A Quiet Root
LightNews LightNews
banner
aquietroot.bsky.social
A Quiet Root
@aquietroot.bsky.social
410 followers 600 following 170 posts
lover of libraries, poetry, lit mags & zines, Appalachia, printmaking, webcomics, bicycles, possums, and crows
Posts Replies Media Videos
aquietroot.bsky.social
From Julia Ross in The 2River View www.2river.org/2RView/29_3/...
Excerpt from "The week I keep my government job but you lose your gender," a poem by Julia Ross in 2River View: we endeavor to fuck the algorithm: send each other nonsense phrases about sourdough until our news feeds are a blur of dead-looking women kneading in long skirts. You learn twenty nine uses for discard & give your starter a name: I mull the perils
May 27, 2025 at 2:29 PM
aquietroot.bsky.social
Read this right now. Those fuckers can’t have your hope.

By @mike3stars.bsky.social in Gastropoda. gastropodalitmag.wixsite.com/main/post/a-...
"Hope is a flowering, multiplying thing. Spread that shit around. Gather its many seeds; form a ball of dirt and dreaming. Cast it into your manicured suburban lawn."
March 13, 2025 at 3:54 PM
aquietroot.bsky.social
from "My New Year’s Resolution Is to Turn into a Refrigerator" by Harriet Prebble in takahē magazine www.takahe.org.nz/my-new-years...
Excerpt from a poem: "I could be there in your apartment in the small hours of the morning, when it’s too hot to sleep and the moonlight is filtering through your blinds and you’re longing for something you can’t explain, and you reach out to me in the dark and I open for you slowly, and you run your fingers across every part of me and bring them to your lips and sigh softly, and I hum and shudder for you as we are bathed in electric light, and I offer you everything I have without shame and everything you had all along— and then I will BEEP LOUDLY because you’ve taken TOO LONG to DECIDE what you WANT and I’m going to SLAM my cold exterior shut again until you SORT your SHIT go AWAY."
March 10, 2025 at 7:15 PM
aquietroot.bsky.social
From Two Hawks Quarterly at twohawksquarterly.com/poetry/2024/...
Poem "Star Horse" by Amy Miller from Two Hawks Quarterly, link to full text in post
February 5, 2025 at 4:25 PM
aquietroot.bsky.social
Now THAT'S an opener. From @mcarphil.bsky.social in @matchbooklitmag.bsky.social
Excerpt from “Tether,” a flash by Meghan Phillips originally published in matchbook literary magazine: "You tell your sister you’re going to fuck your way into the textbooks. Her sigh sounds like she’s right next to you at the crowded bar instead of 2,500 miles away at her kitchen table in Bethesda. The man you will make history with isn’t career NASA. He isn’t even a scientist, not in the way you are. A middle school biology teacher from Rhode Island who made it through every round of the application process. A man algorithmically chosen to be your perfect match."
January 25, 2025 at 11:46 AM
aquietroot.bsky.social
I get to see this little guy every time I take a walk. Tragically, I do not get to scratch his little ears.
A young calf stands in a winter field the same color and texture as his fluffy, light brown fur. He has teddy bear ears, and he's looking expectantly at the camera.
January 23, 2025 at 7:43 PM
aquietroot.bsky.social
a good snowy morning with @allisacherry.bsky.social's wonderful new book and an old coffee mug from The Strand
Allisa Cherry's book An Exodus of Sparks and a red coffee mug reading "Where Books Are Loved" in worn lettering on an old quilt
January 18, 2025 at 1:01 PM
aquietroot.bsky.social
Everyone's posting their favorite book of the year, but I'm going to post the one that broke my brain the hardest. You? #booksky
Cover of How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu
December 19, 2024 at 9:23 PM
aquietroot.bsky.social
Two months after the hurricane, the river is still delivering interesting things.
A damaged mailbox lying in the grass by the river. The flag is up as if there is mail in it to be collected.
December 12, 2024 at 12:07 PM
aquietroot.bsky.social
Excerpt from poem "Bless the Damage" by Allisa Cherry: "Now that time has nacred over the rough edges of memory I can say that you were a real beauty. A shiner. You glittered like glass shards in the baby formula."
December 11, 2024 at 1:38 PM
aquietroot.bsky.social
Eating yogurt with a plastic fork is how I'm doing. Full poem at www.benningtonreview.org/thirteen-sie...
Excerpt from “How Am I Doing?”, a poem by Matthew Siegel in the Bennington Review: "Wearing a bathing suit as underwear is how I’m doing, though I’m learning to ask better questions like: what’s most important? And answering: what allows day and night to live inside us."
September 4, 2024 at 4:02 PM
aquietroot.bsky.social
A truly transcendent poem about, of all things, incandescent lightbulbs. fivepoints.gsu.edu/excerpt/inca...
Excerpt from “Incandescence” by Elaine Sexton Solitary, you stand or hang under a shade. Or, exposed. oh, bulb: don’t ever burn out. You are the last of your kind, old, inefficient, salvaged. Dangerous.
March 19, 2024 at 10:18 AM
aquietroot.bsky.social
On refusing to see the signs, from L.M. Cole in @feralpoetryandart.bsky.social feralpoetry.net/no-portents-...
Excerpt from "No Portents On This Path" by L.M. Cole: I saw a deer today, dead bloated and stripped for parts, and I chose not to see it as a sign.
January 16, 2024 at 6:41 PM
aquietroot.bsky.social
From Dayna Patterson in @literarymama.bsky.social
literarymama.com/articles/dep...
Excerpt from "Ten ways of engaging with your teenager” by Dayna Patterson: "7. Too much praise and you’ll turn irrelevant as a jellyfish, sack of water pulsing in some far-off ocean. 8. Too much scolding and you’ll turn riptide and isn’t the world already a basin of tears"
January 15, 2024 at 8:36 PM
aquietroot.bsky.social
From @jezzbah.bsky.social in @moistpoetryjournal.bsky.social moistpoetryjournal.com/category/poe...
Excerpt from “Impact Sport” by Jessica Q. Stark: "By age 15 I was a hungry, red wolf. I worked at JoAnn Fabrics one summer—scowling women forming lines at the back of my hangover and a terrible crush that kept blooming over floral-patterned fabric beneath my palms. I scanned coupons and resisted knowing the definition of a window valance. So many sighs from women in search of a texture, a measurement, some small tool that I could never afford…"
January 5, 2024 at 1:37 PM
aquietroot.bsky.social
From Abriana Jette in The Museum of Americana, full text at themuseumofamericana.net/2023/11/14/a...
Excerpt from “Cicero Said Memory is the Strong Mental Grasp of Matter and Words” by Abriana Jette: "There are words we don’t say because they matter. Non Hodgkin’s. Alzheimer’s. I’m sorry."
January 3, 2024 at 1:52 PM
aquietroot.bsky.social
From The London Magazine
Imogen Wade's poem "Message": Sometimes we are insects, communicating with each other from opposite ends of a vast yellow field— rubbing our wings, tapping our feet, vibrating in the air. I picture us as tiny creatures rummaging in the tall grass. I know that there’s someone out there of my kind, though it has been many years and our acquaintance will never be renewed. Yet you are still in my life—faith without sight, love without words.
January 2, 2024 at 12:51 PM
aquietroot.bsky.social
From Colleen Abel in Tupelo Quarterly www.tupeloquarterly.com/poetry/colle...
Excerpt from “We Are All Bad Mothers Here” by Colleen Abel: "We are all bad mothers here, the Country of Frozen Nuggets, Province of Froot Loops, we nursed too long or did not nurse, we stuck their bawling bodies into bed beside us when they would not sleep. Now they wander."
December 26, 2023 at 8:52 PM
aquietroot.bsky.social
Always read the acknowledgments. They're full of heart and useful information.
"Also, to the indie booksellers and librarians who've championed my book to readers, thank you. I am forever in your debt and will do whatever you ask of me, even if that means helping you hide a body." -Excerpt from the acknowledgments in TJ Klune's book Under the Whispering door.
December 14, 2023 at 12:26 PM
aquietroot.bsky.social
I love that ucity review publishes 8+ pieces from each author, enough to really get to know them. This whole issue is not to be missed--Jared Beloff, Jane Zwart, and this wonderful opener from Tina Kelley.
www.ucityreview.com/27_Kelley_Ti...
Excerpt from "When I Took the Train to Montauk" by Tina Kelley: " saw a naked guy covering his face instead of his parts. Smart -- I truly couldn’t identify those in a police lineup -- but counter to instinct. When have I disappeared myself, while freeing my wild animal?"
December 12, 2023 at 2:43 PM
aquietroot.bsky.social
A flash about a voice that won't quit. From @redogrereview.bsky.social, it's confessional stream-of-consciousness by Laura Lippman, a retired physician, about a teenager inserting a confessional stream-of-consciousness into her AP History essay.
ogre.red/issues/2023-...
Excerpt from “High School Bullshit” by Laura C. Lippman: me so tired of being a perfect little thing my parents bragged about at cocktail parties so the family dentist could parrot that shit back to me while I had my mouth full of his hands and metal dams
December 7, 2023 at 1:40 PM
aquietroot.bsky.social
These poems remind me of line drawings: distinctive, idiosyncratic, perfectly spare. By Ruth Lasters, translated from the Dutch by Rosalind Beck, in the Amsterdam Review
www.amsterdamreview.org/five-by-ruth...
Excerpt from "Proposal" by Ruth Lasters: "Ask. Ask me on the tank. Atop the first Tiananmen tank that stopped one man in his tracks."
December 4, 2023 at 4:13 PM
aquietroot.bsky.social
From Robert Okaji, who was recently diagnosed with late stage metastatic lung cancer, in @stonecirclereview.bsky.social
stonecirclereview.com/trigger-alert/
Excerpt from "Trigger Alert" by Robert Okaji: Trigger alert: I’m dying. I am dying, and nothing will change that, not philosophy, not chemicals, not will. Not even the sky
December 1, 2023 at 1:53 PM
aquietroot.bsky.social
From Marc Sheehan in DMQ Review
Excerpt from “Technical Problems of Heavier-Than-Sorrow Flight” by Marc J. Sheehan: "First of all, do not, under any circumstances, start reading old letters. Especially old love letters. Leave them exiled to the attic or basement. They’re reconciled to being expatriates. In fact, they take a certain pride in believing they will never betray their home country—the past."
November 29, 2023 at 2:06 PM
aquietroot.bsky.social
Hey Annie Dillard: a word, please?
From Michael Rogner in @ballastjournal.bsky.social www.ballastjournal.com/michael-rogner
Excerpt from "Annie Dillard Says to Write Like You’re Dying" by Michael Rogner: Jesus, Annie. Maybe talk with my wife, watch the cloud shadow of everything emotions shutter her eyes after braving rattling sidewalk nitwits screaming at chemo patients to stop being sheep. Maybe that’s the dying you mean, the dying faced every midnight before waking once more in the snow. Maybe write each myth of a nation’s
November 27, 2023 at 1:48 PM