Tana Jean Welch
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tanajeanwelch.bsky.social
Tana Jean Welch
@tanajeanwelch.bsky.social
650 followers 770 following 110 posts
Poet. Spy. Author of IN PARACHUTES DESCENDING (Pitt Poetry Series, 2024) and LATEST VOLCANO (Marsh Hawk Press, 2016).
http://linktr.ee/tanajeanwelch
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tanajeanwelch.bsky.social
Really loving Krysnia Wazny McClain's recent review of In Parachutes Descending. It's always cool to see how someone might read one's book, especially on such a personal level.

Check it out here: www.tupeloquarterly.com/uncategorize...
A Review of Tana Jean Welch’s In Parachutes Descending by Krysia Wazny McClain
I wrote some of my notes on Tana Jean Welch’s In Parachutes Descending while sitting in a cafe in the Castro, sipping iced tea and delighting at the parallels between the speaker’s life and mine. Like...
www.tupeloquarterly.com
November 20, 2025 at 9:13 PM
Reposted by Tana Jean Welch
mbsycamore.bsky.social
Honey, I'm sobbing, yes, literally SOBBING after reading this review of TERRY DACTYL by Trish Bendix in the New York Times Book Review, which engages with the book on so many deep levels, yes, I'm reading it over and over, what a gift, this means everything to me!!!💞💞💞💞💞
This Club Kid Knows How to Survive. The Better Question Is: How to Live?
www.nytimes.com
November 12, 2025 at 4:09 PM
tanajeanwelch.bsky.social
Happy discovery! Rama Duwaji's plates!

tanajeanwelch.com/news/2025/11/10/winter-2025-featured-artist-rama-dujawi
Winter 2025 Featured Artist: Rama Duwaji — Tana Jean Welch
I just want you to see these plates.
tanajeanwelch.com
November 12, 2025 at 5:01 PM
tanajeanwelch.bsky.social
Gabriele Münter, “Breakfast of the Birds” (1934)

See it at the National Museum for Women in the Arts (or the Guggenheim Nov to April 2026)
August 26, 2025 at 5:51 PM
tanajeanwelch.bsky.social
Anyone read All Fours by Miranda July? What’d ya think?
August 19, 2025 at 3:43 PM
Reposted by Tana Jean Welch
mythopoetica.bsky.social
Out now at @translunartl.bsky.social , "Vengeance As Sweet As My Love", my weirdo tale with the premise of: "What if two figures from Malaysian folk horror were thrust into a cyberpunk Sherlock-Moriarty situation"?

translunartravelerslounge.com/2025/08/15/v...

(you know I'm a Sherlock Holmes nerd)
Vengeance as Sweet as My Love, by Anita Harris Satkunananthan
My love is pixelated letters and symbols made by keypads in a locked chatroom on an irc network so encrypted, even botnet overlords would not be granted admittance. My love is algae-rich pools in t…
translunartravelerslounge.com
August 16, 2025 at 9:55 AM
Reposted by Tana Jean Welch
literaryhub.bsky.social
Danielle Dutton talks to @pipadam.bsky.social on the possibilities of politically engaged speculative fiction.
Other, Better Worlds: Pip Adam on the Possibilities of Politically Engaged Speculative Fiction
The first time I ever spoke to award-winning New Zealand writer Pip Adam was over Zoom. It was 2022, right after my partner and I had signed on to publish The New Animals in the US. The New Animals…
buff.ly
July 2, 2025 at 3:30 PM
tanajeanwelch.bsky.social
A grain silo can be a metaphor for any feeling—one misstep and you are simply engulfed.

poems.com/poem/day-10/...
Day 10
I think: sunshine as punishment, lavender as love language
poems.com
June 29, 2025 at 2:40 PM
tanajeanwelch.bsky.social
HEAL: Humanism Evolving through Arts and Literature is currently seeking visual art submissions. HEAL welcomes a variety of genres and themes, and submissions are open to all. Please share with your artistic people! #art #submissions #callforart #healingthroughart
June 23, 2025 at 3:30 PM
tanajeanwelch.bsky.social
Revisiting: Audrey Kawasaki

Tingling
12” x 15” graphite and oil paint on wood panel 2024

www.audkawa.com
June 19, 2025 at 9:17 PM
tanajeanwelch.bsky.social
I'm in love with Kati Thomson's vibrant art! An added bonus: she lives and paints in my hometown. #clovis

This one is entitled "Flyers."

See more at katithomson.com or tanajeanwelch.com/news
June 17, 2025 at 6:02 PM
tanajeanwelch.bsky.social
#LosAngeles "Susan, Aarti, Keerthana and Princess, Sunday in Brooklyn" (2018), by Mexican artist Aliza Nisenbaum. For more on Nisenbaum's work with immigrants, see bombmagazine.org/articles/202...
June 11, 2025 at 2:02 PM
tanajeanwelch.bsky.social
Thanks Simeon!
simeonberry.bsky.social Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · Jun 9
“while drought damages / acres of asparagus, almonds, and oranges // while a teenage boy stashes / the strangled next door girl // in a recycling bin, small under stacks / of corrugated cardboard” — @tanajeanwelch.bsky.social, “The History of Humanity” @upittpress.bsky.social
THE HISTORY OF HUMANITY. while drought damages acres of asparagus, almonds, and oranges, while a teenage boy stashes the strangled next door girl in a recycling bin, small under stacks of corrugated cardboard bearing the black Amazon smile, while a dentist from Minnesota pays $50,000 for the privilege of killing a lion, fires spread through Napa’s vineyards, high-speed trains pick-off Sudanese migrants night after night—this is why I accept your torch moving through dangerous air, why I had three orgasms as southern Alaska had 21 earthquakes—instead of asking when the hard choices will be made, I take the torpor of touch, I feed and pulse on the spasm of space and time until that generous juncture of black hole departure—with every climax, I can leave this world, even as the earth’s tremors deepen by miles, even as pink iguanas live on the precipice of extinction, even as lightning pulls us farther and farther apart. Tana Jean Welch
June 9, 2025 at 7:28 PM
Reposted by Tana Jean Welch
splitthisrock.bsky.social
Soft numb resilience, wing me a story. Scratch me a skin poem. Chase the sparrow’s tail, roll the boulder.

Poem of the Week is “Cedar Waxwing, Pyracantha II" by Lehua M. Taitano. The poem is available as audio and text for free at The Quarry: bit.ly/4jvygPJ

#Poetry #PoemoftheWeek #Poem #Poet
Poem of the Week graphic, which includes the poem title, author, and excerpt with a photo of Lehua M. Taitano in a circular frame. Lehua M. Taitano, a CHamoru woman with dark, wavy, shoulder-length hair, smiles warmly while standing outdoors in front of lush green foliage. She wears a black shirt and a black blazer decorated with a white daisy floral pattern.
June 6, 2025 at 2:34 PM
Reposted by Tana Jean Welch
foxaboxen.bsky.social
"Dog Years" by Michael Bazzett #NationalPoetryMonth #poetry
"Dog Years" We’re all aware that when we are walking the dog, and he spends an hour lovingly sniffing posts and tufts, and we then return home and his tongue hangs from his panting mouth, that somehow seven hours have passed for him, which means that, allotting time for grieving, our lives consist of maybe five dogs, and when we clutch the slack skin behind a puppy’s ear, when we gather up that impossibly soft coat into our fists, part of the stabbing intensity of our grip comes from grief. Right there. Even as that soft pink tongue is licking you. But what we do not consider often enough is that old-growth maples peer down at us in the same way, bewildered by how soon we are gone, how little we grasp while we’re here, at our odd rootless ways of love. — Michael Bazzett
April 7, 2025 at 2:39 AM
Reposted by Tana Jean Welch
splitlippress.com
Brimming with praise ( @roxanegay.bsky.social! @maggiesmithpoet.bsky.social! ) GRAPHIC RAGE exposes the absurdities + injustices that women know all too well, turns rage into razor-sharp wit, pushes back against the world’s worst takes, + channels frustration into fearless humor + incisive critique.
splitlippress.com Split/Lip Press @splitlippress.com · Apr 7
Wild timing, but the universe keeps its own schedule: welcome to our (pre-scheduled!) cover reveal and preorders day for @aubreyhirsch.bsky.social's book GRAPHIC RAGE, 25 sharp, unflinching, and darkly funny feminist comics.

Order at the link in our bio or www.splitlippress.com/graphic-rage
orange background with the cover for Aubrey Hirsch's book, GRAPHIC RAGE: COMICS ON GENDER, JUSTICE, AND LIFE AS A WOMAN IN AMERICA in the forefront, coming October 7, 2025
April 7, 2025 at 1:25 PM
tanajeanwelch.bsky.social
A hauntingly beautiful poem. Maybe one day they'll stop spitting.
poetrydaily.bsky.social Poetry Daily @poetrydaily.bsky.social · Mar 9
Today’s Featured Poet:

Cara Dees is the author of Exorcism Lessons in the Heartland, winner of the Barrow Street Book Prize. She holds a PhD from the University of Cincinnati and an MFA from Vanderbilt University.
March 11, 2025 at 6:37 PM
tanajeanwelch.bsky.social
Grateful for this review of In Parachutes Descending by Michael Trammell. He really got what I was trying to do with the book :)
www.apalacheereview.org/in-parachute...
In Parachutes Descending [Book Review] - Apalachee Review
In Parachutes Descending.Tana Jean Welch. University of Pittsburgh Press: Pittsburgh, PA. 2024. Tana Welch interlaces sea level rise, the concept of Seasteading, and stanzas packed with intense passio...
www.apalacheereview.org
March 10, 2025 at 7:05 PM
Reposted by Tana Jean Welch
martharichart.bsky.social
I made this the other night while procrastinating, mainly because I thought all the posts about the blackout were boring. It feels like there is momentum bringing people together!
A poster for the economic blackout on February 28. It is a big red Jack rabbit on an aqua blue back ground. It says economic blackout in hand done black type. There are two black speech bubbles. One says “don’t buy stuff Friday February 28th. The other says we have power. Below it says No Amazon, Walmart, target, gas food, gas. Below that it says OK small business, use cash. Designed by Martha Rich.
February 27, 2025 at 1:39 AM
Reposted by Tana Jean Welch
simeonberry.bsky.social
“boys in the cul-de-sac shooting / rubber bands and rocks from PVC pipe guns // this is how I remember my childhood” — @tanajeanwelch.bsky.social
Highway 99: Jane Visits My Valley” @upittpress.bsky.social
HIGHWAY 99: JANE VISITS MY VALLEY. tiny teeth marks gnashing a hole in a paper fan purchased at the Fresno Fair. boys in the cul-de-sac shooting rubber bands and rocks from PVC pipe guns. this is how I remember my childhood: a ravenous static a static explosion, killer sharks floating belly up in the sun-bleached fiberglass pool, blood on the slide, the wasp whipping the back of a knee, the smell of a rattlesnake stripped of its skin, the metal barrette, the light socket when Jane was in the bathroom and my mother told me to leave Jane, go back to the husband in Boston, because “You are not a lesbian,” I didn’t remind my mother of her own infidelity: the mother-daughter “shopping trips,” to meet her lovers in San Francisco. I didn’t say: “I never said I was a lesbian.” there was only rubble, Jane bending to pick out a scrap of painted shirt as if it were soiled ivory from a grand piano, possessed of us both, and ruined now. Tana Jean Welch.
February 26, 2025 at 12:08 PM
tanajeanwelch.bsky.social
Just want to give a shout-out to Jhon Gonzalez! His Latin dance classes on Apple Fitness make me so happy. Each time I do one, I feel like the day, the week (dare I say year) is actually going to be ok. Anyone else a fan of this fun, happy, loving dancing man?
January 9, 2025 at 9:18 PM
Reposted by Tana Jean Welch
simeonberry.bsky.social
“I would’ve told you // I should but don’t / regret trying to OD on my mother’s heart pills // at age 16. I slept five days straight and it was absolutely / fabulous.” — @tanajeanwelch.bsky.social, “Letter to Those Who Wanted Me”
LETTER TO THOSE WHO WANTED ME to choose truth over dare. Self-disclose for once. Give anything, a barbed fluke, a chain tongue of a buckle, enough for them to claim, I know her. She is mine. Me. Always opting to kiss the cis girl, never holding fast. Tagging her lips as if a hot pot, hardly a blink. Just enough to satisfy the dare, the boy forever asking me to strip and streak even though my deft undress-dress celerity—perfected in junior high locker rooms—long ago evolved into a moonlit self-evasion, polished in pretense. But no one wants to be left suffocating in the polluted orchards of this valley: the earth everywhere brown and aching. So, older now, I long to unmoor myself, disassemble my semblance, to imagine I never left Jess Johnson’s game room without answering questions about ejaculations, virginity mislaid, sexual partners, and other regrets. I would’ve told you I’d never fake an orgasm. I would’ve shared the stale story about the back seat of somebody’s mother’s Camry. Spectators sneering round the windows. I would’ve told you how many sexual partners: enough, and the only celebrity crush I’ve ever had—Frank O’Hara. Odd, but true. Because starseeds, because a brittle desire to land. Because Alice Neel painted his portrait not once, but twice. Because the body is a place in which the city squats and tarries. Because I’ve never faked an orgasm—except when drunk. I would’ve told you I should but don’t regret trying to OD on my mother’s heart pills at age 16. I slept five days straight and it was absolutely fabulous. I would’ve said Frank O’Hara. Because he “had so much grace, that man, even through all the delirium and agony.” Because sex is a common denominator. Because humans do things like release all the British birds cited in Shakespeare into Central Park. Because you wanted the truth is I would’ve liked to kiss her harder. Longer. To splay myself agape. To open in slow motion everything a body has to offer. Hers. Mine. Middled bare in the coed dare circle—a cadaver peeled and pinned—authenticating the thrust and gut inside us all. Tana Jean Welch.
December 24, 2024 at 2:00 PM
tanajeanwelch.bsky.social
Poems at the end of the year! Thank you to the multi-talented Rebecca Hazelton for including one of mine. lithub.com/49-contempor...
50 Contemporary Poets on the Best Poems they Read in 2024
In the sea of endless year-end lists, poetry often seems to get sidelined, or forgotten—or maybe the critics and listmakers just aren’t reading enough poetry in the first place. Which made me…
lithub.com
December 18, 2024 at 10:18 PM
Reposted by Tana Jean Welch
dionnewarwick.bsky.social
Me every time a new person is announced on that man’s team.
November 15, 2024 at 4:41 AM
tanajeanwelch.bsky.social
With election day upon us, I wanted to offer hope for a better future by sharing one of my favorite artists, Firelei Báez. Drawing from and destabilizing the past, Baez presents new possibilities for the future. tanajeanwelch.com/news/2024/11/4/firelei-bez-on-imagining-positive-possible-futures
November 4, 2024 at 5:23 PM