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jamesolearypoet.bsky.social
james o
@jamesolearypoet.bsky.social
1.1K followers 770 following 570 posts
James O'Leary / was Willow James Claire for a while / Poet Writer Reviewer / they / Assistant Poetry Editor for Anomaly / free palestine 🇵🇸
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jamesolearypoet.bsky.social
maybe it's just my newly acquired SSRIs talking but this year I went to Tin House, wrote some poems I'm really excited about, and actually published/got accepted in Poet Lore, Kenyon, Four Way, Sho, and Gulf Coast. so perhaps I'm not totally a washed disgraceful failure or whatever
November 14, 2025 at 2:37 AM
jamesolearypoet.bsky.social
really loving Kim Addonizio’s Now We’re Getting Somewhere
Animals “I think I could turn and live with animals” Walt Whitman O Walt you were wrong, they aren’t placid or self-contained I just watched a spoonbill make carpaccio out of a frog &crocodiles dining on wildebeests trying to cross the Maro River It’s wrong to say O in poetry these days which makes me want to have a loud orgasm right here in an unashamed animal way
November 3, 2025 at 6:30 PM
jamesolearypoet.bsky.social
RIP Oscar Wilde, you would have loved The Substance (2024)
October 27, 2025 at 4:10 AM
jamesolearypoet.bsky.social
The newest issue of @anmlymag.bsky.social is here! There are many excellent poems in this issue. I want to shout out them all, but I'll start with McLeod Logue's "Descent" a ghost story in the shape of a chasm, a poem that floored me the first time I read it
McLeod Logue Descent Night glows gold like blood stains, like first lost tooth. The crunch of a change: brutal. Begin again. I hear the slow essence of retraction. It glistens. This morning I make eggs in bare feet, wilt white onto windowsill. The slim reap of my body. I’m seeing faces that aren’t mine in the mirror, some other me who scabbed and started fresh. I feel my blood pumping, every heartbeat the same lonely terror. The eggs cool. The whole house sighs. I can feel my nested wandering, the ghost’s shadow stretching, making moods that affix. The wind chimes move, catch shapes I couldn’t see. The noose of a song slopes, creeks a stair that wasn’t loose before. I feel the hollow calling: the hole in my stomach eating itself. You want me to describe my white cotton panties, tangled mass of hair. My bones. You want to hear the ways I opened myself, let light into vein and perfect pink. Here: The first time I ever opened the door, there was an endless dark. A sinking deepness that flattened. I mean, when it creaked on its hinge, the whole house numbed. How do you describe eternity? How do you live in a place that creases the fold? That swallows it.
October 15, 2025 at 4:27 PM
Reposted by james o
summ.bsky.social
I have two poems in the ANIMALIA folio edited by @sannawani.bsky.social at @ex-puritan.bsky.social 🐦 ex-puritan.ca/the-birds-ar...
"THE BIRDS ARE CALLING" and "THE BIRDS ARE CALLING"
Read Summer Farah's poems "THE BIRDS ARE CALLING" and "THE BIRDS ARE CALLING" in The Ex-Puritan's special issue Animalia, then check out the 2025 Austin Clarke Prize in Literary Excellence!
ex-puritan.ca
October 10, 2025 at 3:20 PM
jamesolearypoet.bsky.social
not to be a sad sack but long covid sucks, my brain still has really bad days quite often. I often feel like studying anything is a matter of squeezing my brain like a dry stone for water
October 10, 2025 at 9:31 PM
Reposted by james o
anmlymag.bsky.social
ANMLY is now open for new work!

We're especially seeking more from writers outside of the US, more nonfiction, & more translation!

> anmly.submittable.com

*Fee waivers available*

Check out our latest issue to see what we're into!

> anmly.org/ap40
ANMLY Submission Manager
**ANNOUNCEMENT: Fees will be waived for all Black and Indigenous writers, and writers of Palestinian descent, to support those most targeted by state violence. Email editor [at] anomalouspress [dot] o...
anmly.submittable.com
October 3, 2025 at 4:14 PM
jamesolearypoet.bsky.social
Venus, take me in your summer gown

Sally Wen Mao
Valentine for a Flytrap You are a hairy painting. I belong to your jaw. Nothing slakes you—no fruit fly, no cricket, not even tarantula. You are the caryatid I want to duel, dew-wet, in tongues. Luxurious spider bed, blooming from the ossuaries of peat moss, I love how you swindle the moths! This why you were named for a goddess: not Botticelli’s Venus, not any soft waif in the Uffizi. There’s voltage in your flowers: mulch skeins, armory for cunning loves. Your mouth pins every sticky body, swallowing iridescence, digesting light. Venus, let me swim in your solarium. Venus, take me in your summer gown.
October 5, 2025 at 3:18 AM
Reposted by james o
lambdaliterary.org
🎉🎉🎉 Congratulations to the 2025 Lambda Literary Award Winner for Transgender Nonfiction: Pretty by KB Brookins! 🎉🎉🎉 #Lammys2025 #LammyAwards
October 4, 2025 at 9:19 PM
Reposted by james o
anmlymag.bsky.social
we'll be opening for new work on october 1.

get your best ready. get your worst ready. we want to read you.

anmly.submittable.com/submit
ANMLY Submission Manager
ANMLY Submission Manager Powered By Submittable - Accept and Curate Digital Content
anmly.submittable.com
September 23, 2025 at 2:37 PM
jamesolearypoet.bsky.social
Nora Hikari

@systemwires.bsky.social
A poem breaks After Claire Heinzerling Along the places most tend er. A poem peel s like fruit. Fingers dug into the softest parts, war m and flowing. The man ner of violence is quiet. Gentle, even. “Son” the kin g of a poem says.
September 21, 2025 at 2:32 PM
jamesolearypoet.bsky.social
depression is weird because there are a thousand things that should be making me cry right now but the only thing that seems to have the power to actually do it is the soundtrack from a video game series about bugs experiencing Catholicism
September 17, 2025 at 4:11 PM
jamesolearypoet.bsky.social
to be honest I’m almost 20 hours in and I think Silksong is fantastic and I genuinely don’t understand what people are complaining about
September 16, 2025 at 2:48 AM
jamesolearypoet.bsky.social
I hope the tailless whip scorpions know that as much as I admire their beauty and grace I Do Not Want Them In My House
September 14, 2025 at 9:49 PM
Reposted by james o
junlper.beer
be very careful about what you post online
September 10, 2025 at 6:49 PM
Reposted by james o
anmlymag.bsky.social
"we don’t question death for the pain inflicted by man;
for the hollow dug in our hearts by man; because, sometimes,
death fruits peace & mostly, all that man has given birth to is chaos."

—Abdulbasit Oluwanishola

anmly.org/ap40/abdulba...
Abdulbasit Oluwanishola – ANMLY
anmly.org
September 9, 2025 at 11:55 AM
Reposted by james o
anmlymag.bsky.social
Congratulations to ANMLY's 2025 Pushcart Prize nominees!

Aida Bardissi
Anton Lushankin
Olga Zilberbourg translating Olga Bragina
Ági Bori translating Miklós Vámos
MK Kuol
Curtis Emery & Laura Wetherington

Read their work at anmly.org
Lavender background with a pastel illustration of a crow. Text that reads: ANMLY's 2026 Pushcart Nominees Aida Bardissi Anton Lushankin Olga Zilberbourg translating Olga Bragina Ági Bori translating Miklós Vámos MK Kuol Curtis Emery & Laura Wetherington
September 8, 2025 at 2:03 PM
Reposted by james o
asaldrake.bsky.social
This is one of my favorite poems I wrote this winter. It's a little messy but also one I was resistant to change? So glad @cerena.bsky.social and Poet Lore gave it a home in its current form. Every once in a while, I need to protect a sentimental poem.
Year of the Snake Is it best to plan for the worst? Maybe the plainer sentiment is, I will be using my strongest voice from here on out. I will make much work in a familiar pattern. Assignments, invitations, my own autonomy to step behind the stanchion (a stop-gap) (a doubleness). All my life, I have feared the uncanny valley. I have feared being mistaken or a mistake. But the valley is green and full of objective facts. Blessed be the land of conception, green cards and confrontations. I receive messages from loved ones asking permission to turn off a camera during a conference call, to delay an email, to refuse a request. I try not to let the world punish them. I haven't been reading lately. Except dates. I'm so happy Mom will be able to breathe again on Wednesday, but since the fires, she’s stopped taking photos of sunsets. Last night, the air was so dry I woke up to apply expired lotion. This morning, I prepared a tray of jiffy pods. Plump with water, they’re seven times their pre-hydration size. The way I show control is so, so human. I plan for the next season. Best by dates indicate I’m doing everything late. Frequently, the sentiment is like this. I try to imagine the future.
September 6, 2025 at 2:12 PM
jamesolearypoet.bsky.social
actually got a submission in to the Cincinnati Review before they fill up for the time in like over 3 years. small victories D:
September 4, 2025 at 3:10 AM
Reposted by james o
anmlymag.bsky.social
"we communicate
over the Internet and to you the howls
of snow and wind are something unheard of–it all reminds
a quiet air alert. Finally, you come back
disappointed and together we belatedly
raise our kids hoping to outrace the time."

—Anton Lushankin

anmly.org/ap40/anton-l...
Anton Lushankin – ANMLY
anmly.org
September 3, 2025 at 11:52 AM
jamesolearypoet.bsky.social
I don’t often post about whatever activism I do because I worry about being bragging about it and/or flattering my ego, which is fine, but sometimes I remember other people probably do this too; that people are working harder than is visible to make things better
August 31, 2025 at 7:55 PM
Reposted by james o
jamesolearypoet.bsky.social
Fortunate to have a poem that's very special to me in the newest issue of Four Way Review 💙

fourwayreview.com/issue-33/
BLUE PERIOD by James O’Leary It’s 9:31 PM where the end of the city tinges the sea. An empty spiderweb hangs motionless between the blinds & the closed window leaking the street’s neon onto the unmade bed. No moon. Not even the comfort of wine, bottles shaped like the body I want, & will never have. I keep thinking about the group of boys I passed huddled around their broken car like priests over an altar. I want to drink, to forget; it makes the fashion of my sadness tolerable. Driving on the highway, city -fluxed, sober, trying to ignore my engine light, my mind’s tidal drift reminds me I never made it to my childhood best friend’s funeral. Avoided it, so I didn’t have to see his family, the sharp angles of his still face. The radio asks where the joy has gone; I try to find it, I do, admire clouds, make food for the people I claim to love. & the difference between a claim & a lie is my hands, their learned fluency in devotion under the passage of each spent moon. & the difference between the end of the sea & the start of the sea, is how I feel when I open the window & listen to the pages of the water turn. Tonight the sky tastes like ozone & time—I buy a bouquet of chrysanthemums for my beloved, a full tank of gas. There’s safety from suicidal ideation in imagining the material reality of the other drivers, the names of their daughters or sons as strange as wildflowers a loved one might leave on their sudden tombs. After I spend the night piecing back together what fragments I can still recall of my first friend’s face, I am however sober it takes to watch the ghosts of our hometown retreat from the blanket of the rising sun.
August 16, 2025 at 3:59 PM
jamesolearypoet.bsky.social
this weekend I’m playing in my first chess tournament since I was like 11 years old. Just won my first game :)
August 30, 2025 at 8:08 PM
Reposted by james o
beestung.bsky.social
"Alternative title: You become a queer elder by accident, not because you are good at living but because you are slow at dying."

—Loren Maria Guay

beestungmag.com/issue24/one-...
One Poem by Loren Maria Guay – beestung
beestungmag.com
August 29, 2025 at 12:02 PM