Boycott Black Friday!
I can feel the fungi muching on my brain
General News
It’s after 10AM on Monday. I didn’t prepare anything for this week. Idk. Here’s a list of things that might be interesting: let’s see those files, the worst woman in the world might actually not be the worst, and PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE TELL YOUR MEMBERS OF CONGRESS TO STOP THE HUD “NOFO” CHANGES BEFORE JANUARY 14, 2026. That’s all I got idk.
Personal News
Not much to report on these days other than the fact that I registered for the Chicago Marathon next year. I’ll share more details as we get closer to training. In the meantime, I ran 3.5 miles with some comrades yesterday morning and it went well. All gas, no breaks. “I’m training for a marathon,” a sentence uttered by the deranged and masochistic. I’m still waiting for 2 poems of mine to be featured in a literary journal that sent me my acceptance one whole year ago. Lmao. I submitted to their “2024-2025” category. They came back stating that they’d appear in “one of our next three issues over the coming year” in March. I was cool with this until, in June, they hit me with, “we’ll have them in our 2026 issue.” Okay? When I asked about the delay, they gave me some weird answer that made me resent graduate students more than I already do and then said that the poems would appear in their Spring 2026 print issue in April. This is the only publication news that I have, other than a wildly delayed announcement of the release of this anthology, which has a poem of mine in it.
Speaking of my creative work, I did some calculations over the weekend to discover that, over the course of the past decade, I have published my work across 35 different publications, totaling 45 individual creative pieces published. 36 and 47 if you count the forthcoming pieces in that spring 2026 issue of [redacted]. Truthfully, I started submitting my creative work in 2015, which was during my second semester of Freshman year at the University of North Texas. Nothing I submitted for publication in those first 3 years was accepted anywhere. Probably because they sucked! I’d share my earlier work, but they’re under my dead-name. The reason I calculated my publications is because I was doing some archival record-keeping of my published work, in the event that someone might want to publish a “collected works” posthumously. They should know that I have work under another name. However, it’s really inspiring to see that I was rejected by certain publications in 2018 which accepted my work the next year, and I received rejections from publications that would later send acceptances. I think that this speaks to my boneheaded persistence and deeply held belief that I’m supposed to be a published writer. And my commitment to the craft, of course. Natural talent is cheap without commitment and refinement.
Not to “sub-tweet” about a comrade in the DSA chapter here, but…I need to get this off my chest. There was an evening when I was out with my comrades when someone referred to Some Guy as “The Literary Guy of DSA” and I felt a competitive spirit flicker. Look, if anyone is “The Literary Guy of DSA,” it’s going to be me. I don’t care about your “reading list” and “book clubs.” I have a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing with a concentration in Poetry. Oh, you’ve read the Great American Classics? That’s cool, I’ve literally published work in 35 different literary magazines, journals, and anthologies. I code and run my own online literary journal. I’ve been a guest reader, guest editor, assistant editor, and staff editor for multiple publications. I currently serve as an assistant editor on a special project with Sundress Publications, which is a brief transition before I become sole editor of the special project. You can find me in the official Poets & Writers Directory. They must have amnesia, they forgot that I’m him.
Poetry
I’m a dog, I’m biting the fart bubbles in the bath. Okay, that’s it! That’s this week’s poem!
For the past month and a half, I’ve been reading Ursula K. Le Guin’s 1985 novel, Always Coming Home. If you don’t know who Ursula K. Le Guin is or if you haven’t even read her work, you’re missing out. I read The Dispossessed and Left Hand of Darkness a few years ago and they rock. Enough said. If you consider yourself a leftist and/or even “a literary guy,” you really do need to read her work. Anyway, Always Coming Home is a sick experimental novel that’s Tolkien-esque in its anthropological approach to her utopian world. Here’s a poem from it. As I work through this novel, I will return to share some of the poems within. It’s really quite fascinating.
