iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

HALSEY Literary Reader @halseyreader.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

You will. Leave. If you can’t walk out the door, imagine walking out the door. Remember: soon some small good thing will show up. Look for it. Then look for the next. —Peg Edera, Reclaiming the Nectar and the Hum (Fernwood Press, 2025)

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HALSEY Literary Reader @halseyreader.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Humming is a small form of yes. Humming is a way to call to everything that is underneath the hard stuff. Cry. Then make a choice. Even if it is the choice to keep crying, choose it. You are in charge for this moment. Listen for something you like. Keep listening until you find something.

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HALSEY Literary Reader @halseyreader.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Remember you are smarter than they think, no matter what proof they’ve got. You have your own intelligence. What is it you really know? At the moment maybe it is only that they are wrong. Good, start there. Hum. There is a way to hum silently. You can practice it, or hum so you can hear it.

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HALSEY Literary Reader @halseyreader.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

How to Survive Check your breathing. Still happening? Stay with it. Close your eyes if you need to. If not, open them wider, more light is good. Notice one thing— give it all the words you can find even if it is a scrap of lint or a crumpled piece of paper. Words ground us.

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HALSEY Literary Reader @halseyreader.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

What can we ever know, Dad? This urge to rummage our dead. —Mary Warren Foulk, The Show Must Go On (Fernwood Press, 2025)

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HALSEY Literary Reader @halseyreader.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

London Fog Searching your trench coat, was I looking for truth? What I found instead, a 1969 penny and a Green Room matchbook— I resisted the flame. Pockets, lined with moth holes and a stained handkerchief, not Mother’s shade of red.

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Reposted by HALSEY Literary Reader

s. e. smith @sesmith.lol · 01/10/2026

In no circumstances ever should the state be murdering people. Judicial or extrajudicial. Period.

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HALSEY Literary Reader @halseyreader.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

No one is more self-assured. No creature more composed. When I would speak, no one would dare misunderstand. —Kendall Dunkelberg, Tree Fall with Birdsong (Fernwood Press, 2025)

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HALSEY Literary Reader @halseyreader.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Crow Would I were a crow, a dark contrast to all around, a black shadow in the sky that casts deeper shadows on the ground. Would that I could fly over rivers and over fields, searching for corn or a tree to roost in or just because I can.

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HALSEY Literary Reader @halseyreader.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

from beneath the man’s car parked in the street as police arrive walking silently like figures in a dream— enormous August clouds peering down, while something surges through my chest like lightning or God or maybe the spirit of the boy. —John Krumberger, When I Was a King (Fernwood Press, 2025)

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HALSEY Literary Reader @halseyreader.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

FIRST DEATH The not so ironically surnamed son of the owner of Solomon’s Standard gas station— he possessed of the same large hands and slow wit as Lenny from Of Mice and Men— comforts the still-drunk man, sobbing a child, a child, and indeed, a small boy’s boots appear

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HALSEY Literary Reader @halseyreader.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I don’t know why we found it funny. Running home to my mother after the beating, I felt my teeth scrape grains of dirt. —Sharon Whitehill, Putting the Pieces Together (Fernwood Press, 2025)

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HALSEY Literary Reader @halseyreader.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

of the underworld, Orcus, who gave orcas the name, punished breakers of oaths. A man I knew punished his broken lawnmower by shooting it with a .22. Later we laughed at the story, but now

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HALSEY Literary Reader @halseyreader.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

had been sunk once before. They knew what they wanted this time. They bit off both rudders and didn’t touch anything else. A chiropractor to whom I never returned cracked my spine while standing behind me. I felt his erection. The Etruscan god

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HALSEY Literary Reader @halseyreader.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

made jokes: Men swarm you like flies on honey. Or on rotting meat, I thought as I turned from a drink at the fountain to find several guys waiting, their own thirst postponed by their hunger for me. Oh please, not again! cried the skipper whose boat

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HALSEY Literary Reader @halseyreader.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

in the grocery store aisle. “What did you do to entice him?” other shoppers seemed to be thinking at me. The question pierced like a dart. Apex predators, orcas. The triangular dorsal fin of the male juts six feet high. Half-jealous, my girlfriends

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HALSEY Literary Reader @halseyreader.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

experts say, just playful behavior. In first grade, a gang of boys held me down in a ditch, pushed my face in the mud: as if I’d been wearing a sign that said Kick Me. Which later changed to Kiss Me but meant the same thing: a male neighbor pressing me into a full-body hug

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HALSEY Literary Reader @halseyreader.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Apex Predators The wolf whistle first, then the slap on the bottom that left my skin burning under the thick winter coat. How much do you cost? the man called. Orcas are known as the wolves of the sea, having recently damaged the rudders of dozens of vessels. Not really attacks,

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HALSEY Literary Reader @halseyreader.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

—Nizar Qabbani (trans. Rana Bitar), Love and Resistance (Fernwood Press, 2025)

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HALSEY Literary Reader @halseyreader.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

The kings of salt: In the Quran, there is a story of four kings who defeated their enemy and claimed that the geology of Palestine changed un- der their rule, such that the sea collapsed to form the salty Dead Sea. Here, Qabbani rebels against the claims that contradicted science.

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HALSEY Literary Reader @halseyreader.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

The Shiite cities: Shiite is a sector of Islam that worships and follows the teachings of the Imams (Hassan and Houssine). Traditionally, be- lievers commemorate their deaths by going into the streets to cry loudly and beat their cheeks and chests to display their grief.

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HALSEY Literary Reader @halseyreader.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Abbasid sorrows: Abbasid poetry is known for its sadness. In that era, the most famous poets (750-1258 CE) believed that life is all about pain and suffering. When Qabbani talks about the Abbasid sadness in the beloved’s eyes, he refers to her recognition that living is to suffer.

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HALSEY Literary Reader @halseyreader.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

And I protest, when I love you, against the ugliness against the kings of salt and the institutions of the desert And I will love you until the flood arrives and I will love you until the flood arrives

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HALSEY Literary Reader @halseyreader.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

When I love you, your breast breaks free from the submission and turns into lightning, thunder, a sword, a sandstorm All the Arabic cities—when I love you—protest against centuries of oppression against centuries of revenge against the doctrines of all tribes

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HALSEY Literary Reader @halseyreader.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

and golden minarets gleam and ancient mysteries reveal themselves and my passion turns me into Kufic scripts and designs I stroll under the strands of your black hair I read my nightly verses I envision tropic islands and imaginary boats bringing tobacco and oysters from the East Indies

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HALSEY Literary Reader @halseyreader.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

and countries slide under the water My skin unfolds on three red roses and three white doves The sun discovers womanhood and rises to wear her gold earrings Bees migrate to your navel And in between your breasts all civilizations gather Abbasid sorrows dwell in your eyes and Shiite cities cry

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HALSEY Literary Reader @halseyreader.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Birds from your eyes bring sweet hazel news and from your breasts, come carnivals and Indian herbs Mangoes fall into our laps, and forests flare-up in flame and Nubian drums invade our dreams The white sea—when I love you—fills with red flowers and countries rise from the water

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HALSEY Literary Reader @halseyreader.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

When I love you, thousands of new words emerge— a new language in a new city in new countries The hours breathe faster and faster Words fit together in ways they never did before: Commas relax their curves the feminine Arabic characters conceive children and wheat sprouts from in between the pages

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HALSEY Literary Reader @halseyreader.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Valleys and mountains form when I love you Birth rates soar Imaginary islands surface in your eyes and people on Earth discover new planets Wealth and passion rain on everyone and God camping on the moon is content

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HALSEY Literary Reader @halseyreader.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

When I Love You Earth swells when I love you On your palms, all roads cross and the stars redraw their intricate designs on mine Fish multiply in the sea and the moon circulates in my blood My shape changes: I become the trees I become the rain I become the black center of the Spanish eyes

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Reposted by HALSEY Literary Reader

Jennifer @jenwith1n.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Long Covid is real. The people living with it and advocating for better treatment and more awareness are absolute heroes in my book. And the people too sick to advocate need to be remembered and believed.

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HALSEY Literary Reader @halseyreader.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

After we leave, in our own home when we try to touch each other, Mary’s face appears, still stricken. We sit on opposite sides of her sad eyes, then talk of work, the moon trapped like a key that broke in a lock. —Kenneth Pobo, At the Window, Silence (Fernwood Press, 2025)

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HALSEY Literary Reader @halseyreader.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

When she brings us each a bowl of cold canned peaches, she says of him: We stopped talking about thirty-five years ago. She gives such news like a weather report. Sometimes he pipes in a remark.

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HALSEY Literary Reader @halseyreader.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Marriage and Canned Peaches A picture of Mary’s bleeding heart hangs in their austere living room. When we visit, they turn on a game show so loud that we must talk over it while trying not to look at the wall with the heart beating against fading magenta.

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HALSEY Literary Reader @halseyreader.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

bird-flicker Whose woods not Fergus’s no voice of a fire- forked pine Worn footpaths walk me Seaview Tr. —Dan Alter, Hills Full of Holes (Fernwood Press, 2025)

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HALSEY Literary Reader @halseyreader.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Taking cane of twisty Australian branch in hand onto trail upturns lizard skitter sad sack trees drooping over thistlefields Whose woods are these East it’s all ruin- brown hills thatched with roof & surly evergreen Up here air whisper on a rock thimble brown

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HALSEY Literary Reader @halseyreader.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

sickness. My father stamps on the voices in his head, but they keep burning. Soon he will come downstairs. The angel will not stay his hand. —Ayelet Amittay, The Eating Knife (Fernwood Press, 2025)

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HALSEY Literary Reader @halseyreader.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

reading rug, Abraham climbs, leading God’s burnt offering by the hand. The span between the knife and Isaac’s chest is a form of closeness. The ram like an afterthought—enough testing now, let us eat. My father shudders in the small attic room of his

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HALSEY Literary Reader @halseyreader.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

The Voice of God In the first grade I kneel behind a trash can heaped with crepe- paper flames. The branches shudder. I am God’s voice. I am God’s call for burnt offerings, the scent of smoking flesh. Mount Moriah unspools its summit road down the middle of the

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HALSEY Literary Reader @halseyreader.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

of spearmint still drips no matter how tightly the faucet is turned. —David B. Prather, Bending Light with Bare Hands (Fernwood Press, 2025)

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HALSEY Literary Reader @halseyreader.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

where they want to be held. I’ve changed the locks because I’m afraid someone from the past might still have a key. I have a bowl full of keys that have forgotten their purpose. The garden hose hanging over a patch

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HALSEY Literary Reader @halseyreader.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

I sprang from the timbers of this house, my great grandmother’s before me, her shelf paper under my dishes and glasses, her recipes unused in the pantry next to olive oil and pancake mix, her tarnished scissors with a broken tip holding her fingerprints

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HALSEY Literary Reader @halseyreader.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

they ever existed. In the basement, there are names carved into wooden beams, Joey and Susan, children or lovers, I can’t say, but this is evidence, nonetheless, of lives lived long before I spoke my first word, which my mother never told me, never wrote down. As far as I know,

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HALSEY Literary Reader @halseyreader.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

door that warns any haunts I’m home. I couldn’t sneak out if I wanted, all the hinges hoarse with my going and coming back. I always come back. Some of the windows no longer open, and a few screens have been missing so long there isn’t even a memory

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HALSEY Literary Reader @halseyreader.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

this house, I know how quiet means listening, for the hum of traffic, for the chit chat of finches, for the startled voices of neighbors to trouble me through these thin walls. The hardwood floors grow weak in a few spots, but they are level. There’s a spot at the front

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HALSEY Literary Reader @halseyreader.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Maintenance Aluminum siding needs painted to cover those faint gray patches only I can see. And the porch needs a new coat of blue to hide the wear of weather and footsteps. I know two places where shingles let a hard rain in, shirking their duty, admitting defeat. The only soul to inhabit

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HALSEY Literary Reader @halseyreader.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

I don’t want to be like Obama. I want to be me and inside America. —Emmett Wheatfall, Contradictions in Uncertain Silence (Fernwood Press, 2025)

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HALSEY Literary Reader @halseyreader.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

The passkey I’ve been given is faulty. My place has been in the kitchen rather than America’s living room. Langston Hughes wrote a poem expressing such sentiment.

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HALSEY Literary Reader @halseyreader.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Inside America Is there an inside to America? Is that question far-flung? I’ve tried all my life to find acceptance, America. To you who have kept your foot wedged against the door, I know who you are and who you have been and who you continue to be.

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Reposted by HALSEY Literary Reader

pnwpolicyangel aka Angelita 👼 @pnwpolicyangel.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

The consequences have been slim to none for LITERAL NAZIS ON THE POLICE FORCE! Where is the condemnation for true harm? www.opb.org/news/article...

opb.org

Officer Receives Two Week Suspension For Nazi Plaque

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