Karin
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drivelikekarin.bsky.social
Karin
@drivelikekarin.bsky.social
190 followers 400 following 170 posts
Writer, poetry workshop facilitator, collagist, and birder based in Portland, Oregon. Author of See You Never (2024).

she/they 🌈

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drivelikekarin.bsky.social
Love this poem from Heather Christie.
Poem by Heather Christie: Perfect Song I remember walking through the mornir after a night of heavy snow and drink with headphones on and they played me the most perfect song: no one was awake and I was hungover young as clean as a piano I thought and at any moment someone might fall in love with me I wa that woven into the electric cold bright air and for weeks after I went through the album in search of the song but could not find it and later much later I saw that what I had taken to be the song was in fact the joyous concordance of a moment that would not come again
November 21, 2025 at 4:05 PM
drivelikekarin.bsky.social
Enjoying this one from Monica McClure:
Poem by Monica McClure CLASS SONG If I were a man I would turn this self-violence onto you The lace was still gathered at my throat when they collected my bones among embers and opal But haven't you heard we rise from the ashes with our red hair It's too bad I dreamed of Cambridge but couldn't get accepted because of two Class B misdemeanors I wanted to be among great men Monica hearts Philip Larkin 4evah
November 14, 2025 at 4:14 PM
drivelikekarin.bsky.social
I requested this book for Christmas 20 years ago and my parents cutely inscribed it. I wish all the books I got as gifts had little notes in them. ❤️
The title page of Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe with an inscription reading “Karin, On the bus or not…Love, Mom and Dad, Christmas 2004.”
November 8, 2025 at 3:59 PM
drivelikekarin.bsky.social
The only issue on the ballot here (parks levy) passed, hooray! I don’t have a car to get into the wilderness often, so parks are extra important to me. Here’s a little snap of my baby, Mt. Tabor Park:
A photo of Mt Tabor park in Portland with tennis courts, people in silhouette, a blue aquifer, and autumn trees in the background.
November 5, 2025 at 3:43 PM
drivelikekarin.bsky.social
Eileen Myles nails it.
Poem by Eileen Myles: Today I would love to love someone forever & fuck them till they died.
October 30, 2025 at 10:44 PM
drivelikekarin.bsky.social
Emily Skaja’s got the juice.
Poem: BRUTE STRENGTH Soldier for a lost cause, brute, mute woman written out of my own story, I've been trying to cast a searchlight over swamp-woods & parasitic ash back to my beginning, that girlhood— kite-wisp clouded by gun salutes & blackbirds tearing out from under the hickories all those fine August mornings so temporary so gold-ringed by heat haze & where is that witch girl unafraid of anything, flea-spangled little yard rat, runt of no litter, queen, girl who wouldn't let a boy hit her, girl refusing to be It in tag, pulling that fox hide heavy around her like a flag? Let me look at her. Tell her on my honor, I will set the wedding dress on fire when I'm good & ready or she can bury me in it.
October 27, 2025 at 3:53 PM
drivelikekarin.bsky.social
From Safe Word by Donald Dunbar:
THE O F ENEMIES LOVE My mother was fond of digital pets, And put her hand on my head, And pressed her finger down. My father was a smartphone. My brother is a simile. My sister is a butterfly who eats butterflies. She flutters over, and matches her wings to theirs. I say "Oh you're a dragonfly!" and she says, "No, an angel." The cutscenes make it look like I'm living this life like a pro. But the gameplay footage shows me getting beat to death by angels. Shows me reloading, Shows me getting crushed under the weight of the gold I recover from their corpses. In this way, I come to resemble even my enemies.
October 22, 2025 at 2:46 PM
drivelikekarin.bsky.social
From Other People’s Comfort Keeps Me Up At Night by Morgan Parker:
There Are Other Things I Want to Explain but They Are Mysteries What is usually said about love I ignore worship instead the wilted flowers gleaming in our throats what you don't know is I envy this world and I want to save it squeeze its bloodied hand like so saying this will sting but only for a minute our primary concern will always be the gnawing feeling like when I wake up to wonder how many serial killers have entered my life how the truth can feel like ant hills their sandy curves their tiny crests like nipples what I really want to ask is what do you think of the idea of progress and is it an injury I can fix
September 26, 2025 at 4:50 PM
drivelikekarin.bsky.social
Little bite from Paul Legault:
3 AIRS I. So what if electricity can kill elephants? The internet which is powered by the same force swung us into such a tizzy, and all I can see is pictures of us looking back at ourselves inside of the enveloping world.
September 14, 2025 at 2:12 PM
drivelikekarin.bsky.social
Reading through poems on my shelf and found this little ghazal from Kaveh Akbar:
GHAZAL FOR THE MEN I ONCE WAS If you re immortal, God better be too. Otherwise? Otherwise. Hello, have you disrobed? The nursemaid is stomping her hooves. Don't make her fret like that. Dip a finger in your bourbon, tap it to your lip. Bad water. Bedwetter. Now watch thosehands through your blood jealous moths. How do they heaven, upset like that? The hungry bear won't dance. Bad milk burnt her tongue. How to find your voice: try, You're bound to it like a knight to his century. Everything forgets like that. The key, filed smooth to fit every lock, opens none. The bitter mourning uselessly in the rain. In the beginning was the eye, and the eye was wet like that. Like a pin pushed through a pane of glass. Like life lasting longer than you can bear. Like a sundial gone bad. Like your own name. Dead set like that.
August 12, 2025 at 3:09 PM
drivelikekarin.bsky.social
A wolf poem I like, from Ben Mirov’s Hider Roser.
Dedication I can see your wolf in the bathroom mirror. Your wolf is built of purplish light. It barely sleeps at night. I use my eagles to touch your wolf. Try harder to carry your wolf, I say. Carry it over the fields of snow past the army of ghosts asleep in the vale. Circumnavigate the necropolis. If your wolf gets too heavy, don't pop your flares. No one will rescue you. You are the rescue team. When you arrive at the secret bakery the bakery is closed. The stars appear one at a time, completely naked. Your wolf will die amongst the cedars behind your face. Let's name him Robert Frost.
August 6, 2025 at 11:43 PM
drivelikekarin.bsky.social
“The world holds you on its tongue/And no one can save you”—Dorothea Lasky.
THE AMETHYST All my life It was a lie To try to go towards bliss But death is the ultimate blissfulness To be a candy or a corpse The world holds you on its tongue And no one can save you Not even your own children or your friends So have a seat with the home of the dead They will eat your colors Until you are blank The best thing to happen to you The greatest happiness To be an animal who is smoke And beyond the mouth That tears your bones from one another To be a mound of meat At the table of the living
July 14, 2025 at 2:32 PM
drivelikekarin.bsky.social
Jean Valentine. poets.org/poem/love-5
For love, you leapt sometimes you walked away sometimes that time on the phone you couldn't get your breath I leapt but couldn't get to you I caught the brow that bid the dead I caught the bough that hid I'm, you know, still here, tulip, resin, temporary-
July 8, 2025 at 2:46 PM
drivelikekarin.bsky.social
Always finding a gem reading Eileen Myles:
creep ugly nightmare eating too much dunking your head in water over and over again. Feel bad for your kid all of them but most of all us bad nights when I was young and drinking pred atory men with swollen heads would buy me drinks and want to fuck me again & again because I was nothing to them and he is our president now.
June 24, 2025 at 4:29 PM
drivelikekarin.bsky.social
Stephen Miller’s head looks like it’s going to bust out of his skull, MTV’s The Head style, but with something way worse inside.
An ad for MTV show The Head featuring a demon monster busting out of a giant head.
June 10, 2025 at 2:29 PM
drivelikekarin.bsky.social
Reading Tilt today and then probably finally assembling my Cascadia earthquake preparedness kit. 😩
A photo of a novel, Tilt, by Emma Pattee, with a bird on the cover.
May 26, 2025 at 3:37 PM
drivelikekarin.bsky.social
Heard about Alice Notley and went straight to the shelf where this poem, “I Think Fiercely,” was bookmarked. Too long to post in full, but I’m going to share it in workshop tonight. 💔
I THINK FIERCELY I think fiercely to tell you how I have mutated, O shades; help me and speak too for you have changed, to be here in a poetic space with my own spirit, we are our I. Did I arrive in capacity before sea and earth were formed, and didn't they make themselves, after a birth as sweet chaos, maternal chaos, that I was formed across and return to? Poet, someone says, you are surely our Poe, for you are the maker of order, lights, crescendo, and even a body to walk the stabilizing earth saying the boundaries we love, not between countries, but between sky, sea, and land, between species, between us. Shouldn't we be separate in space, though we're together in this space? Yes, I say, we must always re-create our world, for chaos, encapsulated by us, must be lightly reformed from. I love the uncreated but it erases me, our I, and I could like that if I were that, not I, but here I am!— distinct and adventurous, ever changing. Once I was one with the air or sea. Once I was a river that began flowing, says another voice, or part of my wholeness. Once I was the first eyes to see treambitious in their beauty; I was
May 20, 2025 at 3:15 PM
drivelikekarin.bsky.social
I know that sports industrial complex is bad, but I’m a hockey fan, love it for escapist entertainment/it’s fun to watch. Today, my favorite team’s best player broke Gretzky’s goals record and it was fantastic to see in real-time. An historic moment that didn’t suck!
A hockey dork in a Washington Capitals Alex Ovechkin jersey.
April 6, 2025 at 6:50 PM
drivelikekarin.bsky.social
I love the Oregon coast so much, truly stunning every time I go.
The ocean and some rocks on the coast of Oregon on a sunny day.
April 1, 2025 at 12:05 AM
drivelikekarin.bsky.social
Crying at rescue dogs on the internet. One day I’m going to get one and mess Jimmy’s world up.
A picture of a cat, Jimmy, who likely doesn’t want me to get a dog, sitting on a table
March 21, 2025 at 3:24 PM
drivelikekarin.bsky.social
Feeling feelings, so here’s an apt poem I like by sam sax:
IT'S A LITTLE ANXIOUS TO BE A VERY SMALL ANIMAL ENTIRELY SURROUNDED the world was already [young|sick|lost] when we came to it we were busy looking (for|at|through] god when we went to the dance we brought our new (shoes|father|flask] borrowed a [shirt|religion|mask] & sat in the bleachers (music|oil|trash] filled our rivers stayed up for the after [party| life| math] the forests were [protected|sold|ash] we wrote [letters|checks|ads] against corruption blamed [science|systems|depression] for our cities when the [oceans|fires|droughts] came when the [rain bomb|fu] came when the weather|weather|weather] came we weathered welcomed watered] it we were [prepared|shocked/responsible] please for one line look nowhere else who made our [life|language|living] here whoever eats [rivers|ash|lambs] will return each time we turn our mouths to [sob|scream/song] children are blameless as they become (gone/ghosts/gods)
February 11, 2025 at 7:35 PM
drivelikekarin.bsky.social
This is the face of a macaroni and cheese THIEF.
A black and white cat looking at something with wide eyes
January 30, 2025 at 9:55 PM
drivelikekarin.bsky.social
Jimmy has been walking around chirping and meowing worriedly about all my stuff being packed, so now I’m holding him and singing Riki Kiley songs to soothe him, and it’s working! Just a baby.
A black and white cat looking soothed on the lap of a brown-haired person.
January 27, 2025 at 6:08 PM
drivelikekarin.bsky.social
Feeling bad about the news, so here’s one of my favorite ca conrad poems—“poetry is the opposite of escape/ but makes this world endurable”
CAMISADO after breaking in the wolf calmed the hens so he could take his time with them twists them open until the right amount of memory fits into the song another high price for belonging poetry is the opposite of escape but makes this world endurable how the smallest puddle reflects the entire sky a return to every dream our minds talked us out of trusting our math of the star your hand around my shoulder poet astronaut you know I love you I have no sense of failure when I am with you everything matters because everything hurts someone somewhere as it is mattering we became all we carried into the mast migratory patterns given to the love again a way to end this secrecy of suffering cut a door in the wolf so we can retrieve our dead for a world that matters
January 21, 2025 at 5:00 PM
drivelikekarin.bsky.social
Awful news, RIP to one of the best.
A photo of David Lynch with the caption “fix your hearts or die”
January 16, 2025 at 6:58 PM