iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

mark leidner @markleidner.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

signing off every email “treasuring your vibrations,”

mark leidner @markleidner.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

slowly, methodically, patiently cold emailed my way into both sandra bullock’s and walton goggins’s inner circles—just to see if I could. and now that I have outsized influence over their decisions, I’m not sure to what end I should apply my new leverage. feeling kind of lost

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sweetie π @sixfeetofcandy.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

panting and holding my side as i run away from reality

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mark leidner @markleidner.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

if you’re not at least a little bit interested in what I do, then please don’t cold email your way into my inner circle. otherwise, what are you doing there?

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Brad Listi @bradlisti.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

⌛️ Poetry Time: poet @markleidner.bsky.social reads 3 poems from his new collection, ELEGY FOR PANGAEA (@fonografeditions.bsky.social). The poems are “Tetris,” “Castle Strong,” and “Work Nap.” Mark’s full conversation on Otherppl is Episode 1053. 🎧 Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

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Robert Vaughan @rgvaughan.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Today on our @bendinggenres.bsky.social blog, Ashley Yang-Thompson interviews, and reviews Mark Leidner's new project Elegy for Pangea: bendinggenres.com/ashley-yang-...

bendinggenres.com

Ashley Yang-Thompson Interviews Mark Leidner/ Micro-review of Elegy for Pangea

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mark leidner @markleidner.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

words I would use to describe the color grading for Digger, starring tom cruise, based on the trailer: sickly pasty wounded light fluorescent beige wan deathbed gray ashen ig filter: hospital cafeteria bathroom can’t wait to go to the cinema

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mark leidner @markleidner.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

hey man are you ok? I noticed one or more xenomorphs were stalking you and your coworkers in a remote, confined, post-industrial site, and you were the only one who was alarmed by what was happening before it became obvious, but no one wanted to listen to you

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mark leidner @markleidner.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

we need to set tom cruise loose in a data center. not sure why, we just need to. maybe just to see what happens. we can lure him in by telling him there’s a new mission impossible script in there, then we can shut and lock the doors behind him. then we just observe what happens

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mark leidner @markleidner.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

what if weyland-yutani was trying to bring xenomorphs to earth to unleash them on our enemies? it’s not such a bad company once you think about it like that. we really need to stop letting power hungry sociopaths like ellen ripley gaslight us

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mark leidner @markleidner.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

"Backrooms: Bookmoms" sequel to Backrooms. a bunch of busy moms whose main source of social release is their book club get sucked into the Backrooms and must resolve the petty aesthetic/personal quarrels afflicting the club in order to survive. jennifer lawrence comeback vehicle

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mark leidner @markleidner.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

I think we can handle stiff and/or liquid ai robots as in the terminator franchise, and I think we can handle xenomorphs as they appear in the aliens movies, but if xenomorphs ever harnessed ai, or if ai found a way to mimic the xenomorph phenotype, then we would be screwed

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mark leidner @markleidner.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

[in the desert] I hate how the wind is always at work and the dunes are ever changing

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Brad Listi @bradlisti.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

In Episode 1053, my conversation w poet Mark Leidner, author of ELEGY FOR PANGAEA (Fonograf Editions). 🎧 Listen to the full conversation wherever you get your podcasts. @markleidner.bsky.social @fonografeditions.bsky.social

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mark leidner @markleidner.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

dreamt I had to win at ping pong, but the ball was my eye. the tournament organizers plucked it out of me before the game. worse, I could still see through it—and couldn’t close it—throughout the game. I had to win to keep my other eye. I was losing badly when I awoke

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Brad Listi @bradlisti.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Tomorrow on the program: poet Mark Leidner, author of ELEGY FOR PANGAEA (Fonograf Editions). We talk about poetry, humor, language, mortality, & the strange work of trying to make meaning out of a world that keeps changing beneath us. 🎧 Episode goes live September 8 wherever you get your podcasts.

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mark leidner @markleidner.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

dear god, why are we all this plastic zebra abandoned in the candy rack?

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mark leidner @markleidner.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

if I ever became extremely bitter and depressed about being overlooked because i live in a flyover state, I would simply relocate myself and all of the people I love to whichever was the closest coast

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mark leidner @markleidner.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

knighting myself with a plastic knife in the bathroom at Medieval Times

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mark leidner @markleidner.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

if the large hadron collider scientists discovered the entire universe was somehow circumscribed by an actual ass yellow submarine, I don’t even want to think about how people who hate the beatles would react. it would be absolutely devastating for them

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mark leidner @markleidner.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

stoked to announce my debut autofiction novel, about an unconventionally handsome and charismatic genius, as well as kind and generous community servant, scientist, and artist, trying to figure out why he’s only 99.9% happy instead of an even 100%, is forthcoming from knopf

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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

Now this is a story All about how My boat got flipped, turned upside down And I’d like to take a minute just sit right there To tell you how I got back To my home: Ithaca

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mark leidner @markleidner.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

my therapist is watching the u.s. open on their phone during our session, i can tell because I can see the reflection of the ball zipping back and forth across the court in her retinas

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mark leidner @markleidner.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

It’s awful when something is tragic, it’s bonkers when something is insane, it’s nice when something is cool, and it’s fine when something is ok.

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mark leidner @markleidner.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Heartbreaking possible opening line of this possible novel: “Last February, my son walked into the Spherical Fog and didn’t walk out.” Everything unspools from there. Absolutely breathtaking, hypothetically

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mark leidner @markleidner.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

I hate it when my head accumulates white hairs, my skin hangs loosely from my worn out limbs, and my dreams become the dried out husks of dreams

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mark leidner @markleidner.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Spherical Fog would be a good name for a poorly understood environmental threat in a quasi-sci-fi experimental literary novel or novella. It could also be effective as the title, but only if its metaphorical significance is thoroughly explored or remains pointedly unexplained.

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mark leidner @markleidner.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

my buddy quit reading the odyssey halfway through, then lost his life savings on kalshi– betting penelope would marry one of the suitors before odysseus returned. he thought he was being smart by not betting on a specific suitor–now his wife is leaving him. brutal beat

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mark leidner @markleidner.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

I have some pretty wild pet theories about media. one is that HBO makes television shows of a mostly decently good quality, while Netflix usually makes almost as good shows, but not quite. Would any podcasts (with video as well as audio) like to interview me about my views?

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mark leidner @markleidner.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

wife claims I muttered “my autofiction is powered by ai" in my sleep last night. not a great morning. choosing not to believe her

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mark leidner @markleidner.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

my friend is obsessed with the idea that if he were one of penelope's suitors she would've chosen him over odysseus, and when pressed to explain how the hell he could've pulled it off, he says he'd have *pretended to be odysseus* the way odysseus pretended to be a beggar, lmao

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mark leidner @markleidner.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

“Ok, muse—you cheeky, fickle fuck. Blow my shit up with the most disgusting, pearlescent barstool anecdotes about that conniving, self-gaslighting GOAT of toxic horseshit, Odysseus!!” —first line from my modern English translation of the Odyssey, forthcoming from Knopf

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mark leidner @markleidner.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

my kid seemed down after school so I asked him what was bothering him and he looked at me with tears in his eyes and said, “dad, why do we have to live in a slopocracy?”

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mark leidner @markleidner.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

adding outright despair and unchecked gluttony to my 53-man roster, waiving tempered ambition and performative ennui

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mark leidner @markleidner.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

the people who wrote Star Wars were obviously very drunk on grain alcohol. how else could they have come up with such crazy stuff? I don’t drink myself, and when I write space opera, all that comes out is thinly veiled autofiction only nominally set in space

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mark leidner @markleidner.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Vanilla Starlight would be a good name for a racehorse, a sailboat, a fragrance, a child whose parents are in a cult, a new drink or add-in at Starbucks, a desktop theme on a Chromebook, or a half-elf multi-class ranger/paladin in Dungeons and Dragons

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mark leidner @markleidner.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

The Odyssey is essentially a story about a guy who wants to lose weight—the weight of his choices—but refuses to take ozempic—the ozempic of forgetting—and instead adopts an insane diet and exercise regimen—the insane diet and exercise regimen of homecoming.

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mark leidner @markleidner.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

the odyssey but ithaca is a bagel shop in new york in the 1970s, and instead of shooting an arrow through a row of axe heads, the old man proves he’s odysseus by throwing a lit cigarette like a dart through all the holes in a long line of lined up bagels

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mark leidner @markleidner.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

the future is endlessly, ruthlessly damoning into infinite nolan while the past leguizamos half-assedly into scattered afflek and the present after hathawaying through open theron barely, zendayaly hollands

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mark leidner @markleidner.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

oh you don’t like blurbs huh? you only like the actual ass poems in the books the blurbs promote? well, have you considered the fact that every poem is itself a blurb for poetry as an artform in general? bro if you look at it like that, you are in love with blurbs

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mark leidner @markleidner.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

dinosaurs have attacked me in the middle of writing every single poem I have ever written, and that is why none of my poems are good, but they would have been if not for the dinosaurs, and none of them being bad is my fault

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mark leidner @markleidner.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

every new book should be written in a new language, and it should begin with a 50-page introduction that teaches you how to read that language. then you can read the book

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mark leidner @markleidner.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

thought I saw Pearl Jam in the clouds. I couldn’t believe it: all five members exquisitely rendered in bulbous mists overhead. my eyes watered. I asked my friend if he saw it too. he took one look at the clouds and squinted and said “that’s Weezer not Pearl Jam” and he was right

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mark leidner @markleidner.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

some of y’all need to worry less about disclosure day and more about dick’s closure day. when the sporting goods retailer in the strip mall near your home shuts its doors, the only “aliens” will be your kids showing up to their sporting events without the right gear

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mark leidner @markleidner.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Vape Shop would be a good name for a racehorse or a boat

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mark leidner @markleidner.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

my dad always used to cry at the part that goes like “chibbbbvvvvvvvvvvshh veeeeewsaaaas” and now I do too

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mark leidner @markleidner.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

in my opinion, reading the odyssey in the original greek is the Iliad of the odyssey, and translating the odyssey into english for non greek readers to read is the odyssey of the odyssey

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mark leidner @markleidner.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

should’ve just said speeding past things ununiques them

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mark leidner @markleidner.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

friends is the jane’s addiction of sitcoms the bible is the nba playoffs of books mfas are the apple pluses of degrees busses are the rhinoceroses of cars wookiees are the cinnamon of aliens silence is the federal reserve of absences

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