Jonathan Little
LightNews LightNews
banner
empiregardens.bsky.social
Jonathan Little
@empiregardens.bsky.social
210 followers 170 following 30 posts
jewels held in a fist turn to sand ✨🌱🌈
Posts Replies Media Videos
empiregardens.bsky.social
November 27, 2025 at 12:52 AM
empiregardens.bsky.social
Bobby LeFebre
A poem by a Bobby LeFebre: They invite me to a thing where the men in suits all look the same, and they twirl and clink wine glasses as the cheese sits next to the olives on plates too small to fill anything but image—everyone is secretly starving, and they laugh at each other's jokes even though they are not funny, they talk about golf and last quarter's returns, and they ask me to read something that is joyful and festive and celebratory, something inspiring that will make people feel good about gathering, but 50 migrants just died in a truck at the border, and the Supreme Court is an active shooter, and the police filled another Black man with 60 holes, and I am not a typical poet, but the elders have taught us that the job of an artist is to reflect the times, so I get on that stage and I do what I do the only way I know how, and when I am done, someone tells me the position of Poet Laureate is supposed to be apolitical, and I say, "maybe it is, but I am not," and sometimes, the only thing better than a standing ovation is a room full of silence. A mentor once told me that sometimes your job as an artist is to be invited somewhere and ensure they never invite you back.
November 26, 2025 at 4:55 AM
empiregardens.bsky.social
overjoyed
November 18, 2025 at 2:29 AM
empiregardens.bsky.social
Marcus Aurelius
by Bianca Stone
Marcus Aurelius by Bianca Stone Sometimes I wake up in the night with a terrible headache, my mouth blackened; a ghost looking for valuables in the debris, I turn on a battery-powered light, clipped to a book, I write things down in the spirit of Marcus Aurelius who said the finest bottle of wine is just grape juice, passing through the liver, no matter the beauty of a frothing glass, or a night of big Truth-seeking, never recalled; the importance of putting something bittersweet into our mouths, turning it around and around on our tongues, attaching to it, our missions, our purpose—in the end we are all just filters, not even as beautiful as the plainest bird or as zen as the meanest deer tick, nothing is given over to, nothing new is lit. So often it is this. I wake up, urgent, fatalistic, with the taste of nectar on my boughs. I replay on a loop my one stoic consistency, my middle of the night vow, that I will start tomorrow the essential dismantling of what I live. Source: Poetry (May 2019)
October 15, 2025 at 2:50 AM
empiregardens.bsky.social
never not excited when a pre-order finally arrives. today just went from good to great.
photo of a paperback book in my hand: We Had It Coming and other fictions Luke O’Neil
October 14, 2025 at 4:39 PM
empiregardens.bsky.social
yeahhhhh
September 11, 2025 at 1:34 PM
empiregardens.bsky.social
mentally i’m here
35mm photo looking out from the stern of a sailboat
September 11, 2025 at 1:12 PM
empiregardens.bsky.social
gloriously large progress pride flag hanging vertically from the rafters of a coffee shop.
August 21, 2025 at 10:52 AM
empiregardens.bsky.social
August 20, 2025 at 3:17 PM
empiregardens.bsky.social
damn it, Ken.
July 27, 2025 at 7:31 PM
empiregardens.bsky.social
June 9, 2025 at 7:40 PM
empiregardens.bsky.social
the purpose of love is to gain so much of one person’s trust, that when they are dying you can tell them it will be okay, and they will believe you
June 4, 2025 at 12:48 PM