Kelley Ann McMinn
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mcminnville1023.bsky.social
Kelley Ann McMinn
@mcminnville1023.bsky.social
56 followers 64 following 38 posts
She/her

Poet, pool player, community college ESL and English instructor, musician, mom, roller of big cigars, cryer.
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mcminnville1023.bsky.social
A poem for today about at least three things

#brokenthings #poetry #apoemaday #decemberpoems
A poem in three stanzas of five lines each Cold Moon Obit Believe me when I say, I like broken things shells in glass boxes and tiny black sharks teeth, bent bottlecaps through the dryer. They used to swim out, farther than waves, as girls strollered him through Wadsworth with bows in his hair. But it could all end in a chat about costs— somebody’s friend’s lawyer on retainer, Missouri to Memphis in six hours. Maybe they’ll give you a barstool, remembrance with a nameplate. The edges of my fingers break. Is this what old age feels like, everything dry and cracking? All the compositions are perfect now— mechanically clean and soulless. But I want to know what makes you feel squishy, family traditions, the hair’s soft beast. This is how my mind works I don’t want machines to do it for me. Promise to show me your imperfections, the room where they’ll need to tear up the floor.
December 6, 2025 at 2:12 PM
mcminnville1023.bsky.social
October full moon days
#thelastonestanding #fullmoon #harvestmoon
October 8, 2025 at 2:16 PM
mcminnville1023.bsky.social
Fall feelings
#poetry #fallpoems #apoemaday #octoberpoems
October 8, 2025 at 2:13 PM
mcminnville1023.bsky.social
#poetry #octoberpoems #fullmoon #apoemaday
October 7, 2025 at 8:58 PM
mcminnville1023.bsky.social
A poetry offering for the Sunday socialrithm
August 18, 2025 at 5:01 AM
mcminnville1023.bsky.social
A little something for today
#poetry #julypoems #apoemaday #butterflies #glasshouses
July 21, 2025 at 12:56 AM
mcminnville1023.bsky.social
Late night, pre-sleep poem
#apoemaday #maypoems #hibernation #poetry
May 28, 2025 at 8:03 AM
mcminnville1023.bsky.social
A recent poem

#mayflowers #apoemaday #junkcollector #poetry #smallpoems
May 23, 2025 at 7:08 AM
mcminnville1023.bsky.social
Yesterday's effort for April 17, International Hailku Day, in response to a prompt to write about Gulfstream using the following 5 words: lips, moon, tankard, sassafras, and field. #haiku #nationlpoetrymonth #napowrimo2025 #apoemaday #aprilpoems #kelleymcminnpoetry #sassafras #gulf
April 18, 2025 at 2:09 PM
mcminnville1023.bsky.social
April 13 poem #poetry #eternalreturn #napowrimo2025 #apoemday #kelleymcminnpoetry #aprilpoems
April 15, 2025 at 1:56 PM
mcminnville1023.bsky.social
Yesterday's effort in response to the Glo/NaPoWriMo ghazal prompt
#aprilpoems #poetry #apoemaday #napowrimo2025 #napowrimo #ghazal #pacificnorthwest #rain #april8
Northwest Ghazal You’re there and then you’re not like the April rain I came unprepared and sat alone unscreened in the rain No charger, no books as shields, a mind unmade My naked face ready to talk only about the rain Restless, awake again at 4 a.m. turning sideways Looking for signals. Get up and go listen to the rain Spring came in mean, humming like a treadmill an unsteady promise, light bending through the rain. I want to watch you blink and move your collections objects of affection and people who know how to love the rain. Forget romance, I can read. And there’s woman-wise graffiti honest as shit-smeared floors. I carried my coat in the rain. Teach me what you know, how to sway like a lottery And perch like a cat, all purr and no permission but rain. When I leave, I’ll drag my boots through the puddles outside To rinse my own feet. Home again jiggity jig in the rain.
April 9, 2025 at 2:47 PM
mcminnville1023.bsky.social
A small poem for Sunday, April 6 in response to NaPoWriMo promt to write a brief history of something after the Dorrianne Laux poem

#apoemaday #aprilpoems #smallpoems #napowrimo2025
A Brief History of Forget-Me-Nots Scorpion grass or mouse ear, Alaska state flower. Nine years ago I woke up there, the first miscarriage under my belt. Dreaming about forget-me-nots. Remember. If your armor gets too heavy to go on loving, and you slip into the stream to go drowning, then you can toss me this something with petals to count on a promise nobody can keep.
April 7, 2025 at 5:58 AM
mcminnville1023.bsky.social
Happy National Poetry Writing Month! Today's efforts are a response to the "If this is the last poem I ever write" prompt.

#aprilpoems
#napowrimo2025
#aprilisthecruelestmonth
#apoemaday
#nationalpoetrywritingmonth
If this is the last poem I ever write Let it be like the first one, A scrawl of childspeak in long line letters Crawling across the page of a small notebook Somebody’s journal with its watercolor font Outside of symmetry, unaware of space, Unafraid of clichés, or pancakes or men Nothing borrowed from a foreign mouth Let it stand in the kitchen, hands on its small hips Staring down its grownup self To say there’s gonna be some new rules. No name calling, no tickling, no not nice words We’re gonna try to keep this house as clean as we can. Let it be like a whisper before all the others, a poem about flowers, a poem about a boy, a poem about itself.
April 1, 2025 at 10:00 PM
mcminnville1023.bsky.social
Spring break is over, and the cruelest month nears. Here's a sort of sonnet for Sunday in celebration of this temporal sweet spot when the flowers are here to do their thing, but the rain hasn't left, and the air is still cool.

#sundaypoems
#apoemaday #sundaysonnet
#sonnet #smallpoemsunday
A Hard Lesson You’ve got no reason to pick the flower. Might as well tell somebody how to love. The best part is its wholeness, how it grows there unassisted. Perfect symmetry. It comes in waves. The sadness of old clothes thick piles of paper. How they remind you of everyone you used to be. Maybe another language has a word for this. It's springtime delicious. Outside, we race against the intervals of a sump pump. I'm drawing a hopscotch in sidewalk chalk. She never gets tired of laughing. Teach me to celebrate. A singular tulip, its stem content in a tangle of rain.
March 31, 2025 at 5:06 AM
mcminnville1023.bsky.social
#marchpoems
#apoemaday #poetry #jumpinguponadock
Remember when You could jump up onto a dock And swim with both arms out Pitched forward in a wide crawl? You could run from whatever Was chasing you Full of breath and clean muscle. You could love All the way up and upside down, Straddle in a backbend, whole body Arched into the sport of it, taking in All the length you could swallow Like a dare, all ideas As new fruits to suck on. How did this day find me Like cold oil in a pan, Like a still moth crouched in grass? I can still go out to the road And throw up my thumbs, Make love to a lantern Get down on one knee. One day you’ll be glad To step into the shower. One day, you’ll have to give up on stairs And driving, and living alone. One day you’ll be relieved Of all your heaviness, your body Lapping behind you, light again with forgetting Smoothed over and hairless, like a stone.
March 22, 2025 at 8:03 PM
mcminnville1023.bsky.social
As spring rolls in and winter term comes to a close, I'm looking back through some January journals. Who was I three months ago? Here are a couple of poems from the beginning of the year that were previously unshared.
#poetry #newyearspoems #januarypoems #apoemaday
March 12, 2025 at 2:40 PM
mcminnville1023.bsky.social
Sometimes I write little parking garage poems, while I'm sitting in my car before getting out and walking to work. Here’s today’s effort.

#apoemaday #poetry #marchpoems #oregoncoast #mondayagain
March 10, 2025 at 5:07 PM
mcminnville1023.bsky.social
A slight revision of a most recent offering, a March first poem written far from the Emerald City in the belly of Oz.
#apoemaday #poetry #lasvegas #tooz #marchpoems
Clicking My Heels in the City of Lights Believe me when I tell you I want the quiet things. The buried seed blind in its soil, A walk among the trees of our country, The manner of their leaves and branches Changing in the direction Of the latitudes that divide us. In the city, we go to the lamps like flies Fill our ears with the noise of our species To forget what’s soft, dark, and empty– Those crevices where we might retreat. Last night, the planets lined up, And the naked sky would’ve made A perfect canvas for that string of lights. There are so many ways to surrender, So many ways to get home Once you remember where you’re from And how to click your heels.
March 3, 2025 at 11:19 PM
mcminnville1023.bsky.social
A small poem for #smallpoemsunday, scribbled out last night just before bed.

#smallpoems #apoemaday #februarypoems #poesy
Are we dead yet? I’ll have to remember to check the news To see if the last stone has been cast The last guarantee rescinded The last rights obstructed. I’m still sitting here cross-legged in bed Hanging my hopes on ridiculous ghosts Forgetting whether the sky has fallen.
February 24, 2025 at 5:06 PM
mcminnville1023.bsky.social
A poem for today, written a while back, about signs, seeing them, looking for them, and making them up.

#poetry #apoemaday #poems #lackofinformation
#readingallthesigns #lookingforsigns
February 24, 2025 at 3:03 PM
mcminnville1023.bsky.social
A new poem for today because AI sucks (up all the water), art is sacred, and humans are meant to do hard things.

#poetry #apoemaday #februarypoems #aisucks #writingishard
Predictive Text Don’t tell me who to be, or where to hang my words. My voice is a house where I’ve cut my own wood. It was won out of nettles, a nest of mom-speak Stringing gurgles and grunts into syntax and sense. First, it was your mother, your teachers after that, Who did the slow work of interpretation. You had choices. Milk or apple juice? Marker or crayon? And we learned what was rude, what was base, off limits. To finish someone’s sentence Required a lover’s intimacy, a mother’s entitlement The refrigerator habits and folded laundry of an old spouse. Who are you to decide what comes next in my diatribe? I wake up to go writing. I’m an image collector. I found a sunrise sprayed with clouds through the kitchen window A wad of paper melting into a rainy sidewalk, a plastic bunny Inflated in an office, teenagers kissing in the street, A man sleeping there, too. Graffiti and grapes. And I want to be struck dumb, Perplexed by my own pen, left weeping over a page With nothing but a puzzle, a tangle of ideas That wrestle their way into one thin line.
February 22, 2025 at 5:38 PM
mcminnville1023.bsky.social
It's that tender, turned on feeling I get when I let in the soft thoughts. Even when it's illogical, vulnerability is brave.

#apoemaday
#poetry #goingsoft
#februarypoems
Choosing Softness I wanted to be hard A rough spot rubbed to a callus, Heart impermeable And head airtight. Face straight, feet planted Elbows out and ready to jab. A cold stone in my palm Might soothe But the kiss of a gift Melts my volition, Puts a song in my head That reminds me to go soft. Once again, I resign To open my fist Once again, I decide And reach for your hand.
February 19, 2025 at 11:46 PM
mcminnville1023.bsky.social
A quick poem for today, written first by hand.

#apoemaday
#februarypoems
#livinginanalog
#noapps
#sanfranciscohotsprings
Living in Analog Think of the things we could do in analog– smell the books and hold them, our fingers knowing the thickness of each page. Explore the soreness of a wrist writing by hand. I’ll return to the roots, to rocks and plants. Mushrooms. Moth and mango. Snake and fern. San Francisco smells like eucalyptus. San Francisco hot springs is in New Mexico. Remember that morning we woke up there In our tent surrounded by snow? There were no apps to warn us. We drank our campfire percolated coffee and went into the water, naked as string beans, thin as wheat.
February 18, 2025 at 3:39 PM
mcminnville1023.bsky.social
Late-night, hypnagogic musings

#poetry #poemaday #lovepoem #gambling
Point of Reference Point of Reference The night is precious and still What takes his attention And gets his time? I lost it in that stillness, Where the funeral found my brain And winter settled in like a cat All purr and no promise He comes on and leaves like a lottery Just the ding and whir of spinning lights Free of dawn's alerts and dusk's edge A library of intermittent return.
February 16, 2025 at 4:00 PM
mcminnville1023.bsky.social
Every poem I write is a love poem or sorts, a love letter to the subject or the muse, regardless of the terms of the relationship or tenets of the social contract. Even when anger, grief, disgust, is the source of inspiration, the poetic act is inherently an intimate one.

#lovepoems
#love
#muses
“As a society we are embarrassed by love. We treat it as if it were an obscenity. We reluctantly admit to it.” –Diane Ackerman (quoted in All About Love by bell hooks) The Thing We Can’t Say Call it a buried seed an invisible thread that tugs a thought that delights and burns esteem for the habits that make up another an affection for all of their metaphors. Keep it close, like a secret. Keep it secret like a vice, an obsession, my precious. I may not touch your face, or taste your mouth but I like to know that you’re out there delighting and burning, too for something unnamed two consonants that vibrate tip of a curled tongue, just behind the front teeth a soft, relaxed vowel that hangs in the middle of the throat sound of a snowy bird or protection for hands. I think of your hands and what they can do regard the objects they seize and fondle with envy, always wishing them well ever grateful for what they carry and know.
February 14, 2025 at 3:37 PM