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nfako.bsky.social
Nate
@nfako.bsky.social
190 followers 290 following 270 posts
he/they // mfa student // loser // poems findable
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nfako.bsky.social
slowly working my way through Larry Levis' The Afterlife
A screenshot of a page of poetry. You loved falling; You loved the braille Of starfish and the snows, High and fatherless. You loved fire, And the hail that had no memory. You loved to forget.
November 19, 2025 at 10:39 PM
nfako.bsky.social
man
An excerpt from page 2 of Larry Levis' poem The Double, found in his book The Afterlife.
November 11, 2025 at 12:47 PM
nfako.bsky.social
Larry Levis
Wound I've loved you as a man loves an old wound picked up in a razor fight on a street nobody remembers. Look at him: even in the dark he touches it gently.
October 28, 2025 at 12:38 AM
nfako.bsky.social
"And the windy streets fly shining with the buckles of October, blues of the change I'm growing through, tough dull greens that have bitten down to stay, and red--the reds are falling down around me so I can hear and smell them red."
The first page of Roland Flint's "Rosalind October" from his The Complete Poems.
October 24, 2025 at 1:22 PM
nfako.bsky.social
"In Chains" by the ol WCW
When blackguards and murderers under cover of their offices accuse the world of those villains which they themselves invent to torture it -- we have no choice but to bend to their designs, buck them or be trampled while our thoughts gnaw, snap and bite within us helplessly -- unless we learn from that to avoid being as they are, how love will rise out of its ashes if we water it, tie up the slender stem and keep the image of its lively flower chiseled upon our minds.
October 22, 2025 at 9:51 PM
nfako.bsky.social
Frank Stanford
Soybeans The book is full of my father's eyelashes He treats the pages rough like a woman He pinches the daylights out of them Mud dries up between his heel and sole quick as spit on his thumb You can still smell Four Roses bourbon in the morning through the onionskin He will not weep He knows most folks don't keep their word Anyway the rain came through like a hitchhiker
October 22, 2025 at 9:44 PM
nfako.bsky.social
Ok I screwed up the first time I tried to post--but! Pretty cool to have a piece in HAD this morning. Thanks @jlyocum.com and @havehashad.com

www.havehashad.com/hadposts/unl...
A screenshot of the poem linked above. I don't have time to write the whole thing out but I'll come back!
October 19, 2025 at 3:17 PM
nfako.bsky.social
A photo from above of a large crowd marching up a Chicago street.
October 18, 2025 at 9:13 PM
nfako.bsky.social
Louise Glück
Vespers I don't wonder where you are anymore. You're in the garden; you're where John is, in the dirt, abstracted, holding his green trowel. This is how he gardens: fifteen minutes of intense effort, fifteen minutes of ecstatic contemplation. Sometimes I work beside him, doing the shade chores, weeding, thinning the lettuces; sometimes I watch from the porch near the upper garden until twilight makes lamps of the first lilies: all this time, peace never leaves him. But it rushes through me, not as sustenance the flower holds but like bright light through the bare tree.
October 8, 2025 at 8:30 PM
nfako.bsky.social
Just finished this book and. Wow. @riverriverbooks.bsky.social The way the poems shift their language in a parallel gesture to the ever changing photographs. So good!
A photo of the cover of Field Notes by E.G. Cunningham. The cover shows a vast hazel field with gray sky above.
September 24, 2025 at 3:06 PM
nfako.bsky.social
my favorite tree as well! Have some Utah Aspen!
Picture of Aspen trees in Utah gone yellow in autumn
August 3, 2025 at 5:27 PM
nfako.bsky.social
Here's a picture of my Poppy sleeping on a friend.
Weiner dog asleep, wee teefs visible
July 21, 2025 at 7:44 PM
nfako.bsky.social
Asha Futterman
Asha Futterman broken lyre my hands are still my hands like my grandfather's hands are his hands and they are on the window attached to the body of a cabbage white and in the casket attached to a face that isn't his face he died shoveling snow that melted the next day poetry makes nothing happen
June 27, 2025 at 1:31 AM
nfako.bsky.social
"The loveliest beds / Are left undone. / Hope is a pillow / Hold on."

"Falling Beasts" CD Wright
Girls marry young In towns in the mountains. They're sent to the garden For beets. They come to the table With their hair gleaming, Their breath missing. In my book love is darker Than cola. It can burn A hole clean through you. When the first satellite Flew over, men stood On their property, warm Even in undershirts, Longing to shoot something. The mule looks down The barrel of the gun, Another long row to plow. Bills pile up in fall Like letters from a son In the army. An explosion Kills a quiet man. Another sits beside a brass lamp In a white shirt And cancels his pay. A thousand dulcimers are carved By the one called Double Thumb. Winter cuts us down Like a coach. Spits snow. Horses flinch Against the cold spurs in the sky. We look for the oak Who loves our company More than other oaks. The loveliest beds Are left undone. Hope is a pillow Hold on.
June 18, 2025 at 8:04 PM
nfako.bsky.social
Dobby Gibson
Room Tone The sun sets and the snow holds its breath. Houses watch one another from opposite sides of the street like knives in a drawer. In the empty park, old statues tear us down by just standing there, defying us to change.
June 14, 2025 at 2:46 AM
nfako.bsky.social
four panel meme about oversleeping at 30, going back to bed, then waking up in a panic remembering you are a teacher
June 10, 2025 at 12:59 PM
nfako.bsky.social
One cool and maybe bittersweet part of buying used books is sometimes the author has written a note to someone else inside, and I feel like I have opened a secret corridor
Photo of inside cover page of Alice Major's Standard candles. There is an inscription that reads: To Richard, all good wishes. Alice Major
May 30, 2025 at 1:53 PM
nfako.bsky.social
First morning back from Vietnam, jetlagged, woke up at 3am to write, now Church
A picture of the menu at Waffle House
May 26, 2025 at 11:39 AM
nfako.bsky.social
Flight delayed 😏 who needs the beach when I have this book
A photo which shows me holding The Poetics of Wrongness by Rachel Zucker.
May 15, 2025 at 4:59 AM
nfako.bsky.social
from the wall above the grad printer, from the chorus of printer persona poems
Picture of a handwritten note that reads "these poems won't save us / but they remind me I'm not alone / we save ourselves"
April 30, 2025 at 12:58 PM
nfako.bsky.social
Thanks for taking my Oklahoma ramblins @croaklit.bsky.social
A screenshot of a poem in croak mag's second issue. Go check it out!
April 28, 2025 at 2:13 AM
nfako.bsky.social
Look, I've read a lot of books. And sometimes I still struggle to scan a poem, like I'm scanning it wrong. I do believe there are different ways to emphasize syllables and to read a poem. But I am crazy about this stuff because when I read, the verse has an effect on me and I want to understand why.
A three stanza poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson: Dark house, by which once more I stand Here in the long unlovely street, Doors, where my heart was used to beat So quickly, waiting for a hand, A hand that can be clasped no more-- Behold me, for I cannot sleep, And like a guilty thing I creep At earliest morning to the door. He is not here; but far away The noise of life begins again, And ghastly through the drizzling rain On the bald street breaks the blank day.
April 26, 2025 at 1:24 PM
nfako.bsky.social
Saturday morning at the Subaru maintenance center
A picture of Gregory Orr's book Poetry as Survival.
April 26, 2025 at 12:31 PM
nfako.bsky.social
morale low in the office today @midamericanreview.bsky.social help
The three fates of graduate studies: fatigue, dismay, and burnout sit in an office in various states of repose.
April 23, 2025 at 6:09 PM
nfako.bsky.social
From "Burning Tomato Worms" by Carolyn Forche. The first poem in her MFA thesis.
I want to ask you why I live And why we go back apart across the field Why I am here and will have to feel the way I die It was all over my face Grandma flipped kolachi rolls Dunked her hands in bowls of water Looked at me Wrung the rags into the stoop Kept it from me Whatever she saw
April 14, 2025 at 1:24 PM