efforts lose steam before there has been any meaningful change.

Night Nurse Omar Sakr I listen for the rustle and shuffle of their feet, Scrubbed and gloved, denied the dark and its stars, the night nurse is anything but, steward of the startling hallway bright, discordant dancer moving to the eerie orchestra of beeps, shrieks, and alarms. Every two hours they sweep in with careful hands to measure my son's blood pressure, to gauge the speed of his heart, put a number to the heat, the sacred fire that animates him but must be tempered; they check his fluids, administer drugs— ensure, in short, that he is well, and every two hours, I blink bleary at the blurred figure, who sometimes turns and smiles, whispering what might be a gospel truth or salutation, and vanishes again into the blinding beyond. Back home, miniature planets hang above our bed, a slow meander of cookie-cutter stars, and inside this shrinking universe, the quiet creeps in between us, a third body, deep as the void in space. I guess I must turn back now to the invisible watchers, or else hold to the memory of tender visitations.

For the nurses. Thank you to the sleepless guardians who keep watch on my son in the night. These past few months living with my son’s cancer have had a profound impact on me. Now, whether at the hospital or at home, at night, I think of them.

#poetry #poem #snow

Black background with white text, a poem: The Heartbeat To be aware of the heart again is the greatest gift. For years it was buried under debris: resentment, and loneliness, fury, fear and defeat. Now look. All you’ve done is walk a ways off the path, into the snow, and looked at it falling. All you’ve done is, for a moment, not worry if the relentless business of the world was calling you, and let yourself be, a flake glistening on your lash.

Black background with white text, a poem continued: Imagine how you might love, if you stayed there for a while, a human being, only some bones and, yes. Yes, yes— a heartbeat.

Black background with white text. Poem: In a Time of Cruelty The body was made for tenderness, and I for one have begun to remember what it is to have and to hold, to touch midday without reason, to place my head on the friend's shoulder when she sits for tea, to kiss my mother on the cheek. Someone I love once told me he feels most loved by touch. And I was taken aback, for in my country, we treat each other as employees, or machines. Rarely slowing to reach for the wholeness of another, the body's grit, its gift: the indisputable goodness of flesh and electricity.

Poem cont’d; But we were made for such tenderness as long hugs, a hand to hold, head on the shoulder, even a simple greeting. I am a mother. Let my body become soft as a cloud for the jews and the muslims, the black and the brown, the indigenous and immigrant, the poor, the children, the queer and the weary to lie down on and rest.

I wrote this poem a few months ago. I hope it finds you well, or at least warm and cared for. #poem #poetry @readalittlepoem.bsky.social

“Once invited, / it steps in gently, / circles twice, / and takes up as much space / as you will give it. ”

— Joyce Sidman

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This poem appeared in The World According to Dog by Joyce Sidman, published by Houghton Mifflin, 2003. Shared here with deep gratitude.

I imagine him giving the side eye as he’s saying this. Subtle.

A pencil sketch on white paper entitled, The Pondo. The sketch shows a woman next to a goat with horns, a young boy behind them, and traditional Ponto homes with thatched roofs in the far background. A tree sprouts between them.

One reason im starting to love homeschooling: making art throughout the day with my kids. This is a reference from Ashanti to Zulu by Margaret Musgrove, illustrated by Leo & Diane Dillon. To be clear: I cannot draw without a reference. It’s so fun though.

I think of God, and I moan. Ps. 77

2020 Academy of American Poets Prize On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs by Renée Nicole Macklin

It was her poem that destroyed me this morning. poets.org/2020-on-lear...

So, so sad.

Whoever we’re about to capture, plunder, or attack next—I’m against it.

Done. ✅

I want to start a movement.

Replace your profile pic with a black dot in mourning for Renee Nicole Good who was murdered today by ICE agents in Minnesota.

Here.

I really appreciate this kind response. Thank you.

This makes my heart ache with the desire to paint. I am a poet, and this - this is poetry in paint form. I really, really like it.

I share this as much as I can - four years I had postpartum psychosis that ended in an attempted suicide. Thank god I survived and am recovered.

Many of the patterns I displayed I see when I look at Trump. He is in no way connected to reality.