iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Jessica Ballen @jessicaballen.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

I like my solitude most of all, & this is why I’m a poet & not a journalist.

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Jessica Ballen @jessicaballen.bsky.social · 24/03/2025

See picture (of my husband) for an accurate representation of my moon and mars in Aries season

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Jessica Ballen @jessicaballen.bsky.social · 12/03/2025

Just me and my GERD against the world

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Jessica Ballen @jessicaballen.bsky.social · 07/02/2025

Submit to Lunch Ticket! lunchticket.submittable.com/submit

An image of open submissions for Lunch ticket literary magazine

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Jessica Ballen @jessicaballen.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

Shout out to the writers for accepting my brand of weird

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Jessica Ballen @jessicaballen.bsky.social · 29/01/2025

Crying bc the writing muses blessed upon me an epiphany to restructure my entire poetry manuscript, and all I want is sweet surrender!

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Jessica Ballen @jessicaballen.bsky.social · 28/01/2025

Ilya Kaminsky’s Deaf Republic: Poems

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Lúl Rýzooo @itsreallycj.bsky.social · 25/01/2025

Companies Scaling Back or Denouncing DEI Amazon Boeing Brown-Forman Caterpillar Ford Harley-Davidson John Deere Lowe’s Molson Coors McDonald’s Meta Nissan Stanley Black & Decker Target Tractor Supply Toyota Walmart Support who supports you ✨✊

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Jessica Ballen @jessicaballen.bsky.social · 20/01/2025

One of these days I’ll butter my bread and think “I’m good enough for this life”

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Maya C. Popa @mayacpopa.bsky.social · 18/01/2025

Mary Ruefle:

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Jessica Ballen @jessicaballen.bsky.social · 11/01/2025

Looking at my old community college transcripts and I got a B+ in The Holocaust.

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charlotte shevchenko knight @shevchenkoknight.bsky.social · 10/01/2025

haven’t worn jeans in years but i bought a pair yesterday. i feel like i’m wearing some kind of medieval torture device. i’m like if the man in the iron mask was a 21st-century woman. i feel like i’m living the premise of every Abramović endurance piece. this is me sitting in my jeans

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Jessica Ballen @jessicaballen.bsky.social · 10/01/2025

“I saw the refrigerator glow” — the Jessica Ballen story

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Jessica Ballen @jessicaballen.bsky.social · 09/01/2025

Dreamlight Valley’s a nightmare for someone with executive dysfunction 🙃

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Jessica Ballen @jessicaballen.bsky.social · 30/12/2024

From john compton’s “Melancholy Arcadia”

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Chen Chen @chenchenwrites.bsky.social · 24/12/2024

just learned of Michael's passing. he was my favorite teacher at Syracuse. i’m heartbroken. * I do not want to belabor invisibility, but if it isn’t there in the spaces among the people as a spiritual thread then I do not want to be there either. —Michael Burkard, from "The Summer After Last"

The Summer After Last
by Michael Burkard

I do not want to belabor invisibility,
but if it isn’t there in the spaces
among the people as a spiritual thread
then I do not want to be there either.

Sea or no sea, house or not.

There is a useless rage in returning
to the past. It is a labor
not unlike labor among the stones,
5 years time and someone is made to break them
for nothing.

Sea or no sea, house or not.

In the unrational time of the summer
after last I found myself alone
with the sun, simple night,
water when I wanted water.
My heart almost broke for not
being used to this.

It is amazing, the chains attempted
upon the heart.

Sea or no sea, house or not.

—for Bill

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Jessica Ballen @jessicaballen.bsky.social · 23/12/2024

From Lena Khalaf Tuffaha’s “Something about Living”

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Jessica Ballen @jessicaballen.bsky.social · 23/12/2024

From Cathy Linh Che’s “Split”

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Jessica Ballen @jessicaballen.bsky.social · 21/12/2024

Yellow teeth and compression socks—I’m that bitch

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Jessica Ballen @jessicaballen.bsky.social · 18/12/2024

Got that pre-birthday mania wheeeee 🎈

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Jessica Ballen @jessicaballen.bsky.social · 15/12/2024

From Twenty Poems of Anna Akhmatova

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Taco Bell Quarterly @tacobellquarterly.org · 09/12/2024

Try to make your mental illness work with you, not against you. Become a writer.

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Jessica Ballen @jessicaballen.bsky.social · 11/12/2024

RIP What We Do In The Shadows! You served us well 🧛🏻‍♀️

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Kenyon Review @kenyonreview.bsky.social · 10/12/2024

We've received a few requests to continue to submit to our Poetry Contest, so we've reopened it and set the deadline to match our Short Nonfiction Contest: December 31! Learn more & submit to either one or both at the link in our bio.

A light red and light blue graphic on a black background showing two ongoing contests through the Kenyon Review. This year's Poetry Contest will be judged by Diane Seuss, and this year's Short Nonfiction Contest will be judged by Lucy Ives. Deadline: December 31

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☀️ Jon Schwarz ☀️ @schwarz.bsky.social · 10/12/2024

It's rare you get such a clear illustration of whose lives have value in America and whose don't

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Jessica Ballen @jessicaballen.bsky.social · 10/12/2024

the cutest baby in all the land 😭😭😭

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Jessica Ballen @jessicaballen.bsky.social · 10/12/2024

June Jordan from Haruko/Love Poems

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Jessica Ballen @jessicaballen.bsky.social · 09/12/2024

Love graduating from poetry workshop dread to post workshop imposter syndrome

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Jessica Ballen @jessicaballen.bsky.social · 04/12/2024

It would be nice to have the heating pad for my debilitating cramps but Oona’s comfort takes priority, of course.

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Jessica Ballen @jessicaballen.bsky.social · 04/12/2024

No shame in my game but also maybe a little shame bc I’m a poet and that’s our natural state

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Todd Dillard @toddedillard.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

when someone says they like my poem

painting of a black frazzled cat with the caption: "Unusually repulsive cat startled by a gesture of affection:

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Henry David Throwed @rosserr.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

Kendrick performing in Toronto on fathers day is NASTY WORK lmao

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Jessica Ballen @jessicaballen.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

I’m living off the two lezzes right now: music made by lesbians for lesbians, and the les miserables soundtrack (original broadway cast recording, obviously)

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