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Reposted by Vikki C.

Susan L. Leary @susanlleary.bsky.social · 1d

“Everything ends up being an ode to death.”

—Martha Silano in TERMINAL SURREAL (@acrebooks.bsky.social)

DEATH POEM

Death is the one-day-alive mayfly clinging to a watering can.
When the grass turns brown, how can I not think of death?
In my heart, death lives like a mama raccoon with her two young.
We haven't figured out a way to undo death.
Death awaits the pigeon on a roof, says the Cooper's hawk.
It's not cool to mention corpse beetles when there's a death.
Did you know there's a death's-head hawkmoth?
A scrub jay squawks death, death, death!
Dragonflies and death: they live about six months.
Eating is for sure some kind of elaborate death feast.
Sometimes death is invisible, especially when we laugh.
Our planet: one big tribute concert to death.
Death be not proud, says John Donne, but death is proud, I think.
Everything ends up being an ode to death.

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Reposted by Vikki C.

Vikki C. @vikkicwrites.bsky.social · 2d

Thank you so much for your kind words and support, @rhonagreene.bsky.social! We really hope you enjoy 'In the Blueprint of Her Iris'. Such beautiful photos and message. She seems to glow in your home ✨️ 💞

#poetrycommunity #writingcommunity @icefloepress.bsky.social @rfredekenter.bsky.social

Rhona Greene @rhonagreene.bsky.social · 2d

🤩This is going to be a real treat!

‘In the Blueprint
Of
Her Iris’

A gorgeous collaboration featuring
Poems by @vikkicwrites.bsky.social
and
Art by @rfredekenter.bsky.social

Published @icefloepress.bsky.social
What a dream combination. So exciting!
Congratulations Vikki & Robert 💐💖💫

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Vikki C. @vikkicwrites.bsky.social · 2d

Thank you so much for your kind words and support, @rhonagreene.bsky.social! We really hope you enjoy 'In the Blueprint of Her Iris'. Such beautiful photos and message. She seems to glow in your home ✨️ 💞

#poetrycommunity #writingcommunity @icefloepress.bsky.social @rfredekenter.bsky.social

Rhona Greene @rhonagreene.bsky.social · 2d

🤩This is going to be a real treat!

‘In the Blueprint
Of
Her Iris’

A gorgeous collaboration featuring
Poems by @vikkicwrites.bsky.social
and
Art by @rfredekenter.bsky.social

Published @icefloepress.bsky.social
What a dream combination. So exciting!
Congratulations Vikki & Robert 💐💖💫

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Reposted by Vikki C.

Rhona Greene @rhonagreene.bsky.social · 2d

🤩This is going to be a real treat!

‘In the Blueprint
Of
Her Iris’

A gorgeous collaboration featuring
Poems by @vikkicwrites.bsky.social
and
Art by @rfredekenter.bsky.social

Published @icefloepress.bsky.social
What a dream combination. So exciting!
Congratulations Vikki & Robert 💐💖💫

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Reposted by Vikki C.

RobertFredeKenter @rfredekenter.bsky.social · 3d

Flower Quartet (2025) (c) Robert Frede Kenter
#images #series #quartet #vispo #visualpoem #magic #colour #dreamgalaxy #artofBsky #patterns #eco #repetition #myth

Four flowers (same flower) for colour schemes pale pink, green-beige, shades of blue, shades of red, four rectangular blocks on page centred, descending order or any direction you wish to view them. visual poem with mythic overtones by Robert Frede Kenter (c) 2025.

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Reposted by Vikki C.

RobertFredeKenter @rfredekenter.bsky.social · 5d

Ty Lynne Lampe for her pre-writing on IN THE BLUEPRINT OF HER IRIS, collaborative-hybrid work by myself (art) & Vikki C. @vikkicwrites.bsky.social (poetry).
"an intricate piece of lace tatted from a single thread" - LJLampe.
Available @icefloepress.bsky.social
#books #collaboration #vispo @poetry

Vikki C. @vikkicwrites.bsky.social · 5d

"From start to finish, In the Blueprint of Her Iris thrilled me with the mystery and electricity of its text-image pairings.."

Grateful to @ljensenlampe.bsky.social for her praise of In the Blueprint of Her Iris.

Available from @icefloepress.bsky.social. Link below🔥

@rfredekenter.bsky.social

“From start to finish, In the Blueprint of Her Iris thrilled me with the mystery and electricity of its text-image pairings. This collaboration by Vikki C. (words) and Robert Frede Kenter (images) reminds me of an intricate piece of lace tatted from a single thread—necessarily connected, the collection loops and swirls. Individually and as a whole, the pairings captivate with repeating words, colors, textures, and themes. Each time I reached the end, I started over, looking for more connections and sonic play. I read Vikki’s words first silently then aloud, I basked in Robert’s vivid visuals. I felt upended in the best way, a “galaxy mouthing a name / it has not learnt to pronounce.” In the Blueprint of Her Iris won’t let me go.”

—Lynne Jensen Lampe, author of Talk Smack to a Hurricane

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Vikki C. @vikkicwrites.bsky.social · 5d

icefloepress.net/in-the-bluep...

@icefloepress.bsky.social

In The Blueprint of Her Iris – A Collaboration. Vikki C. (Poems) Robert Frede Kenter (Images)

Now Available ! In The Blueprint of Her Iris is a collaboration between Vikki C. (Poems) and Robert Frede Kenter (Images). It is 69 pages, full colour, 6″ x 9″ dimensions. Purchase it h…

icefloepress.net

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Vikki C. @vikkicwrites.bsky.social · 5d

"From start to finish, In the Blueprint of Her Iris thrilled me with the mystery and electricity of its text-image pairings.."

Grateful to @ljensenlampe.bsky.social for her praise of In the Blueprint of Her Iris.

Available from @icefloepress.bsky.social. Link below🔥

@rfredekenter.bsky.social

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Reposted by Vikki C.

Vikki C. @vikkicwrites.bsky.social · Aug 1

"You know / I always need to save something, to control it."

'Aubade as Fuel' from LOVE PRODIGAL by Traci Brimhall (Copper Canyon Press) @coppercanyonpress.bsky.social

Sheer brilliance 🤍

#poetry #poetrybooks #poetrycollections

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Reposted by Vikki C.

Stone Circle Review @stonecirclereview.bsky.social · 7d

Art, as I said earlier, affects a person's emotions, not his reason. Its
function is, as it were, to turn and loosen the human soul, making it
receptive to good.

-- Andrei Tarkovsky

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Reposted by Vikki C.

Vikki C. @vikkicwrites.bsky.social · 8d

On occasion, the poet leaves the isolation of her room, her literary duties, her various wild and broody selves...and heads to the city.

Tonight, celebrating the blessing of being “caught between cultures” — the way she’s always been. Joy, reflection, heritage.

#Midautumnfest 🏮🌕✨️ #eastmeetswest

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Reposted by Vikki C.

Amorak Huey @amorak.bsky.social · 8d

Jenny George—

Fortune
Autumn, with its vivid exchanges,
streams the avenues
of an old city. The falling leaves
produce a kind of wedding.
There's a thinness to the air.
Golden cottonwoods tremble with their visions.

We walk along the street
with our shoulders nearly
touching. One of us
carries a bag of delicate pastries
wrapped in paper like sticky jewels.

Here, says the Future, that famous comic.
Here are your lives. They are yours
to live in extravagantly.

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Vikki C. @vikkicwrites.bsky.social · 8d

Full story and sequence on IG ✨️

Vikki C. @vikkicwrites.bsky.social · 8d

On occasion, the poet leaves the isolation of her room, her literary duties, her various wild and broody selves...and heads to the city.

Tonight, celebrating the blessing of being “caught between cultures” — the way she’s always been. Joy, reflection, heritage.

#Midautumnfest 🏮🌕✨️ #eastmeetswest

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Reposted by Vikki C.

Alison Birch @irishali13.bsky.social · 9d

This poem is stunning. If you haven't read Dressing The Bear, it's a must-read.
Clean
~ Susan L. Leary
-I often worried when I got the call, I'd be unprepared. But the morning my brother dies ——💙

Clean
By: Susan L. Leary
I often worried when I got the call, I'd be unprepared.
But the morning my brother dies, all the good clothes in the house are clean. So I tell myself to get on with it. x later, standing over my brother,
I think whoever
prepared his body must love what they do. Because he looks so clean. Cleaner, even, than when he'd doze on the couch midafternoons to Hank Williams or Johnny Cash.
The fatigue of living wiped from his cheeks. & today, as then, the same stillness stretched across his eyes.
The same tiny shovels for thumbs. & when I find the strength to rest a hand atop his, I shake him a little to tell him I wore his favorite dress: summery & sand-colored with splotches of blue. & while it seems so symbolic, it's all rather simple.
I wear a blue-patterned dress because my brother loved the ocean. & because my brother was lonely & broken, he couldn't kick drugs. But I love my brother & the morning he dies, all the good clothes in the house are clean.
So I tell him: Clean.

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Reposted by Vikki C.

Sam Rasnake @samrasnake.bsky.social · 9d

We’re all dreamers; we don’t know who we are.

Some machine made us; machine of the world, the constricting family.
Then back to the world, polished by soft whips.

We dream; we don’t remember.
Louise Glück
#poetry #writer

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Reposted by Vikki C.

Veronika Fuchs @veronikafuchs.bsky.social · 12d

Roses for Susan @susanlleary.bsky.social, I hope you are doing well, Susan—this is probably the last bloom of the year, and therefore the most precious.

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Vikki C. @vikkicwrites.bsky.social · 9d

"...the poet evokes the sacred through place and seasonal migrations that mark the fluid nature of identity, juxtaposed with the duties and footholds of tradition."

My review of the luminous 'Drench Me in Silver' by @saraswatinagpal.bsky.social (@blackboughpoetry.bsky.social).

#poetry #reviews

Saraswati Nagpal's 'Drench Me in Silver' (Black Bough Poetry, 2025)

A review of Drench Me in Silver by Saraswati Nagpal (Black Bough Poetry, 2025)

By Vikki C.

Saraswati Nagpal’s Drench Me in Silver (Black Bough Poetry, 2025) demonstrates through precise, breathtaking language, that rapture resides in tender reverence for the rich fabric of heritage and familial legacy. A vivid and moving tribute to the complex nuances of culture and codex that influence and transcend the female experience, the poet evokes the sacred through place and seasonal migrations that mark the fluid nature of identity, juxtaposed with the duties and footholds of tradition.

Nagpal conjures the fragrance and soul-song of a multitextured terrain where a singular voice cascades into an intergenerational chorale in honour of the divine feminine. From nascent wellspring to oneiric cameos of kinship, domesticities and ritual, we are held in mutual adoration for the transformative beauty of the natural world and the devotion of mythical female figures: “These women abound, adorned in ichor, blood and blossoms.” Meditations where for Nagpal, time is both vignette and luminous ancient light: “Year’s lived grow distant, city lights fading / to tarnished tinsel. Youth’s amber demands / have been savoured and sold.”

I was enlightened by her elegant vernacular of loss—a liminality that rains, pools, evaporates in all its forms— yet, what endures, elides cinematically from both origin and otherness: “In a river, you pirouette at last: / a wild bird in love with the wind.” Distilling grace, intellect, defiance and empathy, this is poetry that incarnates the ardent love of forebearers with the alchemy of the sublime self, both in the moment, and the ages to come..

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Reposted by Vikki C.

Bunkong Tuon @bunkong.bsky.social · 9d

Here's a list of journals that folks recommended: Long Poem Magazine (UK), The Broken Spine (UK), Last Syllable, Missouri Review, Literary Imagination, Blackbird, Ploughshares (for Fall reading period), Adroit, Cincinnati Review, Lothorian Poetry Journal (1/2)

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Reposted by Vikki C.

Read A Little Poetry @readalittlepoem.bsky.social · 10d

Today’s poem is selected by Tomás Q. Morín as part of the 20th anniversary of Read A Little Poetry.

“Meditations in an Emergency” appeared in Dispatch by Cameron Awkward-Rich, published by Persea Books, 2019. Shared here with deep gratitude.

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Reposted by Vikki C.

RobertFredeKenter @rfredekenter.bsky.social · 9d

L.A (2023) (c) Robert Frede Kenter #photo #photoart #image #LosAngeles #photographsofbluesky #street #queer #lgbtqia
@icefloepress.bsky.social @mjseyesopened.bsky.social

Photo by Robert Frede Kenter (2023) Los Angeles. A white low rise industrial-loft building/ storefront/ mural of red leaves, a fish, flowers. Caption red ink, "When you're queer, you're family"

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Reposted by Vikki C.

Vikki C. @vikkicwrites.bsky.social · 14d

Link to order page @icefloepress.bsky.social 🔥 icefloepress.net/in-the-bluep...

In The Blueprint of Her Iris – A Collaboration. Vikki C. (Poems) Robert Frede Kenter (Images)

Now Available ! In The Blueprint of Her Iris is a collaboration between Vikki C. (Poems) and Robert Frede Kenter (Images). It is 69 pages, full colour, 6″ x 9″ dimensions. Purchase it h…

icefloepress.net

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Reposted by Vikki C.

Vikki C. @vikkicwrites.bsky.social · 11d

"The fictive ones, the far gold
of a rain-blessed prison,
where people play to live,
and sentences seem gentle
and so on."

Here, researching, reimagining, invoking spirits for a special project – one woman, one room, and the mind's potential...

#nationalpoetryday #goldenhour
#poetrycommunity

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Vikki C. @vikkicwrites.bsky.social · 11d

Thank you, Carmella, for sharing about this book 🤍

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Vikki C. @vikkicwrites.bsky.social · 11d

"The fictive ones, the far gold
of a rain-blessed prison,
where people play to live,
and sentences seem gentle
and so on."

Here, researching, reimagining, invoking spirits for a special project – one woman, one room, and the mind's potential...

#nationalpoetryday #goldenhour
#poetrycommunity

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