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jillkitchen.bsky.social
Jill Kitchen
@jillkitchen.bsky.social
3K followers 5.1K following 1.1K posts
poems, stories, music & landscape. in DC. co, nyc, & london still hold pieces of my heart. writing in asterales, ecotone, crab creek review, HAD, four way review, iowa review, poet lore, split lip, trampset, whale road. social media manager @ SWWIM she/her
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jillkitchen.bsky.social
Somedays it helps to know that someone decided to build this in their backyard.
Image of wooden wall/fence and sagebrush with the word LOVE spelled out in large red-painted letters made of wood.
November 23, 2025 at 4:18 PM
jillkitchen.bsky.social
Hanging out with my friends.
View of a crow in a red-leafed tree beneath gold-leafed trees outside of a window.
November 13, 2025 at 4:38 PM
jillkitchen.bsky.social
In case you missed my Brooklyn ghost poem on Halloween, here is "after-midnight umbra" from Boudin's Ticking Clock Issue:
after-midnight umbra Jill Kitchen brick brownstone painted red on a busy avenue, top floor open to brooklyn sky. from the roof, a woven cityscape of other rooftops, other chimneys, the scent of tar. manhattan’s lower skyline small enough to hold in a hand, catch fireworks in july. spiral staircase a tremble of iron, sunday goulash at the austrian restaurant on the corner. a bed shared with a sleeping love and sometimes two cats when they aren’t chasing each other up and down the narrow staircase, through pink dawn shadows on the floor. when you are alone, another dark silhouette in the shower, shifting where there should be no shadow. when your partner is alone looking out the window, a human-shaped reflection behind his own outline. at three a.m. each night, both bedside lights turn on. some wiring glitch, perhaps. one october night, a candle long unlit lights itself. you wake to your near-dreaming man standing in trance, watching the flicker and burn, red shadows on his skin. another night, your long-unwound music box starts to play musetta’s waltz into the sleeping dark. always as the clock touches three. your love returns home late one night, ascends the stairs to find you asleep, curved into eyelash flutter, while both bedside lamps put on a strobe-stuttered light show. your mouth open to a soundless cry. you start to wake at three a.m. to the sound of a man’s scream in one ear. you think it must be the stress of work weaving nightmares until your man tells you he wakes that way, too, and often. you pack to move 2,000 miles away. the night before you leave, your partner wakes to a fist in his face, no hand in sight. the room a shimmer of shadow mote. black and white drawing of an analog wall clock with roman numeral numbers.
November 7, 2025 at 5:29 PM
jillkitchen.bsky.social
It's the marvelous @majda.bsky.social's birthday! Celebrate by purchasing her brilliant collection "In the House of Modern Upbringing for Girls" if you don't already have this beauty on your shelves! politics-prose.com/book/9798218...
The cover of Majda Gama's book of poems "In the House of Modern Upbringing for Girls"
November 7, 2025 at 2:21 PM
jillkitchen.bsky.social
Full moon in DC:
Full moon through rust-orange leaves.
November 6, 2025 at 1:50 PM
jillkitchen.bsky.social
a twilight colorado mountainscape with moon, a few years back.
twilight snow-covered mountainscape with cloud and fragment of moon
November 1, 2025 at 11:31 PM
jillkitchen.bsky.social
In case you missed my ghosty poem yesterday in Boudin's Ticking Clock issue, the day after Halloween is a great day to continue your spooky reads! www.mcneese.edu/thereview/af...
Drawing of old clock with roman numerals.
November 1, 2025 at 3:46 PM
jillkitchen.bsky.social
I had sent a friend her COVID hedge apple:
Hedge apple decorated with cranberries to look like COVID structure
October 26, 2025 at 3:51 PM
jillkitchen.bsky.social
This guy had to pause in the tree with his load of snacks after tossing unacceptable acorns onto cars on the street below all day.
Squirrel in tree holding a branch with acorns on it.
October 23, 2025 at 9:19 PM
jillkitchen.bsky.social
In case you missed my poem "when the world did not feel like a crushing weight" in the beautiful @asteralesjournal.bsky.social:
when the world did not feel like a crushing weight / jill kitchen in the black & white picture from the photobooth, we are laughing to near tears, showing all of our chins. i can hear our snorts, see my hand over my mouth. we didn’t feel steamrolled by the world then, did we? not in that moment anyway. when did it shift? last night i dreamt i was in montana again, 17 years old, about to start a 20-mile hike uphill in the rain. i panicked to prepare, wrapping changes of clothes in plastic, liner socks beneath the thicker wool, bandaids for the inevitable blisters. sleepless in the tent because every raindrop was a bear, the bear we had hidden our food from, trail mix & potato chips wrapped & hung high in a tree. i had left my doc martens behind along with most of my CDs. did i really see the trail, the way the sky hinged into cloudmist? did i know
October 23, 2025 at 5:34 PM
jillkitchen.bsky.social
My poem "when the world did not feel like a crushing weight" is best viewed on a phone flipped sideways or on a computer browser. www.asteralesjournal.com/1-4-kitchen-...
October 21, 2025 at 1:04 PM
jillkitchen.bsky.social
Look what arrived yesterday! Can't wait to dive in to @djvorreyer.bsky.social's beautiful book!
Photo of the book Unrivered by Donna Vorreyer on blue fabric
October 16, 2025 at 3:48 PM
jillkitchen.bsky.social
Beautiful mail just in from Ireland. Thank you @poetryireland.bsky.social!
Image of a copy of Poetry Ireland Review issue 146 Edited by Stephen Sexton with a jar full of bright colored flowers.
October 6, 2025 at 4:24 PM
jillkitchen.bsky.social
Baby poet in the desert.
A woman with sunglasses and a denim jacket standing in front of a Joshua Tree and California desert landscape.
October 5, 2025 at 3:00 PM
jillkitchen.bsky.social
Shadow poem, DC morning light falling across a closet door.
Shadows of morning light fanning out across a door
October 3, 2025 at 5:54 PM
jillkitchen.bsky.social
Of course, there was also this:
Young woman dressed as Trinity from the Matrix with sunglasses, chin-length hair and vinyl coat.
September 30, 2025 at 1:59 PM
jillkitchen.bsky.social
Post a you from a different era
Smiling woman with long hair looking off to the side next to an image of a skeleton with fangs that reads ASYLUM
September 30, 2025 at 1:58 PM
jillkitchen.bsky.social
So sorry to hear of the loss of the great Claudia Cardinale. Pictured here in Sergio Leone's wonderful epic Once Upon a Time in the West, a film that wove through my childhood and adolescence. I liked to pretend I was named after her character, Jill.
Photo still of Claudia Cardinale from Once Upon a Time in the West, wearing a hat and upswept hairstyle, dark eyeliner.
September 25, 2025 at 4:18 PM
jillkitchen.bsky.social
Beautiful! It looks like it would go very well with a copy of the latest Poetry Ireland Review:
September 23, 2025 at 3:27 PM
jillkitchen.bsky.social
Electric wires with a half moon over a tree scape
September 12, 2025 at 4:04 PM
jillkitchen.bsky.social
Trying to find beauty.
white and blush-colored hydrangeas leaning against a fence
September 12, 2025 at 4:00 PM
jillkitchen.bsky.social
New author photo?
Girl on bunk bed with rolled jeans and blue tee shirt and sideways ponytail.
September 9, 2025 at 1:26 AM
jillkitchen.bsky.social
DC sunsets of late.
peach orange pink sunset sky with treescape.
September 6, 2025 at 7:32 PM
jillkitchen.bsky.social
protect yourself from the knowledge as long as you can. they seized control of my one week of vacation by way of my 13 year old's longing, regenerating by the sea side like these guys would:
room full of gizmos
August 23, 2025 at 2:33 PM
jillkitchen.bsky.social
Birthday still-life near the sea with gifts of romance novels and a Patti Smith book from my London bestie.
Bouquet of bright flowers next to stack of books.
August 12, 2025 at 5:57 PM