David J Bauman
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davidjbauman.bsky.social
David J Bauman
@davidjbauman.bsky.social
1.4K followers 1K following 4.4K posts
Poet, birder, librarian🌈 New Ohio Review, Shenandoah, Crab Creek Review, the MacGuffin. Three chapbooks, including Mapping the Valley: Hospital Poems, with my son Micah, Seven Kitchens Press. davidjbauman.com
#PromoteIndieLit
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davidjbauman.bsky.social
For a sample of the sort of thing you might hear Saturday, here is a poem by @toddedillard.bsky.social from his chapbook *Ragnarock at the Father-Daughter Dance*
How to Live Depravity begins with thinking of love as a radical act. I quit loving with difficulty. I love easy now. Two parakeets on my shoulders. They'll fly away if I move. So I move. I love flight. I love cages left wide open. I am not a window. I could be a window. Open me, you'll find a dense wood, children wandering inside it. Not lost children. They know the way. They live the way horses run. If they each had a bird in hand they would open their hands.
November 7, 2025 at 5:21 PM
davidjbauman.bsky.social
If you can’t be at the one this Saturday, check out the reading on December 13!

beardedbardsofbluesky.weebly.com
November 6, 2025 at 8:43 PM
davidjbauman.bsky.social
I’ve been sharing this and images from the Bearded Bards page on Instagram and Facebook, so please feel free to share about Saturday’s reading as well as the one in December wherever you find poetry lovers. It’s a zoom reading, so it’s not limited to here :-)
November 6, 2025 at 2:49 PM
davidjbauman.bsky.social
I’ll be part of the BBBS this Saturday. The Reading is free. Just register for the Zoom call in the link. And if you can donate, click the Trans Lifeline link at the bottom of the page:
beardedbardsofbluesky.weebly.com
November 8, 2025
2:00-3:45 pst
4:00-5:45 cst
5:00-6:45 est
November 6, 2025 at 4:48 AM
davidjbauman.bsky.social
Funny, I’ve had trouble with this too. At first they actually “nested next to each other, and even now I’ll catch one giving the other kisses, but more often, as this morning when I wasn’t getting up fast enough to feed them, I heard them hiss and scuffle.
Two orange kitties curled in a bed Two orange cats in cat beds next to each other Shaggy dog and two Orange cats messing u a single bed
November 3, 2025 at 5:09 PM
davidjbauman.bsky.social
I get those. Sometimes I you with them. Today:
October 15, 2025 at 1:06 AM
davidjbauman.bsky.social
I’ve been busy getting a poetry podcast ready to launch, so I thought I’d have some time this weekend to catch up here. Instead, I thought I could single-handedly recapture my escaped cat Oscar, who morphed into a 50 pound bobcat and proceeded to put me in a condition that sent me to the hospital.
Badly scarred, scratched, and bitten arm Scratched and bitten hand Cat owner in a hospital bed trying to look heroic instead of stupid The orange fugitive in question in a previous exploit, trying to raid the cupboards
September 23, 2025 at 3:39 AM
davidjbauman.bsky.social
“The Teacher” by Tom Romano
the teacher Why do I forget question marks. I am notorious for it. My students scoff at me, "How can you teach English when you don't punctuate proper?" I don't teach you anyway, I think, just lead you like a scout master and hope you'll dip your hand into the brook—-cold like no tap water you've ever felt, let you marvel, a little frightened, at a snake, mouth agape, before it darts between rocks, an image you'll carry for years, spur you to anger when I won't stop to let you rest, even hope you catch poison ivy, and, as we race up the hill, urge you on when you leave me behind, gasping, a seeming spear wedged between my ribs. Of the absent question mark, I say, "An innocent, harmless error," And those of you who aren't smug point out that I should extend to you the same courteous understanding. I uncap my canteen, drop to the grass, and, before I take a long swig, say, "Why not." Tom Romano Edgewood High School Trenton, Ohio
August 30, 2025 at 4:48 AM
davidjbauman.bsky.social
Sorry, I haven’t been as active on my BlueSky posts lately. I’ve been preparing to launch a poetry Podcast coming your way this October. It’s about exploring how poets and poems speak to and with each other, and the joy of reading aloud. It’s a podcast In Three Poems

bsky.app/profile/inth...
Burnt orange background and shadow with three text bubbles that together say “In Three Poems.”
August 18, 2025 at 6:54 PM
davidjbauman.bsky.social
From our cathouse to yours, goodnight
Two orange cats sniffing around the head of their dad who is reading in bed
August 14, 2025 at 4:27 AM
davidjbauman.bsky.social
I would like to assure you that no limes were harmed in the making of this cocktail, but I’d be lying
Kitchen counter scene with knives and utensils in the background bottle of gin and a bottle of Schweppes tonic a glass, full with ice, a shot glass, half of a lime and a knife
August 11, 2025 at 4:17 AM
davidjbauman.bsky.social
I love a good mail day! Especially when they include sonnets in the the MacGuffin
The MacGuffin Vol. XL, No. 3 August 2025 Abstract shapes on cover Mary Jo Firth Gillett Eight, a wisp of a child, child of wind and willow suddenly weighted by weeping and worry-a father's corneas going bad and then what would we do for money-I'd search ditches, fields, vacant lots for empties, collecting bottles for their two-cent deposits, coins that could mean bread or milk. Sometimes l'd imagine even the trees along the ravine were sad beyond words so that I, the kid wonder, could save us, save us all as I grabbed a fistful of drooping branches to run, leap, fly high above the stream until, at just the right moment, I dropped into water and muck to wade the realm of mud, of snail, oddly able then, almost, to grapple with the random, the real, the dread.
August 9, 2025 at 6:36 PM
davidjbauman.bsky.social
Yes, sometimes I make notes when I brew coffee. My Origami ceramic dripper is one of my favorites
Origami ceramic coffee dripper on carafe. Black gooseneck kettle and grinder, hand made ceramic dosing cup on scale, small notebook and pen to the left.
August 7, 2025 at 4:39 AM
davidjbauman.bsky.social
Goodnight, BluSky
Golden reddish, shaggy golden doodle, sleeping on his owners, legs, bookshelves, messy desk, and lamp and window in the background
August 7, 2025 at 3:47 AM
davidjbauman.bsky.social
Ron Mohring’s book, The Boy Who Reads in the Trees. This book of poems is a heart breaking marvel
Cover to The Boy Who Reads in the Trees by Ron Mohring Go All your meals will be in color now. All your lights are green. You're good to go. All your love returns a thousandfold. All your coddled seedling trees will grow. Almost all your geese leave in a vee. Forget the earthbound gander pulling all the feathers from his breast. Time wounds all heels, said someone clever but unkind. It's all forgiven now. Death wipes plates clean, fings these leftovers at the bin, the wall, who cares? Not you. Not now. Forget the tremor, all that spilled from forks you tried to steady, all the cups half-filled. We're brimming over, wholly open now, like all your doors, fung wide. It hurts. This light. I's everywhere you were, And now you're there, and there, and there.
August 5, 2025 at 12:26 AM
davidjbauman.bsky.social
August 3, 2025 at 5:09 AM
davidjbauman.bsky.social
An image of this sign came up in my Facebook memories today from seven years ago. When we found it, @micahjamesbauman.gosixers.online said “This door is, in fact, a wall.”
And that became the inspiration for one of our poems in our chapbook Mapping the Valley:Hospital Poems, published in 2021
August 2, 2025 at 10:15 PM
davidjbauman.bsky.social
Attempting the Sealey Challenge within my budget means including literary journals. This spring’s edition of Talking River Review is one of a bunch of journals I’ve gained access to thanks to a retiring professor at SU.
So here’s a gorgeous poem. Derek Sheffield, where have you been all my life!
Cover of Talking River Review, spring 2025. Image of a person mostly in greens and blues DEREK SHEFFIELD Nothing Happens All she does is lean against a railing in bell-bottomed jeans and laugh and chatter as her hands gesture about her. Fourteen, on vacation, he stands near. All he does is listen. How tame, she says of the deer browsing in sunlight beyond the deck, stepping closer, unhurried, untroubled. She tells him no one can shoot them, and he feels like the air as her hands move through it. Twenty-two years later, he is certain this time on an island does not surface when she looks away from a meeting or shaves her legs. She will never read this to see the soft mouths of the deer working in the boy, leaves again brushing fur. But you have, and that makes you part of their story. True, those sea breezes did not touch you, nor the little waves of her voice, but it might be that now as you read you float like a doe's breath in someone's thought.
August 1, 2025 at 6:50 PM
davidjbauman.bsky.social
Thanks for the tip. This setup helps. I may stay here a long time.
Bearded man with a cold mask and an ice pack
July 29, 2025 at 4:55 AM
davidjbauman.bsky.social
Goodnight, Gracie
Orange cat sleeping in a light green, fluffy cat bed
July 29, 2025 at 4:09 AM
davidjbauman.bsky.social
The cute pharmacist slipped me a love note. He thinks I’m a bad ass and a cutie.
But I’m kinda mortified that he got my age wrong
Acute BA Then the number 65 in a box
July 29, 2025 at 2:41 AM
davidjbauman.bsky.social
A well crafted villanelle always gets my attention. And the poems in this book get me to the core
July 28, 2025 at 12:32 AM
davidjbauman.bsky.social
Saturday vibes
Orange kitty cat lying on his back in a bay window making a big big stretch
July 26, 2025 at 5:25 PM
davidjbauman.bsky.social
Another goodnight pose from Mr. Jake
Orange kitty cat with white belly and white bootie socks sleeping in his back.
July 26, 2025 at 3:31 AM
davidjbauman.bsky.social
The birder in me wants to take this person “under my wing” and take them to Hawk Mountain. The poet in me just wants to enjoy this poem from 44 Poems on Being with Each Other, a collection compiled and edited by Pádraig Ó Tuma.
The poet is M. Soledad Caballero
payment . そ ISBN 9; THIS EXPL THRO CURA THE UNBO 44 PO is a nev on hun Padraig tion onl to each An friendsl "I Love Rita Dc with th row” t "Won't of conr olutior BI tender Being poetry ings, i tion, linked groun will d done Someday I Will Visit Hawk Mountain M. Soledad Caballero I will be a real birder and know raptors by the shape of their wings, the span of them against wide skies, the browns and grays of their feathers, the reds and whites like specks of paint. I will look directly into the sun, point and say, those are black vultures, those are red-shouldered hawks. They fly with the thermals, updrafts, barely moving, glide their bodies along the currents, borrowing speed from the wind. I will know other raptors, sharp-shinned hawk, the Cooper's hawk, the ones that flap their wings and move their bodies during the day. The merlins, the peregrine falcons, soaring like bullets through blue steel, cutting the winds looking for rabbits, groundhogs that will not live past talons and claws. I will know the size of their bones, the weight of their beaks. I will remember the curves, the colors of their oval, yellow eyes. I will have the measurements, the data that live inside their bodies like a secret taunting me to find its guts. Or this is what I tell myself. But, I am a bad birder. I care little about the exact rate of a northern goshawk's flight speed. I do not need to know how many pounds of food an American kestrel eats in winter. I have no interest in the feather types on a turkey vulture. I have looked up and forgotten these facts again and again and again. They float out of my mind immediately. What I remember: my breathless body as I look into the wildness above, raptors flying, diving, stooping, bodies of light, talismans, incantations, dust of the gods. Creatures of myth, they hang in the sky like questions. They promise nothing, indifferent to everything but death. Still, still, I catch myself gasping, neck craned up, follow the circles they build out of sky, reach for their brutal mystery, the alien spark of more. A POETRY UNBOUND COLLECTION 44 POEMS ON BEING WITH EACH OTHER PADRAIG Ó TUAMA PÁDRAIG Ó TUAMA is a poet and presenter of the Poetry Unbound podcast from On Being Studios. He is the author of Poetry Unbound: Fifty Poems to Open Your World, Kitchen Hymns, and eight other books. He lives in Belfast and New York.
July 24, 2025 at 4:35 PM