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Michael Thériault

@mtheriaultsf.bsky.social
389 followers 848 following 1K posts

I’ve done a few things. I’m not quite done yet.

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Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Today, as for a while now, I said good morning to my zombie submission of a short story to a literary magazine that has already published its announced last edition but that still shows the submission as In-Progress on Submittable. Progress toward what? There, there’s another story.
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Reposted by Michael Thériault
Literland @literland.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Gabriela Mistral caminando con Miguel de Unamuno en 1933, durante la etapa en la que la poetisa chilena era cónsul de su país en Portugal.
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Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Retelling this: Ironworker organizer, I found a nonunion steel outfit adding a story to Wong’s building. Willie Brown’s mayoral campaign HQ was on the ground floor. I obtained picket sanction from the Building Trades. My local’s Business Manager wouldn’t (1/2) missionlocal.org/2026/09/walt...
missionlocal.org
Uncle Walter's Mystery House: Mission Local's exclusive tour
Secret passageways, a secret floor — the former inner sanctum of deposed fixer Walter Wong is full of strange and terrible surprises
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Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
It’s Autumn Moon Festival time hereabouts, so also time for my annual moon cake with red bean paste and egg yolk. Because I’m supposed to be watching my ancient body’s cholesterol, I opted for the single over the double yolk version.
On a white paper napkin, half a moon cake with dark red filling and in its midst an egg yolk, and with a design of blossom and leaf stamped into its upper crust.
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Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
If you see this, post your fav Disney character. (So much more attractive than Snow White to small-boy me, and still so, at the other end of life.)
static.klipy.com
Evil Queen: I Am The Queen
Alt: Evil Queen: I Am The Queen
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Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Word has arrived that my short-short story “A Glass of Grappa,” mourning, power, and conflict in an urban setting, has been accepted by literarygarage.bsky.social. I look forward to sharing it with you. My thanks to editor Kevin Christopher Michaels.
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Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
With some success in the short story after a hiatus of decades to support a family, then the labor movement, I reviewed work I’d published in my 20s. @bulbculture.bsky.social publishes work from defunct litmags. Berkeley Poets Coop was one. Thnx to Bulb Culture for resurrecting In Here, Out There.
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Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
An advantage of cool San Francisco summers: Red Sails lettuce from my garden for tonight’s dinner.
A leaf lettuce with crinkled leaves of green and russet, held in a hand above other lettuces.
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Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Elegy: I inherited the Gitane from a man who’d died of cancer. I had it rebuilt, rode it 20,553.2mi. I broke a chainstay 1600ft up the Tunitas climb, a freewheel on the steep part of Sneath. I had these repaired.There seems to be no repair for an ancient French headset. I loved this bike.
Blue Gitane Grande Luxe 10-speed bicycle from 1972 leaning against a bank of mailboxes under a sign for the junction of Tunitas Creek and Skyline roads, in the background some of the shrubs and conifers of the Santa Cruz Mountains on the San Francisco Peninsula.
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Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Likely first peelings of meal prep just now by a hawk (gone by the time I looked) in the pine above our back garden. I’m guessing the feathers are from an Eurasian collared dove.
Cluster of white and gray feathers of various functions among a few small weeds on bare soil.
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Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
It gave San Francisco as my closest dialect match, which is comforting, because that’s where I was born, raised, and live. (But for much of the quiz it said New York, which says I retain some of the Mission Brogue, the old Brooklynesque working-class San Francisco accent.)
United States pronunciation heat map showing the strongest match in an arc from Los Angeles north to a bit north of San Francisco.
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Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
Introduce yourself as what almost killed you. Hi, I’m trashed-by-radiation-for-stage-4-cancer-fell-down-stairs-fractured-3-neck-vertebrae Hi, I’m confronted-by-soldier-with-rifle-on-Medellín-sidewalk Hi, I’m made-my-living-as-structural-Ironworker-(many-incidents)
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Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Worth reading to land in this passage:
None of this is a tabletop campaign, right? No one knows how it is going to turn out. Are you doing the right thing when you run? When you leave your stuff to someone else? When you plead with your parents whom you hate to get you out? When you marry for convenience and then fall in love with someone in the exile community? When you commit suicide? When you go to Mexico? “Why didn’t you?… “ “Why didn’t they?…” “They should’ve…”

Why didn’t I drive a truck into the side of the detention camp to get someone, anyone out?
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Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
The challenges of growing tomatoes in San Francisco include not just cool summers, but rats, so soon after the fruit starts to change color I bring it inside to finish ripening away from long nocturnal incisors.
In a white bowl on a cutting board, Early Girl tomatoes in different shades of red, a Black Krim lobed and purple with green shoulders, and little oblong Sunset Torches, some orange, some still yellow.
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Reposted by Michael Thériault
Samuel Day Wharton @fakeourway.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
Delighted to have this poem appear in issue 7 of @pictura.bsky.social picturajournal.com/issue-seven/...
picturajournal.com
Samuel Day Wharton - Pictura Journal
after 3 years my in-laws still walk around this townlike tourists     black glasses & backpacks with bagsof water      (where do they go?      down the river & up it)taking in the salmon runs & the po...
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Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 02/08/2026
Your last text message is your epitaph. What does your tombstone say? “But now I prefer to animals that talk the lobster, as did the French poet Gerard de Nerval, who named his Thibault and walked it in Paris on a blue silk ribbon leash. Despite knowing the secrets of the deep, the lobster is ….”
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Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
Here, here’s another of my stories, out today in @bloominonionlit.bsky.social (and thanks again to editor Daniel Groves). It rides San Francisco Muni’s 14-Mission bus (as often do I) and fulfills an important task along the way:
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Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
Exacting Clam, @exactingclam.bsky.social, has accepted my story entitled and beginning “EYES” for likely spring ‘27 publication. I violated tons of rules and conventions in this one but thought it worked. So, apparently, did Exacting Clam, with my gratitude. (Photo by Honza Reznik, unsplash.com)
A golden eye with dark pupil and surrounded by fur in various grays
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Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
I began to watch a trailer for the upcoming Cien años de soledad Part 2 this morning and felt tears start to come before I realized why: This is where we will get the United Fruit massacre. And recalled also being on a Medellín street after a strike’s end with a Colombian army rifle pointed at me.
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Rosella Melanson @rosellam.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
Beau texte.
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Reposted by Michael Thériault
California Federation of Labor Unions @californialabor.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
The California Labor Movement stands with every peaceful immigrant in this country simply trying to get to work without being killed.
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Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
Four varieties of lettuce (Thurinus, Flashy Trout Back, Cherokee, Red Sails) in a homemade starter flat at the start of thinning and weeding. The lettuces at bottom, toppled by their neighbors’ departure, will stand back up in a couple of days. The neighbors have gone into a salad.
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Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 12/07/2026
“porque sólo de movimiento fue su alma”
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Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
Thanks again to Libby Feltis and Madison Betts. My story The Gift of a Ring is out today in their Issue V: Rebirth of Tension Literary. Some of my stories take structural risks. This one takes a different risk. Have a look: www.tensionliterary.com
Magazine cover, a collage with the words Tension Literary, tensionliterary.com, and Issue V: Rebirth, and including on a background of text, left, and of black and white photograph of clouds crossing the sky over a Spanish bayonet plant, right, a dark-haired smiling woman in red blouse or dress among floating blossoms and colored dots and two jagged fragments of maps.
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The Guardian @theguardian.com · 10/07/2026
‘It’s a national reclamation’: the 12-year festival bringing Samuel Beckett back to Ireland
theguardian.com
‘It’s a national reclamation’: the 12-year festival bringing Samuel Beckett back to Ireland
The playwright has long been considered one of the country’s most famous exports, but not an ‘Irish writer’. An ambitious new season of plays explores his complex relationship with his homeland – and tickets are already on sale for 2036
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Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
The dispute was between the “shape-up,” in which longshoremen were chosen by bosses from a crowd on the dock, and the hiring hall, with rules structured for fairness. I dispatched for the San Francisco Ironworkers 377 hiring hall and was always cognizant that workers had died for it.
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Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 04/07/2026
San Francisco attracts the ambitious, but it can also be the city to which someone flees thousands of miles to escape ambition and the pressures of love, as in my story Distribution, which has just been accepted by The Bloomin’ Onion, @bloominonionlit.bsky.social . My thanks to editor Daniel Groves.
Detail from a letter handwritten in black cursive and addressed in an October to a Theresa.
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Reposted by Michael Thériault
the Thieving Magpie @the-thievingmagpie.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
The writer Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social has written a sly and salty story about the subtleties of relationships for our Summer 2026 issue.  Pay attention!  And check it out thievingmagpie.org/michael-ther....  #thievingmagpie #literarymischief #fiction #summerishere #poetry #art
thievingmagpie.org
Michael Thériault - Fiction
Sal was unperturbed when Mary sat apart from him on the couch as they watched television after dinner, and even when her favorite comedy didn’t once make her laugh. Sooner or later...she would again l
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Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
San Franciscans will know the true tales of local corruption behind my fictional tale Scruff Patch, out today in Animal Blood Magazine. Thanks to editor Tess Pollok. animalbloodmagazine.com/features/scr...
Trash and leaves in a dry patch primarily of wild oats
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Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
I wondered how stories I published in my 20s, before a hiatus of decades from fiction, would play now. Well, I guess. Bulb Culture Collective features work that has appeared in defunct litmags. In Here, Out There was in the long-gone Berkeley Poets Cooperative (#26, 1985). It comes out Sept. in BCC.
Copyright page from Berkeley Poets Cooperative 26 with the date 1985, and Table of Contents with Michael Thériault, In Here, Out There, under Fiction
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Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 27/06/2026
My garden’s bees adore its lavender and African blue basil but ignore squash blossoms, so I go daily among the zucchini plants with a worn-out soft toothbrush to gather pollen from male flowers and participate in sexual activity.
On the white bristles at the top of a well-worn toothbrush, yellow pollen waits to be applied to a female squash blossom in the background.
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Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
Many thanks to editor Jocelyn Osoria and her advocacy for my story A Dance at the End and its acceptance now by NuEpoca Journal. It walks the sidewalks of San Francisco’s Excelsior District and the corridors of Balboa High School to a dance in a tiny apartment tucked behind a door under a stair.
Under wood stairs, green to a green house, and across from items in loose storage, a doormat and wrought iron gate reveal the entry to an apartment with the address number 473.
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Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 21/06/2026
I have a small thing in this, a story, “All of a Sudden,” which I hope you’ll enjoy.
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Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 20/06/2026
Wanted to rewatch K Russell’s The Devils Sunday, half century after the last time (family history link; Jean Thériault left for Acadie from Martaizé, 11km from Loudun, the year after the events there on which the film is based) but it’s only on Amazon. Won’t deal with the Devil to watch The Devils.
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Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
My short story “The Gate with Two Hasps,” out today in The Astorian Journal, has in some ways almost a 19th-century feel. In one very important way it does not. See for yourself: theastorian.net/articles/the... My thanks to editor Noemi Leigh.
theastorian.net
The Gate with Two Hasps — The Astorian
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Reposted by Michael Thériault
Thomas Ragon @thomasragon.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
Jacques Tati par Carlos Nine
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Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
Good day this Bloomsday: The Astorian says it will publish my story The Gate with Two Hasps, in which a new gate and Verdi’s Otello together open a connection between neighbors separated for most of a lifetime by education, class, and more.
Gate in a backyard fence of weathered redwood planks.
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Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
Trump - 0, single-celled brainless photosynthetic organism - 1
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Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
It’s Bloomsday, and after I deal with a short story rejection and a short story acceptance I’ll return to a personal tradition I’ve established in retirement, spending the day reading this aloud.
A copy of James Joyce’s Ulysses with cover worn almost to tatters.
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Reposted by Michael Thériault
Wikipédia en français @wikipediafr.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
8 juin 1903 : Naissance de la femme de lettres française Marguerite Yourcenar. Elle est la première femme élue à l’Académie française en 1980 et reçoit de nombreux prix littéraires. fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marguer... #CeJourLà
Photo en noir et blanc de Marguerite Yourcenar, assise et souriante. Elle porte la main à côté de son visage et est vêtue d’un pull en maille, d’une écharpe et d’une chemise.
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Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 06/06/2026
So, I wake from a dream, and the one thing I recall is standing beside a guy in San Francisco firefighter workday blue, and he says, “It will require the cooperation of all fourteen departments.” This will henceforth be my response to even the mildest difficulty presented to me.
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Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
From which exile he escapes, passing through San Francisco, where he pops up in a short story of mine, published in Sortes: drive.google.com/file/d/1TMIu...
drive.google.com
SORTES Issue 18 (June 2024).pdf
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Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
From my garden for tonight’s dinner, snow peas and (for omelettes) fines herbes (chervil, parsley, chives, tarragon/cerfeuil, persil, ciboulette, estragon) (and red bell pepper from Safeway, because, you know, San Francisco’s climate gives, San Francisco’s climate denies)
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Sean Hecker @sean-hecker.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
We are going to savor this one. Our client, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, is freed of these outrageous, vindictive charges. It’s a good day.
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Wikipédia en français @wikipediafr.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
20 mai 1799 : Naissance de l’écrivain français Honoré de Balzac. Il est l'auteur de l'une des plus imposantes œuvres romanesques de la littérature française, avec plus de quatre-vingt-dix romans et nouvelles. fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honor%C... #CeJourLà
Photographie en noir et blanc d’Honoré de Balzac. Il porte une chemise blanche avec le col ouvert. Ses cheveux sont sombres et mi-longs, légèrement ondulés. Un fond uni et clair met en valeur la silhouette d’Honoré.
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Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
My grandmother recalled being led by an open coffin where lay my great-grandfather Docite Pelletier, struck by lightning while running with rosary in hand for the shelter of a barn in Northern Maine. He was, she said, black all down one side. This orphaned her. Now I picture this going through him.
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Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
My copy of Querencia Press’s magazine Scavengers has arrived. Hanging onto its tail is my short-short story Bolt Head, which plays with prose form. My thanks to Editor/Curator Shilo Niziolek. It’s a wild ride. See for yourself: www.querenciapress.com/scavengers-3...
querenciapress.com
Scavengers Issue 3 — Querencia Press
Scavengers is a journal of fragmented and hybrid works across all genres. Issue 3 of Scavengers Journal an imprint of Querencia Press incudes 69 contributors - Edited & Curated by Shilo Niziolek
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Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 11/05/2026
Word has come that Tension Literary will publish my story The Gift of a Ring, which somehow combines Ironworkers Union picnics, protein construction, swimming, Jane Austen, and fugal counterpoint. I’ll post a link when it’s out so you can see how. My thanks to editors Libby Feltis and Madison Betts.
Opening bars of Fugue Number Sixteen in B-flat minor from Shostakovich’s préludes and fugues, as far as the second entry of the subject.
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Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 10/05/2026
Owl pellet from under our San Francisco Monterey pine today. We often hear great horned owls at night. Forgive the blur, and note the flecks of bone in the fur matrix.
Before a pine trunk, fingers hold an oblong Pellet of fur flecked with pine duff and bone fragments.
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