alina pleskova
LightNews LightNews
banner
alinapleskova.bsky.social
alina pleskova
@alinapleskova.bsky.social
1.6K followers 810 following 880 posts
poet-in-residence of the astral realm / fog aficionado / Toska (Deep Vellum, 2023) / 🥨 Philly

IG: @alina_pleskova
alinapleskova.com
Posts Replies Media Videos
alinapleskova.bsky.social
honestly yes
Screenshot of a Philadelphia Inquirer headline that reads: Her path to 'having it all?' Be gay and move to Philly, a Wharton economist says, with a photo of a group of people of varying ages and identities seated a table sharing a family style meal
November 26, 2025 at 4:45 PM
alinapleskova.bsky.social
four new short poems from me at Boxx Press 📦 📦 & a sneak peek below—
Alina Pleskova 4 poems Boxxpress.substack.com Background: Adorable but also lowkey bitchy looking bird holding a pink flower in its mouth RECESSION INDICATOR Less need for recreational degradation Obliterate me some gentler way
November 22, 2025 at 2:32 PM
alinapleskova.bsky.social
ok so this series only [re]started in October, but i still get to say, with gravitas, that the final Track Changes of the year is upon us!!! closing it out on 12/2 with ultra-talented writers Austyn Wohlers (Baltimore) & Sam Heaps (Philly)!

🎶 🎶 🎶: december-track-changes.eventbrite.com
flyer for TRACK CHANGES A reading, listening, & conversation series where writers chat about their favorite records December 2 Doors: 7 PM Start: 7:30 PM Pen & Pencil Club Philly Featuring: Sam Heaps Austyn Wohlers Hosted by: Alina Pleskova
November 16, 2025 at 7:10 PM
alinapleskova.bsky.social
do i get to use this as a reason to call out of work or what
Corny ass ultra clickbait NYT opinion headline that reads: Did liberal feminism ruin the workplace?
November 6, 2025 at 1:53 PM
alinapleskova.bsky.social
another day, another dapple
November 6, 2025 at 12:19 PM
alinapleskova.bsky.social
i'm not a patriotic girlie, but as an immigrant & the daughter of a Ukrainian taxi driver, it made me weep to think that an America like the one Zohran describes, like the one my parents believed existed—where there's hope for a decent life & dignity, & opportunities exist for them too—can be real
Thank you to those so often forgotten by the politics of our city, who made this movement their own. I speak of Yemeni bodega owners and Mexican abuelas. Senegalese taxi drivers and Uzbek nurses. Trinidadian line cooks and Ethiopian aunties. Yes, aunties. To every New Yorker in Kensington and Midwood and Hunts Point, know this: This city is your city, and this democracy is yours too. This campaign is about people like Wesley, an 1199 organizer I met outside of Elmhurst Hospital on Thursday night. A New Yorker who lives elsewhere, who commutes two hours each way from Pennsylvania because rent is too expensive in this city. Editors’ Picks Knee Arthritis? Exercise Can Help Manage the Pain. Chasing the Elusive Southern Lights in Tasmania The Soothing British Radio Show That Blew My Mind — and Put Me Right to Sleep It’s about people like the woman I met on the Bx33 years ago who said to me, “I used to love New York, but now it’s just where I live.” And it’s about people like Richard, the taxi driver I went on a 15-day hunger strike with outside of City Hall, who still has to drive his cab seven days a week. My brother, we are in City Hall now.
November 5, 2025 at 3:13 PM
alinapleskova.bsky.social
dapple break while you wait
November 5, 2025 at 1:49 AM
alinapleskova.bsky.social
i worship at the altar of dapple
November 2, 2025 at 1:56 PM
alinapleskova.bsky.social
when the protagonist wouldn’t stop ardently yapping about the fearsome power of black holes every time he got drunk, i felt that
American film poster for Oscar Restrepo's A Poet (2025)
October 26, 2025 at 11:28 PM
alinapleskova.bsky.social
i’m so into the idea of poetry being in public & not stifled by the ivory tower (or what’s left of it), but i can be very cynical about how that goes in practice… 

i was invited to read at the first-ever Mural Arts poetry/mural combo walking tour alongside some amazing writers, & it was a huge joy—
Alina Pleskova reading in front of Meg Saligman’s 1999 mural, Philadelphia Muses, located on the wall of a parking lot at 12th/Locust. The mural is intended as a contemporary interpretation of the classical muses. Philly writers Kirwyn Surherland, Maya Angelique, Alina Pleskova, and Joseph Earl Thomas posing in front of Meg Saligman’s mural, Philadelphia Muses Mural Arts walking tour crosses a street in Philadelphia
October 21, 2025 at 4:35 PM
alinapleskova.bsky.social
~ mood board ~
Courtney Love to Barbara Walters: “and as a poet as somebody who always wanted to” Courtney Love to Barbara Walters: “…wanted to be a poet. There’s no money in it.”
October 15, 2025 at 3:27 PM
alinapleskova.bsky.social
💿 join us on the auspicious date of 11/11 for the next TRACK CHANGES ft. a very auspicious lineup:

@ginabird.bsky.social (Philly) + Ryan Skrabalak (Kingston, NY)!

it’s giving cosmic alignment, it’s giving big admiration, it’s giving we do not dream of labor

🎟️ track-changes-november.eventbrite.com
TRACK CHANGES A READING, LISTENING, & CONVERSATION SERIES WHERE WRITERS CHAT ABOUT THEIR FAVORITE RECORDS NOVEMBER 11 DOORS: 7PM START: 7:30 PM PEN & PENCIL CLUB 1522 LATIMER ST PHILLY FEATURING: RYAN SKRABALAK GINA MYERS HOSTED BY: ALINA PLESKOVA $5-15 SLIDING SCALE (EVENTBRITE OR AT DOOR)
October 13, 2025 at 2:25 AM
alinapleskova.bsky.social
it's been a minute since i've sent/published new poems anywhere— hope you like this one, written for the At What Cost catalog's Style issue, curated by Jessica Scicchitano

style.atwhatcost.me#alina-pleskova
ALINA PLESKOVA FOR CONSIDERATION I aspire to compete in the international space-out competition which I've unwittingly trained for all this time- tenderized by blush-hued mushrooms, elderly metalheads, the time Rachel said the sky over the highway looked like a wrinkled sheet & Dylan said I was just about to say that, & I didn't take a photo because I wanted to recall it only so My practice is rooted in wondering how the same ingenious species that invented concertos, disco balls, & broccoli - all seemingly for the hell of it - can't endeavor to dismantle the despotic state apparatus threatening its joy & survival, or at least take cues from the birds who repurpose anti-bird spikes for nest-building My work doesn't interrogate the tension between tempering a certain shame to make one's art more lucrative & knowing your art makes your friends cringe It might ask instead: Why lower the rarified to regular volume? Why refashion the sacred into a vibeless ornament? A mote on the stylus of my consciousness messes with the pickup O accolade-patterned bio- O frosted plaque of competency- I've sensed an emptiness at the back o f your gaze How else do we intend to carry out our absurd impermanence? I endeavor to become lichen, or the lone mail carrier for one of those seaside towns built into cliffs- toned calf muscles gleaming in my wake
October 6, 2025 at 5:42 PM
alinapleskova.bsky.social
this one freaked me out so much that i wrote it into a poem (& that poem is in my book — an immortalized freakout if u will)
Advertisers are hijacking your dreams, scientists say By Caroline Delbert The next frontier for advertising isn't virtual reality or holograms-it's your dreams, according to a group of dozens of sleep researchers. And the practice, they warn, could soon become a nightmare. In an open letter published on the op-ed website DXE, the scientists decry the concept of dream advertising, wherein companies engineer ads into your subconscious through audio and video
September 18, 2025 at 1:23 PM
alinapleskova.bsky.social
from the preposterously great Stay Dead by Natalie Shapero
Long Week Talking I am ashamed to keep thinking of death as a chute that connects to the garbage. I know I should picture it more like the pneumatic tubes at banks of the past: you put in your name and your paper and up you go. I know a bank should be the operative metaphor for every facet of existence, every time. When I fail to liken anything to a bank, I must be tired. That's not the real me; that's the long week talking. Time for bed. Time for the open window and my head on the narrow pillow. The hectoring sky. The streetlight's beam is bright as the bright saved people see when they die, but I don't die—
September 18, 2025 at 1:19 AM
alinapleskova.bsky.social
creepy how this WaPo reporting isn’t paywalled, but their articles that quote what he actually last said “moments” before all seem to be

www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/...
Like a switch, it just became a horror, a student said Anumita Kaur and Aaron Schaffer Charlie Kirk was saying, "I love the Mormons," moments before he was shot, said Savannah Hartelust, a Brigham Young student
September 11, 2025 at 5:21 PM
alinapleskova.bsky.social
it’s giving
A MAGA family in MN claimed that their garage was vandalized and tagged with the anarchy symbol, BLM and the slogan "Biden 2020." A van was also set on fire.
September 11, 2025 at 3:53 PM
alinapleskova.bsky.social
Christine Shan Shan Hou, from A Promise (published by blush)
YOU SHOULD SEE ME... You should see the amount of meat I can pull from my teeth You should see how I grind my teeth to dust You should see how I dust my English furniture You should see how I wander in a perpetual state of childhood You should see how quickly I will invite myself into your shower You should see me pose beneath the arch of interminable doubt You should see my white lies brimming with hope for the future You should see how I turn into a sex fiend and then a plant overnight You should see how possessive I am over my organs You should see how evenly I can distribute pain throughout my body You should see the man I hired to live inside my head You should see how hot he is You should see how I cry into my handkerchief with hardcore gentleness You should see the brightness of my temporary shyness shining out of my asshole You should see me as soon as you open the door I will be napping beneath the daffodils
September 9, 2025 at 2:21 PM
alinapleskova.bsky.social
pleased to have encountered this on the Bob & Barbara’s bathroom wall, where god intended poetry to live
lines from John Berryman’s “Dream Song #14” written on a bathroom wall: Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so. After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns, we ourselves flash and yearn,
September 7, 2025 at 12:33 AM
alinapleskova.bsky.social
also sometimes i grumble about books coming out in expensive hardcover first while also feeling pleased by the tactile experience (this one has a sort of rubbery matte finish that i find kinda satisfying??)
Cover of I Do Know Some Things by Richard Siken with all black background and white, possibly hand lettered text
September 3, 2025 at 2:28 PM
alinapleskova.bsky.social
found Richard Siken’s new book, I Do Know Some Things, to be remarkable

unexpected turns of language, glitchy sequence, slant & sometimes-discomfiting candor, pitchdark humor that legit made me lol, not very excerptable—rather, slow build into an astonishing compendium of, & reflection on, a life
STRATA I drove out past the flat nastiness of Nebraska and into the Badlands of South Dakota. I was twenty-three. The world was a pink layer cake that someone had clawed through. What is a lifer Sediment, residue. Something falls down and soon enough more things fall down and cover it. A red thing, a dark thing. Some chalk, some gold. I drove through it. I viewed it from the side. Where is the point where nostalgia turns into history? Endurance, duration— how long is now? The layered past, the ever-moving present, the void of the unfinished future—we try to measure it. We dig for artifacts and find a shard of pottery, a jawbone. We tell ourselves the story of a bright day in November. It isn't accurate but we have to live as if some things are true. Landfill, I have a question for you, about the bones of things. Library, I have questions about the bones. Because everyone will die, die. Everyone will die. We rise into language for only so long before we fall back down into silence. It's a small window, the span of time in which we get to say what we know. I took a picture of myself by the side of the road. Strange picture. I don't look like that anymore.
September 3, 2025 at 2:23 PM
alinapleskova.bsky.social
this section of Patricia Highsmith’s wiki is the ultimate let women have hobbies
Interests Highsmith began keeping snails as pets in 1946 or 1949 as she was fascinated by their sexuality. Pet snails appear in her 1957 novel Deep Water, and her story "The Snail Watcher" is about pet snails who kill their owner. She kept 300 snails at her home in Earl Soham and occasionally took some with her on social outings. She said that when she moved to France she smuggled her snails into the country in her bra. Schenkar, however, believes this is only an amusing story and that she smuggled her snails in cottage cheese cartons. [9]:23, 251, 570 Her other hobbies included woodworking, 9) painting and gardening. Diogenes Verlag published a book of her drawings in 1995. [101:46, 113-114,375 She was an accomplished gardener, but in her later years her friends and neighbors did most of the work on her gardens. [10]:286, 375, 437, 455
August 31, 2025 at 10:39 PM
alinapleskova.bsky.social
philly is the center of the known universe & i missed hosting a reading series, so here we are 🥁

very excited to share the first event for the TRACK CHANGES series ft. special visitor @niina.bsky.social + local fave @olgamikolaivna.bsky.social on Oct. 7!

🎟️ tickets & info: bit.ly/45RFbxM
Flyer for Track Changes reading, listening, and conversation series on Oct 7 ft. Niina Pollari and Olga Mikolaivna at the Pen & Pencil Club in Philly
August 27, 2025 at 7:38 PM
alinapleskova.bsky.social
Fargo Nissim Tbakhi, from Terror Counter
Spiders for Jess Three times in three days I turned my eyes to see a spider at the moment it caught and ate a fly. I wake wrapped in dread next to a father who's died. He's not wrapped in anything. My dream of creaturely fact. Cook flour and water and you can make flesh. My puppet wrapped in distance and law. I wake wrapped in capital. A spider hid the prophet and kept him safe from harm. How to be lucky in the time of time and nothing but time meted out variously. A child in my grandmother's house my friend the spider. My daddy long legs who could kill me but couldn't. I wish for everybody fullness. Let me have a leg inside every world. To see what could cause me to die and to watch it not move. I used to whisper to trees and then I stopped. Then, later, I saw a very small spider next to a very large scorpion, both dead. Today is my father's birthday. I have not seen a spider eat for several weeks. Outside my window several spiders a kinship of them sharing one web. From them Ilearn violence, homemaking. Jess tells me there's a metaphor scuttling across her ceiling and that spiders are not my friends. I'm trying to write a review of the terrible book about Palestine but I can't. I watched a gust of wind blow and uproot a bush in the neighbor's bougie yard on the day I wished this country would end. I know the world has agency. Wealth makes people evil and so boring I want to puke. The spiders live in all the corners of the house the places things meet. The terrible poetry book about Palestine keeps calling everything we do a poem, my dad is a poem, our scars are poems, annexation is a poem, the land is a poem, etc. I won't do that to spiders they're not poems they 'e creatures and they know things. I've been hungry and eaten. I've been eaten too. I've been practicing flying. I'm starting to find the words I need. I'm starting to know they'll never work. I don't have teeth to speak of. And Jess tells me that hope and faith are different. My dad's starting to disappear and I'm praying him along. I want to bless him with the joy of not being known endlessly. I want to wrap him. The wealth of the writer of the terrible book about Palestine grows, makes nothing happen. Of the spiderearth I ask: cocoon me in wind. Uproot me. Bite me and get past this skin, my aegis. I don't know why anyone writes poems that aren't spells. Most things are performative I'd say. I've got maybe seventy dollars to my name. Performative doesn't mean fake. I think faith is knowing there's a better world and hope is the moments it breaks through into this one. Like a fang piercing my skin. Like one of the strings breaking and puppet flesh spilling out into realness. I don't know how to fly. I'm stuck weblike. The earth tells me something about faith every single moment of every day. Anyone with wealth is incapable of listening and they are so full of blood. I haven't seen a spider eat since that week I wished this country would die. Be drained. Since then I haven't seen a spider try to teach me: nourishment means some body needs to get exsanguinated.
August 19, 2025 at 10:45 PM
alinapleskova.bsky.social
August 17, 2025 at 9:13 PM