iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Odd Pocket Press @oddpocketpress.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

From 'The Night I Nearly Hit a Cow' by @jeanmikhail.bsky.social in Issue 1: oddpocketpress.substack.com/p/the-night-...

The moon pinned itself to a clothesline
as a dress slipping over my head,
then heave-hoed over farm fields,
backroads,with the agility of a track star,
jumped hurdles over silos and barns.

—Jean Voneman Mikhail

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Odd Pocket Press @oddpocketpress.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

From 'Praying With the Mantis' by Lauren WB Vermette in Issue 1: oddpocketpress.substack.com/p/praying-wi...

My finger hovers millimeters above
her triangular head. She rears up,
catches me

between her thorny legs and bites.
Hard. She is not praying,
but preying.

—Lauren WB Vermette

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Odd Pocket Press @oddpocketpress.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

From 'The Gift' by Lauren WB Vermette in Issue 1: oddpocketpress.substack.com/p/the-gift-b...

what I thought
was a dried rose

left on the picnic table
is half a rat.

—Lauren WB Vermette

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Odd Pocket Press @oddpocketpress.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Thank you to everyone who has donated or submitted for Issue 3 so far. There are still two days left to submit, so polish up those poems and send them our way: oddpocketpress.substack.com/p/submit

Odd Pocket press
3rd Issue Contest is Ope
Submit 3 Poems by midnight Oct. 1s
Donation-Based Submission Fer
Prize
1st Place, $10
znd Place $75
3rd Place $5
All Poems Will B
Considered for Publicatiol OddPocketPress.Substack.con
Summer Issue Judge:
Rita Mookerjee
Allison Blevins, Alison Hurwitz, Laurie Kunz, Jacquinn Sinclair, Ankine Antaram, Pratibha Kelapure
Hosted by ThePoetrySalon

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Odd Pocket Press @oddpocketpress.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

from 'After the Argument and Long Silence' by Alison Stone in Issue 1: oddpocketpress.substack.com/p/after-the-...

Now the seven church bells chase each other
down the street.

Now the sun’s untouchable shine is your mouth.

Now a bee in the tulip is not your hand.

—Alison Stone

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Odd Pocket Press @oddpocketpress.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

From 'Merino' by @dsmpoet.bsky.social in Issue 1: oddpocketpress.substack.com/p/merino-by-...

I didn’t love the deep
vermillion, but it was your last favorite.
I love it now. I want to say
it isn’t fair—
how hard I loved you

—Donna Spruijt-Metz

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Odd Pocket Press @oddpocketpress.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

From 'How We Let a 6th Grade Boy Define Us' by Shoshauna Shy in Issue 1: oddpocketpress.substack.com/p/how-we-let...

Mrs. Epper claimed she had information
about our contest Who Danny Shotwell
Likes Best, was privy to his thoughts via
the school mother grapevine.

—Shoshauna Shy

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Odd Pocket Press @oddpocketpress.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

From 'The Great Escape,' by Shoshauna Shy in Issue 1: oddpocketpress.substack.com/p/the-great-...

and one enormous lady,
round as two beer kegs,
comes alone to see
Steve McQueen
make his break
in The Great Escape.
She’s purchasing
an El Grande box

—Shoshauna Shy

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Odd Pocket Press @oddpocketpress.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

From 'Last Christmas in California' by Kristine Rae Anderson in Issue 1: oddpocketpress.substack.com/p/last-chris...

December predawn lingers like a cat reluctant to wake up

—Kristine Rae Anderson

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Odd Pocket Press @oddpocketpress.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

from 'Sonnenizio on a Line from Sylvia Plath’s To Eva' by @jessicapurdy.bsky.social in Issue 1: oddpocketpress.substack.com/p/sonnenizio...

Then dinner arrives on a broken
stovetop to eat
and be eaten. To break bread
and go all stranger,

you could close your eyes
and feel daybreak

—Jessica Purdy

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Odd Pocket Press @oddpocketpress.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

From 'The Dog I Am' by Lucinda Pinchot in Issue 1: oddpocketpress.substack.com/p/the-dog-i-...

I’m so fucking weary

of throwing myself against the fence

sniffing

—Lucinda Pinchot

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Odd Pocket Press @oddpocketpress.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

From 'Ode to the Racoon in Ashland, Virginia' by Carrie Myers, in Issue 1: oddpocketpress.substack.com/p/ode-to-the...

Staggered like a freshman
frat boy to the bathroom. Fell,
face-first, beside the toilet
and a mop

—Carrie Myers

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Odd Pocket Press @oddpocketpress.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

There are two weeks left to submit to Issue 3: oddpocketpress.substack.com/p/submit

Odd Pocket Press
3rd Issue Contest is Open
Submit 3 Poems by Oct. 1st
Donation-Based Submission Fee
Prizes
1st Place, $100
2nd Place $75
zrd Place $50
All Poems Will Be
Considered for Publication
OddPocketPress.Substack.com
Summer Issue Judge:
Rita Mookerjee
Allison Blevins, Alison Hurwitz, Laurie Kunz, Jacquinn Sinclair, Ankine Antaram, Pratibha Kelapure
Hosted by ThePoetrySalon

000

Odd Pocket Press @oddpocketpress.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

From 'Smooth Operator,' by Scott McLane in Issue 1: oddpocketpress.substack.com/p/smooth-ope...

Yes, you'll reminisce about going to the barbershop, that warm towel around your mug. When self-care was your community. The buzz of the clippers beating out all the banter and sports experts. Bald is beautiful, but lonely, too.

—Scott McLane

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Odd Pocket Press @oddpocketpress.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

from 'Self-Portrait as Galactus' by Rita Maria Martinez in Issue 1: oddpocketpress.substack.com/p/self-portr...

When Mami is intubated three times
and flatlines five times in one week, I ditch
Weight Watchers and gobble a cheeseburger

—Rita Maria Martinez

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Odd Pocket Press @oddpocketpress.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

From 'When Your Hospital Bed is a Dive Boat' by @bamars.bsky.social in Issue 1: oddpocketpress.substack.com/p/when-your-...

My mind drifts to scuba lessons:
rough dives off a dreary beach in winter,
instructors trying to awaken us
from our Jacques Cousteau dreams.

—Betsy Mars

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Odd Pocket Press @oddpocketpress.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

From ‘My Mother Draws’ by Susan Krane, in Issue 1: oddpocketpress.substack.com/p/my-mother-...

a shaky circle, wavering on the
downstroke, the wide curve
of the turn. The room fills with the
sad smell of effort.
Facing off the face of failure. The doctor
says again,
Please draw the face of a clock, and with
undue calm

—Susan Krane

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Odd Pocket Press @oddpocketpress.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

From 'De Kooning Morning’ by Susan Krane in Issue 1: oddpocketpress.substack.com/p/de-kooning...

at top right of the composition
sits the moon, lyrical footnote
and reminder that emotion need not be loud.

—Susan Krane

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Odd Pocket Press @oddpocketpress.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

From ‘Passport’ by Tim Kahl in Issue 1: oddpocketpress.substack.com/p/passport-b...

I anticipate that sudden lift
when things fall just short of disaster
and someone has to send in the Marines.

—Tim Kahl

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Odd Pocket Press @oddpocketpress.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

From 'Innocent Complicity’ by Nancy K. Jentsch in Issue 1: oddpocketpress.substack.com/p/innocent-c...

Uncle Bobby’s model trains spilled
from boxes. The unfinished walls grinned
from stud to stud with Playboy centerfolds.

—Nancy K. Jentsch

010

Odd Pocket Press @oddpocketpress.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

from “3 Killed as Northwest Braces for More Freezing Rain, Ice and Snow” by Leslie Hodge in Issue 1: oddpocketpress.substack.com/p/3-killed-a...

We go
through snow not seen before,
this fearsome icy storm. I
moan for those frozen in sleep

—Leslie Hodge

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Odd Pocket Press @oddpocketpress.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

From 'The Return Address Says:’ by Evie Groch in Issue 1: oddpocketpress.substack.com/p/the-return...

Fear mingles with dread as I pull
one corner open

I pry loose the other corner,
allowing soured air to escape.

—Evie Groch

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Odd Pocket Press @oddpocketpress.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

from ‘Quarantine Cooking’ by Lorelei Greenwood-Jones: oddpocketpress.substack.com/p/quarantine...

For someone
who thought of a frypan
as a weapon
he is surely discovering new uses
for cookery
in his arsenal.

—Lorelei Greenwood-Jones

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Odd Pocket Press @oddpocketpress.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

from 'I’d Like to Think I’d Be Like John Laurens’ by Shannon Frost Greenstein: oddpocketpress.substack.com/p/id-like-to...

back when you had to be damn sure you were ready to die on the hill where you decided to take your stand, back when John Laurens dreamt up the first Black battalion and then dared to envisioned its freedom

—Shannon Frost Greenstein

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Odd Pocket Press @oddpocketpress.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

From 'Coming Home, I See a Fawn Standing in the Center of Town’ by Kelly Grace Thomas, selected by @joankwonglass.bsky.social as an honorable mention in Issue 1: oddpocketpress.substack.com/p/coming-hom...

My mother always spotted the deer before me.
There’s one, she’d say, after I missed it.

The trick she taught me is to look beyond
the body. Beyond the dark. Look for the light
she said, the way it catches

—Kelly Grace Thomas

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Odd Pocket Press @oddpocketpress.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

from ‘Organic Date’ by @deroneckert.bsky.social in Issue 1: oddpocketpress.substack.com/p/organic-da...

if you were pressed any further,
you would not have an ounce of life
left in you. That is until I move you
from my hand to my lips, startled
to find even more of what first attracted
me to your younger, suppler sister.

—Deron Eckert

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Odd Pocket Press @oddpocketpress.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

From ‘Full of Misconctewed Words’ by RJ Clarken: oddpocketpress.substack.com/p/full-of-mi...

But he is wrong without a doubt.
If I say nope, he’ll stump, poutine.
Poutine? It’s POUT! See what I mien?
I want to screen or vent my spleen.

—RJ Clarken

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Odd Pocket Press @oddpocketpress.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

from ‘Sunflower, Cast a Spell,’by Alison Bell Miller in Issue 1: oddpocketpress.substack.com/p/sunflower-...

buy vintage postcards, four for five dollars, and a book of poetry
you’ll later fling from the bathtub

—Alison Bell Miller

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Odd Pocket Press @oddpocketpress.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

from ‘mixed tape’ by Tara Humphrey, chosen by Joan Kwan Glass as the second-place poem in Issue 1: oddpocketpress.substack.com/p/mixed-tape...

i tucked your cassette in the cup of my bra on the plane. a decade before the towers fell and airports were slipped into like album covers — Tara Humphrey

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Odd Pocket Press @oddpocketpress.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

From ‘Vigil’ by @nancysobanik.bsky.social chosen by Joan Kwan Glass as an honorable mention in Issue 1: oddpocketpress.substack.com/p/vigil-by-n...

Paper wasp, I see you,
crawling over the same ground
between screen and pane, such a thin gap

—Nancy Sobanik

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Odd Pocket Press @oddpocketpress.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

From “Dog” by @patriciawallace.bsky.social . This poem was chosen as an honorable mention in Issue 1 of Odd Pocket: oddpocketpress.substack.com/p/dog-by-pat...

I woke to the sound of an animal pacing
inside my house. A dog. I don’t
have a dog. In the dark
I got up and found him

—Patricia Wallace

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Odd Pocket Press @oddpocketpress.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Today’s exherpt is from “Decomposition: an Act of Contrition” by Alesa Bernat, chosen by Joan Kwan Glass in our contest for Issue 1. Here is the rest of it: oddpocketpress.substack.com/p/decomposit...

If you don’t want my body after I’m gone,
let me be bone meal – a slow release

—Alesa Bernat

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Odd Pocket Press @oddpocketpress.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Today’s exherpt is from Jessica Purdy’s poem 'If I Named the Flowers—an Abecedarian,’ the winning poem in Issue 1, selected by @joankwonglass.bsky.social . To read the poem, check out our website: oddpocketpress.substack.com/p/if-i-named...

Menopause likes to look back at
80s Mascara—her petals
that cobalt-purple hybrid 
no one can name

—Jessica Purdy

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