iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Jael Montellano @gathcreator.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

Isn’t the cover by Olivia Rombak divine?? So honored to be included in this issue

Jael Montellano @gathcreator.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

Friends! I’ve been busy moving, but I’d love it if you would join me in celebrating this issue launch, which also features a poem by yours truly!

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Jael Montellano @gathcreator.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

While I am not at #AWP26, the POET LORE Mag team is!! Go find them at booth 937 and pick up a copy of the newest issue, which features poets Patricia Lockwood, jason b. crawford, Jenny Molberg, Dorothy Chan, DeeSoul Carson, and little old me 😎

Volume 120 of Poet Lore Magazine, with its red-polka dotted cover, lying atop a wooden table beside a leafy plant.

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Jael Montellano @gathcreator.bsky.social · 14/01/2026

And now my day feels like a dandelion seed…

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Psaltery & Lyre @psalteryandlyre.bsky.social · 13/01/2026

"European men, who loved me for my curves, my / ice-water eyes." "My mother dreams of whiteness" by @gathcreator.bsky.social psalteryandlyre.org/2026/01/12/m...

psalteryandlyre.org

My mother dreams of whiteness

by Jael Montellano

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Jael Montellano @gathcreator.bsky.social · 12/01/2026

Thank you @alinaetc.bsky.social for the inspo! Thank you @psalteryandlyre.bsky.social for giving it a place to live.

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Jael Montellano @gathcreator.bsky.social · 12/01/2026

Literary crush means when I read @alinaetc.bsky.social’s “My Father Explains Why They Left Me Behind When Defecting” last year I had to try its form out for myself! The results are my poem “My mother dreams of whiteness” which pubs today at Psaltery & Lyre: psalteryandlyre.org/2026/01/12/m...

Title card reading “My mother dreams of whiteness” with an image of turquoise-colored ice, under which reads the poet’s name Jael Montellano

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Jael Montellano @gathcreator.bsky.social · 10/01/2026

Thanks where thanks are due—thank you to Executive Editor @eaholla.bsky.social , the entire Poet Lore editorial team, and my friend, teacher and first reader extraordinaire @jsalowe.com ! The purchase link 🔗 www.poetlore.com/buy-single-i...

poetlore.com

Buy Single Issues - Poet Lore

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Jael Montellano @gathcreator.bsky.social · 10/01/2026

IT’S HERE!!!! POET LORE Volume 120, Summer/Fall 2025. The company I’m in, y’all!!!! Award-winning poets, a foreword by Hanif Abdurraqib, PABLO NERUDA, are you kidding me?? And on page 39, little old me with a poem I wrote the summer of 2024, “Aranya (Rêverie).”

Photograph of Jael Montellano with blue hair holding a contributor copy of Poet Lore Magazine Volume 120, with its polka dotted red cover.

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Jael Montellano @gathcreator.bsky.social · 08/11/2025

Upcoming publications! I wanted to note that I’ll have two poems out soon, so please keep watching this space! 🖋️

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Jael Montellano @gathcreator.bsky.social · 07/11/2025

Book mail from Insight Editions, @coppercanyonpress.bsky.social and Cardboard House Press!

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Michael @fleerultra.bsky.social · 18/09/2025

so many dead canaries and we just keep on mining

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Jael Montellano @gathcreator.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

Zhao Dexun Cr: 【澄怀咫尺】赵德勋

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Jael Montellano @gathcreator.bsky.social · 10/08/2025

I’ve been taking a workshop this summer with @jsalowe.com and it’s been such joyful work! I’m coming out of this class with so many new poems and I’m thankful for every minute. I’m proud of myself, of this summer, of the work I put in. Here are the full moons that occurred these weeks 🌕

Blue-lit full moon behind clouds half-illuminated

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Jael Montellano @gathcreator.bsky.social · 12/07/2025

I look at myself and see myself a distance

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Jael Montellano @gathcreator.bsky.social · 11/07/2025

When the muse wakes you at 4am, you listen.

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Jael Montellano @gathcreator.bsky.social · 22/05/2025

Going to see this amazing human today, and it’s going to be profound 💙 #oceanvuong

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Alina Stefanescu @alinaetc.bsky.social · 22/05/2025

Nothing is the way you think it is going to be. Take this little flower from me, and let it go into the way you think of it. - Ron Padgett, “American Cowslip”

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Chen Chen @chenchenwrites.bsky.social · 21/05/2025

all i want is more time to read

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Jael Montellano @gathcreator.bsky.social · 19/05/2025

For context, my day job is technical editing, and this piece went through various editing stages, beta readings, before even being submitted for publication. My word choice is very deliberate.

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Jael Montellano @gathcreator.bsky.social · 19/05/2025

I appreciate the apology. Maybe start with the compliment next time? 😝

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Jael Montellano @gathcreator.bsky.social · 18/05/2025

Not a typo, and now you’ve offended me. Congrats.

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Jael Montellano @gathcreator.bsky.social · 16/05/2025

I wish I could be in two places at once 😭 Please record!

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Jael Montellano @gathcreator.bsky.social · 16/05/2025

“What if the poem refuses to satiate our expectation of conclusiveness?” Your summer #poetry course is ready! Drop into my #interview with @alinaetc.bsky.social on her latest collection MY HERESIES, replete with syllabus: hypertextmag.com/nothing-less-t… #newbooks #WritingCommmunity #amreading

hypertextmag.com

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Jael Montellano @gathcreator.bsky.social · 12/05/2025

“There is no secret to longevity so long as one’s mentality is good.” 110-year old painting by Yan Jiyuan Cr: 中国书画诗词院

Orange buds and blossoms amid lily pads in a Chinese-ink-style painting.

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Jael Montellano @gathcreator.bsky.social · 09/05/2025

The grief. How far-reaching like the desert sun. Writers and editors in the literary landscape have long spun gold from straw and we shall persist. Nevertheless, I want to name the loss of NEA funds that have supported publishers, programs, & writers I work with and benefit from. I’m sorry, friends.

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Jael Montellano @gathcreator.bsky.social · 06/05/2025

‘I entered into motion because …I was not put here to prove I could endure the terrifying, brutal things humans do to each other. Because there are flowers in bloom that need my attention… Because “one wild and precious life.”’

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Es Richard @es-richard.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

& so what––if my feathers are burning. I never asked for flight. Only to feel this fully, this entire, the way snow touches bare skin––& is, suddenly, snow no longer. Ocean Vuong #booksky #poetry Xiyao Wang #art #contemporart #oilpainting

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ANMLY @anmlymag.bsky.social · 25/03/2025

Happening TOMORROW night, Wednesday March 26th! Email me at editor@anomalouspress.org for the Zoom link! This will be an unmissable event of brilliant multilingual writers!

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Alina Stefanescu @alinaetc.bsky.social · 23/03/2025

“Eloquence is heard, poetry is overheard. Eloquence supposes an audience; the peculiarity of poetry appears to us to lie in the poet’s utter unconsciousness of a listener. Poetry is feeling confessing itself to itself, in moments of solitude.” - JS Mill

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Jael Montellano @gathcreator.bsky.social · 22/03/2025

Today is for springtime tea and @alinaetc.bsky.social’s stunning MY HERESIES, coming soon to @hypertextmagazine.bsky.social! #poetry #newbooks #poetrycommunity

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Jael Montellano @gathcreator.bsky.social · 14/03/2025

Inanities aside, writing under that lunar eclipse was very lucrative.

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E.D.E. Bell @edebell.com · 05/02/2025

Pre-orders are up! Pre-orders matter to tiny presses also; we need the money to print the books! Would you join me in a group howl today about this wonderful collection? (And did you see the blurbs so far?) www.atthisarts.com/product/wolf...

atthisarts.com

Wolf's Path by Joyce Chng

within a running wolf, four-pawed, howling

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Jael Montellano @gathcreator.bsky.social · 29/01/2025

Poets! What advice would you give about your first collection/chapbook? What do you wish you knew then that you know now? #writingcommunity #poetry

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Gabino Iglesias @gabino.bsky.social · 01/02/2025

Here’s some Gustavo Rimada art to make your Friday a little better.

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Jael Montellano @gathcreator.bsky.social · 29/01/2025

Poets! What advice would you give about your first collection/chapbook? What do you wish you knew then that you know now? #writingcommunity #poetry

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Jael Montellano @gathcreator.bsky.social · 29/01/2025

蛇年大吉！Happy Year of the Snake! Credit: 中国书画诗词院 (The Chinese Academy of Calligraphy, Painting and Poetry)

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Amy Woolard @a-woo.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

Aria Aber, "Waiting for Your Call" "My phone notes littered with lines like *Beauty will not save you. Or: *mouthwash, yogurt, cilantro.*"

Waiting for Your Call

Aria Aber

The light retreats and is generous again.
No *you* to speak of, anywhere—neither in vicinity nor distance,

so I look at the blue water, the snowy egret, the lace of its feathers
shaking in the wind, the lake—no, I am lying.

There are no egrets here, no water. Most of the time,
my mind gnaws on such ridiculous fictions.

My phone notes littered with lines like *Beauty will not save you.*
Or: *mouthwash, yogurt, cilantro.*

A hummingbird zips past me, its luminescent plumage
disturbing my vision like a tiny dorsal fin.

But what I want does not appear. Instead, I find the redwoods and pines,
figs that have fallen and burst open on the pavement,

announcing that sickly sweet smell,
the sweetness of grief, my prayer for what is gone.

*You are so dramatic,* I say to the reflection on my phone,
then order the collected novels of Jean Rhys.

She, too, was humiliated by her body, that it wanted
such stupid, simple things: food and cherry wine, to touch somone.

On my daily walk, I steal Meyer lemons from my neighbors' yard,
a small pomegranate. Instead of eating them,

I observe their casual rot on the kitchen counter,
this theatre of good things turning into something else.

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Jael Montellano @gathcreator.bsky.social · 17/01/2025

“I feel, in every cell, that word and image are meshed in a symbiotic relationship.” My interview with the indomitable Donna Seaman on her #memoir RIVER OF BOOKS is live! Drop in for our conversation on #libraries, resisting fascism, and more… www.hypertextmag.com/how-books-st... #newbooks

hypertextmag.com

How Books Steer a Life: An Interview With Donna Seaman

by Jael Montellano There is an exercise I practice with my therapist. I’m certain there is a name for it, but to command ownership of our own experiences, we largely work without labels, so I

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