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maddymarcotte.bsky.social

@maddymarcotte.bsky.social

350 followers 168 following 549 posts

My husband, Jamie, makes the best sandwiches. My house is currently a mess. I always kind of feel a little bit like I just want to go back to bed.

Posts Replies Media

maddymarcotte.bsky.social @maddymarcotte.bsky.social · 13h

Dear Bluesky, how often do you 'check the obituaries' for you know who? Do you ever open up your computer expressly for that purpose? How often is too often? Seeking guidance. 😱

000

maddymarcotte.bsky.social @maddymarcotte.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

#Charcoal #CharcoalArt

Charcoal portrait of a young woman

maddymarcotte.bsky.social @maddymarcotte.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

The cool chicks at the East Whiteland Democratic fundraiser. Emphasis on the fun!

maddymarcotte.bsky.social @maddymarcotte.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

#PoemsAbout #PowerCut I had a dream that the power was cut, but your teeth came on like a nightlight when I needed to find the bathroom.

maddymarcotte.bsky.social @maddymarcotte.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

maddymarcotte.bsky.social @maddymarcotte.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

#Charcoal #CharcoalArt

maddymarcotte.bsky.social @maddymarcotte.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

My mom at the library. 😂

Walker full of books

maddymarcotte.bsky.social @maddymarcotte.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Charcoal crows

maddymarcotte.bsky.social @maddymarcotte.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

#PoemsAbout #Faultlines

Canon Perpetuus
How do you know there is a song
and how the song goes?
Because you too have lain in your childhood bed
and held your hand up in front of your eyes
and turned it side to side. Spread your fingers,
found a fist, a claw, a wing, and watched
the strings in your wrist pull tight. Loosen.
You lay awake at night and wondered about your toes,
their distance, and chubbiness. And when you realized
people died, you ran to your mother and cried,
not us, not us. And your mother pulled you close
and kissed your head, said, Yes, us, thank God.
You have your time, you're molded clay.
The song has turned you out this way.
Not even the quark wants to sing alone. It wants to be
something greater than itself. It takes the hand
of another, until there are great wheels of galaxies,
singing the song, and wondering what and why
and how, and where are we going for eons and eons,
until it finds its answer, and all the quarks fly
so far apart, the longing and asking begins again.

maddymarcotte.bsky.social @maddymarcotte.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Charcoal of girl in hat

maddymarcotte.bsky.social @maddymarcotte.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Charcoal of Freddie Mercury

Reposted by @maddymarcotte.bsky.social

Kasey Jones @nikitairoh.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Reposted by @maddymarcotte.bsky.social

Kashana @kashana.blacksky.app · 07/09/2026

Possibly the most American news of all time

Prison inmates donate more than $4,000 to pay children's school lunch debt

Residents at the prison contributed $3,810 of their own money, while Kansas Department of Corrections employees added another $457.

maddymarcotte.bsky.social @maddymarcotte.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

#PoemsAbout #SheddingSkins

After the Illness
On a clear day like today, the sky dazzling,
the wetlands full of diamonds,
on such a day–
if one believed in godliness–
one might, –as El Greco did,
so as not to disturb
his own inner light–
stay inside,
shutters locked tight, perched on a stool,
neither sleeping nor working,
and miss
the sway and dip of phragmites,
prodigal in the imbalance,
or so the sign says, saintly
as that painter's imagined saints,
John the Baptist, staff in hand,
the black-bearded St. Paul, in an orange mantle,
St. Peter, white haired, yellow draped,
shadows that slip
green and graceful
in their longing, elongated,
as if longing is grace.
When the wind kicks up,
there is St. Jerome
in Penitence, the muscles of his chest
rippled in the soul's wake, I want
to be all over again,
and around his hips,
some glossamer cloth,
sheer, unsayable.
Imagine, in a biodome,
on the moon
or Mars, in one fifth, or one sixth gravity,
with such a cloth,
one could fashion wings
and fly, and in a generation or two,
El Greco's lengthened bodies
would be the rule,

the strangeness of his settings
no longer strange,
the acrid brilliance of his colors
commonplace on Mars,
a second chance.
But here I am with my son
at the Wetlands Institute, and the lady
with binoculars tells him,
You missed the show.
Last summer, there were 12 swans,
so territorial,
getting just like the people,
and liking it here too much.
I like it here, too, where I stomped
through the phragmites, making mazes
in the lot
behind my childhood home,
my own kind of terraforming.
I would pick
the longest I could find,
breaking it off
at the ankle,
a good and harmless spear,
or something to dip in the brackish waters
and paint with,
as the Chinese girl paints horses
with a long horsehair brush,
allowing, smart girl,
the gallop and snort emerge
in the imprecision
of her instrument.

Reposted by @maddymarcotte.bsky.social

Digital Brain @yourdigitalbrain.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

When one falls behind, the whole herd slows down. Elephants, wolves, dolphins and primates protect their weakest members instead of leaving them to fend for themselves.

maddymarcotte.bsky.social @maddymarcotte.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

This is what I just got in my email. From f$&k face Vance. But check out the gold buttons for donation amounts and the stupid things they’re focused on. 🤮

Found this in my inbox contribution request from JD Vance, who acts like he is an honorable politician that keeps his word promised his fellow Republicans that he would have the results from my survey. There’s no way to respond to the survey without contributing.

maddymarcotte.bsky.social @maddymarcotte.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

maddymarcotte.bsky.social @maddymarcotte.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

@thebrokenspine.co.uk #PoemsAbout #Static

An Ending

She wanted a poem about leaving him,
but there was laundry and dishes,
and the dog needing to go out.
The trash, too, and neighborhood kids yelling
above the wind, a starling she couldn't quite locate
in the dogwood blossoms.
Even at the beach, the wind held
a disruptive expanse, the sand sticking
in her pen, blowing through the jerked lines
of a gray snow fence, so that not even
the idea of a walk on the mudflats,
of flinging horseshoe crabs by their hard tails
back into the bay, could return her
to her poem about leaving him.
Fingers of sand collected
in the creases of her coat.
She would become a dune, white,
wind rippled, low, and rolling, she knew,
if she did what her body wanted,
which was to lie down, close her eyes,
turn her face to the sun.
So she wrote instead about staying,
because the words came easier,
because she knew it had an ending,
because it kept her pen moving,
so that her hand, at least, was free.

maddymarcotte.bsky.social @maddymarcotte.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

#PoemsAbout #EndOfSummer

maddymarcotte.bsky.social @maddymarcotte.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Also I drew a moped.

maddymarcotte.bsky.social @maddymarcotte.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Whoever had this Office last fall semester did not care one f&@k about who was gonna have it this fall semester.

maddymarcotte.bsky.social @maddymarcotte.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Good riddance Google Maps.

maddymarcotte.bsky.social @maddymarcotte.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Girl wrapped in towel.

maddymarcotte.bsky.social @maddymarcotte.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Woman reading

Reposted by @maddymarcotte.bsky.social

Tweeets of Dogs Automated @tweeetsofdogsauto.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

Old Dogs Need Love Just as Much ❤️ Original post

maddymarcotte.bsky.social @maddymarcotte.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Charcoal drawing of woman

maddymarcotte.bsky.social @maddymarcotte.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

Charcoal woman

maddymarcotte.bsky.social @maddymarcotte.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

#PoemsAbout #ExitWounds #poetry #poem #writing #PoetryCommunity #BlueSkyPoets

Sooner or Later, You Play All the Parts

The best way to commit suicide
is to retravel any of the ways you almost died,
go through the same setup and sequence,
but this time, don't do the thing that saved you.
Don't, at the last minute,
turn the wheel away from the truck,
and then away again from the tree.
And live afterwards trembling in amazement
at your driving skill, spending the night
with the woman at the end of that country road,
who hired you to paint her foyer a deep maroon.
Or, you could show up
in a snowy Colorado evening,
hitchhiking back to Boulder.
Take only a ride with someone
who promises to take you straight through
but then leaves you 15 miles out
as the snow turns to blizzard.
You have a blanket over your jacket.
And an album with you.
Why, who knows?
Asleep At The Wheel.
There are no trucks now,
and you are getting very sleepy.
The cold is a hypnotist.
You could lie down with your blanket.
You've already made a Frisbee of that album,
coming to terms enough to toss it,
watch it find its place like a fin
in a frozen white ocean.
Who needs such an album
when one is close enough to dying?
There is no exit wound
with such a suicide.
It is tidy, contained,
like an igloo.
All the pieces fit together,
as if written for a poem.
Then headlights making angels out of snow
and a black guy just out of the Marines,
details you keep when you tell the story,
stops for you.
You climb into his cab,
and the heat is on,
and you've knocked all the snow
off your blanket before getting in,
and he makes conversation enough
for you to tell him that your mom
always asked if you had a thumb,
and that question was an answer
to a question about getting a lift.
And you sleep until he pulls over
in front of the condo you're renting
with your brothers
because you're young and handsome,
and the time to die wasn't yet.
But now you think of all the pain
that death in the cold
could have saved you.
The angel doesn’t appear and you are no longer lucky.

maddymarcotte.bsky.social @maddymarcotte.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

maddymarcotte.bsky.social @maddymarcotte.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

#Charcoalart #charcoal

Charcoal of girl with apple

maddymarcotte.bsky.social @maddymarcotte.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

Charcoal woman with sheet music.

maddymarcotte.bsky.social @maddymarcotte.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

maddymarcotte.bsky.social @maddymarcotte.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

Charcoal drawing of woman

maddymarcotte.bsky.social @maddymarcotte.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

Charcoal of girl looking down

maddymarcotte.bsky.social @maddymarcotte.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

Charcoal of sad girl at window

maddymarcotte.bsky.social @maddymarcotte.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

Charcoal drawing of unknown woman.

maddymarcotte.bsky.social @maddymarcotte.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Charcoal of Frida Kahlo

maddymarcotte.bsky.social @maddymarcotte.bsky.social · 05/07/2026

Charcoalmof girl leaning against wall.

000

maddymarcotte.bsky.social @maddymarcotte.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

#PoemsAbout #Gravity #poetry #poem #writing #PoetryCommunity #BlueSkyPoets I hate myself for that second hashtag, but it is the thing that triggered this poem, so.... Emma would have been my great great aunt.

The Widow’s Washing Song
–for Emma Schuber, 1882–1885
Babies fall out of windows sometimes
when the wash is being hung.
Blueing makes whites white again.
Shade will keep colors strong.
Soak the clothes late Saturday night
So you keep sabbath day
Make more lye from the ashes
When you burn the sack ‘n hay
A boy can fetch coal from the cellar
A girl can flute the ruffles new
And your foot can work the bellows
When the rent is coming due
Babies fall out of windows sometimes
when the wash is being hung.
Washboards make the scrubbing easy
Wringers get the wringing done
Spin some horse hair for the clothesline
Hope the days are not too breezy
Doing other people’s laundry
makes your cheeks nice and rosy.
Make more lye from the ashes
When you burn the bassinet
Camphor soothes both aches and rashes
And that’s how you pay the rent

maddymarcotte.bsky.social @maddymarcotte.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

#PoemsAbout #CheapMotels #poetry #poem #writing #PoetryCommunity #BlueSkyPoets

Hummingbirds
The poet checked herself into a cheap motel
in a town called Metaphor, happy she could
back her car up to the door and shorten
the haul of her baggage.
She asked the clerk for quarters to activate
the vibrating bed and hung her coat
on a hanger with no hook. She washed her hands
with a tiny bar of soap and sat down
to find her heart.
She filled each empty room with her ghosts:
her stepfather on a drinking binge,
her mother with her first lover,
the preacher who picked her up hitchhiking
and drove her there.
She crossed the crushed clamshell parking lot
and ordered eggs and toast in a diner
called the Rose of Sharon.
On her way back, she let the small boy
who followed the cleaning lady take her hand
and lead her to a real Rose of Sharon
by the ice machine
and show her what he saw
from his window.

maddymarcotte.bsky.social @maddymarcotte.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

#PoemsAbout #TheLook #poetry #poem #writing #PoetryCommunity #BlueSkyPoets

Last Day at the River House with my 86-year-old Mom after the Death of My Stepfather

I want to argue with her.
It is my natural state.
Let’s focus on the “growing” part.
Tell me how the river dazzles
in the clarity of regret.
The barn swallows are back
after 20 years of battle.
Let them build their mud nests in safety
under the sky-blue porch paint,
they know now is a bluff.
That morning, the wildlife put on a show for us,
closing night indeed.
Three yearlings by the edge below,
one mother. Through the binoculars,
I find the soft nubs
of their sprouting antlers.
You say you’ve read that deer will adopt orphans.
I’m making plans in my head
to buy a house with no stairs
so you can live with us.
You don’t need that yet.
You will be fine on your own.
You will enjoy the challenge.
How many grocery bags can you balance
on the seat of your walker?
We’ve scared the swallows off the porch
with our coffee cups.
They kept coming out of the nest
like clowns from a clown car,
then thrilled us with high-wire sorties over the river,
banking away at the last minute from the bleachers.
Then red-winged blackbirds
after the bald eagles,
three young eagles, fresh from a hunting lesson
with a white-headed adult.
Another mother, in a clearing
just up the river a notch,
and her fawn, still with her spots,
bucking head-down to roust the sleeping geese,
who shuffle a few feet and back again.
Once up, they worry the ground
with their red beaks
at the end of their gray goose necks.
The mother drinks from the river
before looking to cross,
the daughter, not far behind,
each pushing their black hooved legs
carefully off the riverbed,
like the long sticks of gondoliers.

maddymarcotte.bsky.social @maddymarcotte.bsky.social · 04/06/2026

#PoemsAbout #Earntheright

The New Apartment

When I phone, you tell me
you’ve been up for two days, stalking
a thump, thump, thump coming through
the floorboards from the tenant below.
Fox-like, you say, in stage whisper,
black-stockinged paw held for hours
over a snow-muffled blue memory,
a field mouse burrowing in the dying grass.
Midnight moonlight concedes
to morning dews, nothing else, you say,
all the boxes still boxed,
your mania contained, folded.
There is no one there to smile
at your English to French
to English novel translations—
les angry raisins. No one
to count your shoes, une, deux, trois.
The streetlights list your bad luck
on shadows cast by blinds.
Your footfalls leave no imprint
in the strange carpet all night
into the next day, ears pinned,
your sleeplessness dignified by yearning,
and the thump, thump, thump again,
a blessing, a moment of grace
from below.
Breathlessly, your grandfather
is summoned just inside the door,
with a cloak of winter cold,
banging out his pipe into the bin
thump, thump, thump,
before taking your small hand
and turning—
a walk in the park.

You’ll drop leaves
from the footbridge off one side,
then wave to them from the other,
small ships, yellow, red, green,
or great ones seen from a distance,
their journey well begun,
bon voyage….
I have to see they are ears
pressed to the surface!
You answer my silence:
You’ve told me all this—

a gust of wind through the line—
as proof: this time is different,
this time you’ll change..

maddymarcotte.bsky.social @maddymarcotte.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

#Charcoal #Reading

Charcoal of girl reading black beauty

maddymarcotte.bsky.social @maddymarcotte.bsky.social · 31/05/2026

Pencil drawing woman

maddymarcotte.bsky.social @maddymarcotte.bsky.social · 24/05/2026

#OilPastel #OilPastelArt

Pastel green frog on leaf

maddymarcotte.bsky.social @maddymarcotte.bsky.social · 24/05/2026

Girl with ice-cream cone. Pencil drawing

maddymarcotte.bsky.social @maddymarcotte.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

Don’t forget to come out and vote for me the like zero of you in my zone!

Photo of sample ballot for East Whiteland, with my name on it.

maddymarcotte.bsky.social @maddymarcotte.bsky.social · 15/05/2026

#WhatRemains #PoemsAbout

Having Found the Emotional Center, Saint Simeon Puts Down His Pen

At first, he went unmissed.
Clouds had palmed the shadows
like loaded dice.

But in the afternoon,
shards of darkness appeared suddenly,
each perfectly in its place

except his.

On the second day,
rumors slipped through crowds
like pickpockets,

too slick to catch
and shake free
of stolen pearls.

A colicky baby was passed back
over the limestone wall
to its mother,

dozing in the weak shade
of sumac and rockfall,
the father still unknown.

Some groused
above steaming bowls of lentils,
fair enough.

They had traveled
from Iberia, Armenia, Persia,
India, Ethiopia,

to see a man
who fed his body to maggots
and wore his hair shirt

coarse side in.

On the third day,
the disciple who kept
the account books

pushed them aside
and touched the shoulder
of another

before stepping out
to lean the ladder
against the balustrade

and climb fifty feet
to the platform
where he found Saint Simeon’s body

folded like a love letter

and carried it
back down the ladder
and buried it
unread.

Reposted by @maddymarcotte.bsky.social

The Tennessee Holler @thetnholler.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

“My childhood home is being taken by @GeorgiaPower to supply power to a new data center…” 🤔 They are now seizing people’s homes in Georgia via eminent domain to build power lines for a $17 billion data center. One has been forced into Utah. And xAI in Memphis. And on and on.

maddymarcotte.bsky.social @maddymarcotte.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

#NamesNotNumbers #PoemsAbout

Her Way In

I name her Sorrow.
I name her Love.

I name her Joy
and then Despair.

I name her each time
I walk through the development
past my development

and remember her small spotted body
and long deer legs

tangled halfway up
the wire fencing
around the drainage ditch,

her body limp
like a jacket taken off
in the day’s heat

and lain in easy reach
for later,

when the sun burns low
and the coolness returns
in charcoal blues.

I can’t help but imagine
her last moments,

the play, of course,
in the deepest greens
and white-starred clover
among the dandelions
in the uncut grass

until she remembers her mother,
and races to find her way out,

so far now
from her way in,

and her final attempt
when she exhausts
her hammering heart

and is left
with a blood-red stone.

I name her Loss.
I carry her home.