iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Nick Smith

scare-ah 👻 @sarahmillswrites.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Here’s my poem in Whale Road Review. Link in comments 🫶

Run-on (noun)
I always think about that walk I took years ago through a Boston cemetery it was peaceful the headstones were like museum artifacts sprawling is how I describe it when I tell the story I cried on the steps of a mausoleum thinking about how all those people lived entire lives before I showed up to the party carrying boxed rosé and a container of store-bought hummus when I got to Anne Sexton's grave the sky suddenly choked open and rain came pouring out back at the hotel I Googled how do astronauts pee in space what happens if there's a medical emergency on the ISS I wanted to know every distant and mildly uncomfortable fact I shivered to sleep in my soaking-wet clothes with the A.C. on full blast the next day as penance I purchased a copy of Anne Sexton's Live or Die from a used bookstore I feel that I should include the requisite nouns apparition / catacomb / gravedigger / columbarium / I keep moving so grief won't catch me I've left it behind so many times I've buried it under nouns eventually it will run out of breath see how small it looks from here just a little hand the size of a doll's reaching up from the ground—

Nick Smith @nixmyth.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Gloria Steinem was the soft cotton rag into which the chloroform of COINTELPRO was poured. Every so called advance for women she stood in front of was a cover for direct harm against Black Americans and their allies.

010

Nick Smith @nixmyth.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

An all timer of an awful week wrt artists dying.

000

Nick Smith @nixmyth.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

I am visiting the future to find out what words are there.

010

Nick Smith @nixmyth.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Ulf the White. Frat bro or brunch lib?

000

Nick Smith @nixmyth.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Hydrocolloid patches are worth every cent for burns.

010

Nick Smith @nixmyth.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

By the way I opened a game store, you can keep up with us @cosmiccardboard.bsky.social

000

Nick Smith @nixmyth.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

Me when the census man comes around checking my race

Picture of a bread bag reading “canyon bakehouse gluten free mountain white”

010

Nick Smith @nixmyth.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

US leftists really need to move past the idea that not holding state power = automatically more radical. The point of radical politics is to take the power back. You can’t redistribute equality, or any resource, until you control it.

000

Nick Smith @nixmyth.bsky.social · 21/06/2026

Pour a hilariously insufficient amount of peroxide into the swamp (I created).

000

Nick Smith @nixmyth.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

Got distracted and forgot to say that despite Bombadil’s status as a conservative perspective the larger lesson is that none of us is safe unless all of us are safe, even TB could not persist alone against Sauron. His own self security didn’t extend to the rest of the world and neither will ours.

000

Nick Smith @nixmyth.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

Anyway, kudzu can grow up to 12” or 30cm a day, and it comes back every time unless you completely trace back the rhizomes and destroy the dendritic crowns that are below the surface of the earth. Meanwhile it perniciously creates a monoculture of its environment and smothers anything within reach.

100

Nick Smith @nixmyth.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

He takes the hobbitish unconcern with the outside world to an extreme and this shows in his similarities to Sam and his affection/connection to Farmer Maggot. In a way Bombadil is the Green Knight of Arda, ineffable, but unable to fully interact with a world that has largely left him behind.

100

Nick Smith @nixmyth.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

on the land where he first appeared. He is immune to the ring’s power exactly because all of his own needs and desires are fully met by the local environment he is coupled to. By extension though he is unable to actually help destroy the ring because it doesn’t matter to him.

100

Nick Smith @nixmyth.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

Strangely, to a contemporary reader Bombadil can read as progressive, environmentalist, an off-grid hero of resistance against industry whose only weapons are musicry and whimsy. Underneath that though is Tolkien’s conservatism. Bombadil’s power comes directly from his nativism, his self ancestry

100

Nick Smith @nixmyth.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

We are locked in a seemingly eternal battle for control of the woods. Yesterday this got me to thinking about how Tom Bombadil is so closely related to the Green Knight. Enigmatic, eternal in a way that seems outside the established constraints of eternity. Inscrutable except to his own authority.

100

Nick Smith @nixmyth.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

I spend most of late spring through summer thinking about the Green Knight. This is because I spend most of late spring through summer fighting back kudzu. Every year (so far) I force it into a smaller space than the year prior, and every year (so far) it returns larger and stronger; but so do I.

100

Nick Smith @nixmyth.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

I’m basically the sacrificial anode for all biting bugs among my friends and family. Picaridin finally making it to the states has been a miracle.

020

Nick Smith @nixmyth.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

If I sent in every tick that attached to me I could fully fund the usps between April and September. Good advice though because alpha gal is no joke.

280

Nick Smith @nixmyth.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

empathy, while Good, can also be dangerous. Hunger for connection in a broken world can be just as dangerous as the hunger of the untrained forager in unfamiliar woods.

010

Nick Smith @nixmyth.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

Also a “bad stat” can be made up, AI does “make things up” in that it collates incompatible information and fabricates false citations. In this way it is very similar to the bigotry that is its primary food source, and if we are smart we will recognize this teaches us that the human impulse to

120

Reposted by Nick Smith

Marianne Worthington @mworthington.bsky.social · 18/04/2026

EXCITED that my new poetry collection is available for pre-order from @bellepointpress.bsky.social! You may know how important pre-sales are, especially for independent presses, so I hope you’ll be interested in pre-buying a copy. Release date is June 23. bellepointpress.com/products/wat...

bellepointpress.com

PRE-ORDER: Water. Witness. Word.

Water. Witness. Word., by Marianne Worthington **This is currently a PRE-ORDER title. Forthcoming Publication Date: June 23, 2026** Water. Witness. Word. is a meditation on loves and griefs of many sh...

0157

Nick Smith @nixmyth.bsky.social · 07/05/2026

Dawkins, among others, once again proving liberal arts supremacy as an education path. Pure science is a great tool but it doesn’t prepare you to navigate a world full of intentionally false information. The bigots reveal themselves often through lack of imagination.

000

Nick Smith @nixmyth.bsky.social · 07/05/2026

The only thing better is getting the notification that someone else has returned a book you’ve been waiting on. Especially for a series.

000

Nick Smith @nixmyth.bsky.social · 02/05/2026

Last year I heard a knock at the door and my neighbor was there with a juvenile cedar waxwing that he brought because “you seem like somebody that would know about how to take care of birds” probably my biggest compliment to date.

110

Nick Smith @nixmyth.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

Democrats went from No Kings to yassss King real fast once a king showed up and said one sentence they agree with. Pathetic.

000

Nick Smith @nixmyth.bsky.social · 26/04/2026

These were my first copies I got between grades 6 and 7 on summer break. Read them until the covers wore off and the pages came unglued.

010

Nick Smith @nixmyth.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

The same ethics and norms that led to Abu Ghraib, My Lai, the 2007 Baghdad strike, pissing on fallen enemies etc etc etc etc etc. I think we are fine to let the institution die actually.

000

Nick Smith @nixmyth.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

I don’t post about sports here but I’m about to become a post covid millennial cardiac event statistic if Mark Pope can’t figure out basic substitution patterns.

000

Nick Smith @nixmyth.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

Reading that Cubans got their grid back up. Viva Fidel, revolution forever!

000

Nick Smith @nixmyth.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

Dishonest innkeep propaganda

110

Nick Smith @nixmyth.bsky.social · 13/03/2026

How do SO MANY people not know that unsigned bills become law automatically after 10 days?

000

Nick Smith @nixmyth.bsky.social · 12/03/2026

It’s covid. I’ll probably live because I’m in pretty good health overall but it doesn’t feel that way at the moment.

000

Nick Smith @nixmyth.bsky.social · 11/03/2026

Mixed greens, walnuts, soft cheese, dried cherries or plums, spicy vinaigrette, pepitas, and crisp apple slices, toasted sourdough slice.

000

Nick Smith @nixmyth.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

Haven’t had a proper day off since 2025 but I’m 3 days away from finishing this renovation then I’m gonna sleep for a week.

000

Nick Smith @nixmyth.bsky.social · 09/03/2026

Hole in one? I’ll put holes in as many as is legally allowed.

010

Nick Smith @nixmyth.bsky.social · 08/03/2026

Can’t believe I live in world so stupid that 23 years later, and 36 years later, people still believe the US is invading west Asia because of nuclear threat instead of imperial capitalism.

010

Nick Smith @nixmyth.bsky.social · 08/03/2026

Survived my own trial of 7 today when I slipped and stabbed the tip of a 7” phillips bit through the top of my hand. Do not recommend 0/10 experience.

000

Nick Smith @nixmyth.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

University of Arkansas too.

010

Nick Smith @nixmyth.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

Definitely a thing. University presses publish fiction, poetry, and CNF all the time. UK, UGA, and University of Pittsburgh all have great fiction work. I’m sure there are more.

120

Nick Smith @nixmyth.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

Yeah, liberals align with the fascists to defend their capital interests.

200

Nick Smith @nixmyth.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

If you all had that much power to make people answer for stuff you would have won the election.

100

Nick Smith @nixmyth.bsky.social · 02/03/2026

Just found out I was accepted into an anthology for the writers workshop that made me the poet I am today. Sometimes it’s a good day on Al Gore’s internet.

000

Nick Smith @nixmyth.bsky.social · 25/02/2026

Worried that I wouldn’t like kotsk but now I’m in the much worse position of loving it and having no more episodes.

000

Nick Smith @nixmyth.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

AI has always been ridiculous to me, but I don’t even like backup cameras on cars, or cars in general.

000

Nick Smith @nixmyth.bsky.social · 19/02/2026

Why is it that a prince of the realm must be jailed so that a moldy orange nouveau riche might be spared?

000

Nick Smith @nixmyth.bsky.social · 19/02/2026

One time entering Ireland I asked the customs agent where to find the local Bobby Sands memorial and he turned stark white, didn’t answer, then advised my fellow travelers to keep a close eye on me until we left the country.

000

Nick Smith @nixmyth.bsky.social · 16/02/2026

When people ask me why I’m a communist and not an anarchist, I’m gonna show them this picture.

000