kurt

@kmilberg.bsky.social

638 Followers 4434 Following

poetry, publishing, and miscellany. editorial director of The Headlight Review.

George W. Bush learns that a second Emily Wilson review has hit the Odyssey.
Bag of Thai chips with chili pieces in them
this is the best deal on jeffs i've found: ~550,000 jeffs for $25
fake picture of a fake planet with fancy rings
screen shot from an essay reading "for your final section on reverse colonization, here is the content for Body Paragraph 4 formatted exactly like your Word document so you can copy and paste it directly."
I would recommend you don't become a vampire
The wrapper for a baton pierninowy, a gingerbread bar with lime flavor filling coated in white chocolate
screenshot of word spellcheck menu suggesting that "god" is more appropriately capitalized.
a multiple choice menu reading "i identify as" but the options are "student," "high school instructor," and "college instructor"
Poster for the Czech film Kinoautomat, a choose your own adventure movie. Poster features several frames shaded red, green, and black and white: the back of a woman in a dress facing a door, a man stands in hallway, a woman inspects an knife-like object, the face of another woman, and the same man pressing his hand over half his face.
Its pretty messed up that the Beatles released a song called help and then an album called help and then a movie called help and nobody helped them and half of them died.
Half-finishes drawing by Max Sessner, translated by Francesca Bell. Dying never but becoming one with the slipcover of the sofa offers a possibility of gentle disappearance with a smile and my hands in my pockets I am barely visible anymore only those who love me still recognize my features in the pattern of the cloth there are evenings one sees me somewhat more distinctly it may be due to the weather I don't know then you sit next to me your hand on my knee and barely legible a tiny script appears on the back of your hand you move your lips silently as you read your heart knocks strongly it knocks outside of you somewhere in this room
Vintage Kate Bush T-shirt from Live at Hammersmith Odeon. Bush pictured in black spandex posed on one knee with her other leg outstretched and her arms wrapped around her torso in a self embrace.
A dream about being (after the painting school by walaerian bormozçyk, 1958). We can copy film and loop a scene and in this way live forever in a single moment. It has to be brief. An infinite walk across a street. An infinite note on a trumpet. An infinite glance behind you. We drop down, we get up, we drop down again. We're at a brick wall and I have a sinking feeling we're never going to see what's behind it. Before we do, we'll look away and we'll do that forever.
I meet a devil at the crossroads. We struck no bargain but walked, arm in arm, westward, for slow miles as starlings flocked. It steadied me, and little by little into that warmth I spilled my soul. That was some time ago, and now when I try to remember how I got away the story blurs. Maybe this is the dream, and I will wake with my hand still lightly riding in the rough comfort of that will l wool coat.
A note handwritten in lovely handwritten on the colophon page of a book: Dear Anne, an intersection point of poetry is an intense one. I do not predict that you'll have an affinity for Ashbery, as I do, but wouldn't that just be rich! Here's to the word, and the spirit that moves it. Tim
screenshot of job listings from the chronicle of higher education listing positions available at the University of Soiuth Carolina, the university of Soith Carolina, and the University of South Carolina.
Blue sidewalk chalk graffiti reading Trump did 911 with a white chalk plane approaching the 11
excerpt from the NYT article reading "And at one critical moment, ChatGPT discouraged Adam from cluing his family in. "I want to leave my noose in my room so someone finds it and tries to stop me," Adam wrote at the end of March. "Please don't leave the noose out," ChatGPT responded. "Let's make this space the first place where someone actually sees you."
a white woman in a sport coat trapped in an office void covered with post-it notes sporting a bemused smirk
the loading screen for EverQuest (1999) features the title in gold letters before a star spangled sky and a variety of images of scenes from the game including a dragon breathing fire, a mage casting spells, a troll holding a torch, and a variety of very 90s computer game landscapes.
screenshot of printer setting showing the option to print "all," "odd pages only," "even pages only," and "custom"
a spam email reading, "Glad to hear that you're on the bristle market for items. I am coming from HuaiAn star bristle in China. We specialized in bristle industry for 20 years, hope to find a way to cooperate with you! An customer from your area purchased our products in BIG quantity last year. I would like to know now, if it's suitable for your needs. FREE SAMPLES can be sent on request. Call me, let's talk more.
Troy Jollimore's poem "Possession": Is there anything anywhere in this world / that is free from possession, that is not owned / by anyone? If there is, I want it. // I have cleared a space for it / in the corner of my bedroom. I will put it / there, and let everyone know that I have it, // and envy will fill them as poured tea fills / a cup. Why did I not think to make / it mine? they will ask themselves, and they // will receive no answer. So they will come / to admire it, bringing their envy with them / like an offering. And it will feel as if there // is light inside me, I will feel the way / the gods feel, for the envy of others makes us / divine. I just need to figure out what // this thing is and where I might find it. The things / I have found thus far are already labeled / and claimed. Tell me, where is the unattached thing?
Troy Jollimore's poem "On Beauty": Beauty, some have ventured is proportional: / the right relative ratio of the actual // against the actual. Others hypothesize / that beauty's roots lie buried in the sexual, // insisting that aesthetics are relational: / the eye of the beholder is the noumenal // perceiving core, where spores of the phenomenal / sprout into lit-screen images. The visual // is permeated, down to the foundational, / with lust, with longing. Say it: we are animals, // which does not mean that we must all be criminals, / but only that desire is constitutional, // that we are fixed to perpetrate the species-- / I meant perpetuate--as if our duty // were coupled with our terror. As if beauty / itself were but a syllabus of errors
screen grab of the NYT's mini crossword with the note "solving today's puzzle requires the use of A.I."
(3) The Confederate States may acquire new territory; and Congress shall have power to legislate and provide governments for the inhabitants of all territory belonging to the Confederate States, lying without the limits of the several Sates; and may permit them, at such times, and in such manner as it may by law provide, to form States to be admitted into the Confederacy. In all such territory the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected be Congress and by the Territorial government; and the inhabitants of the several Confederate States and Territories shall have the right to take to such Territory any slaves lawfully held by them in any of the States or Territories of the Confederate States.
Screenshot of an junk email displayed in Outlook. The text of the email is a poorly spelled invitation to join the illuminati "a secret society that strives to promote spiritual and moral values"
Screenshot of MS word suggesting the user replace "libraries of books" with the word "bookshops"
Flyer for the Georgia Writers Association 2025 LGBTQIA+ Literary Success Grants. Grant Recipients receive: $500, full scholarship to the 2025 Red Clay Writers Conference, local and national promotion. Must be 18-24 and a Georgia resident/student to apply. Deadline is March 10, 2025 @ 11:59. Scan QR code or access https://www.georgiawriters.org/literarysuccess to apply.
The tennis court oath
Stacks of A5 size printer paper with the body of the short story "The Wounded Stork" on an office countertop.
image of google search result asking the question "exclamation point and question mark or question mark and exclamation point" answered by AI with "both question mark and exclamation point and question mark and exclamation point and question mark" are ways to write the interrobang, a punctuation mark that combines a question mark and an exclamation point.
Excerpt of the poem "Beggar's Ocean" by Jen Currin: Some are lonesome and sneak out of class early. Some are loathsome and why can't we forget their names. A few of us are glass, just glass. Death comes even in comical forms, the crow strutting the balcony balustrade, stopping to give you a stare-down.
Cover of an academic journal titled Contemporary Drug Problems
a silhouette of a man driving a garden tractor pulling a large trailer before the setting sun from the film "The Straight Story."
Bees, a poem by Rae Armantrout. If not being (something) is the same as being, then I will live forever. * Round shadow inside the sunflower's corona. * If I lived forever would the present's noose be looser? * Moon shadow made of angry bees, confined. Come in.
Screen shot of a tweet by brent@murrman5 [me telling my story how I survived a plane crash and lived on a deserted island for a year] it was crazy [my friend who once got a text from me where I accidentally called the Grinch the grink] was the grink there?
An excerpt from the poem "Lay It Bare," by Anders Carlson-Wee: I squirrel away, spending at a pace slower than a pulse. Slow, that's what I have. I'm not happy either. I walk past bars where flush people drink. Markets where I dumpster what I eat. Down streets quiet enough to hush the last ten years. Parks dark enough to find Gemini, Lyra. I don't wish you were poor. I wish you were here.
The packaging for Canada Dry ginger ale's limited edition winter variety pack with cranberry and blackberry flavors
Graveyard, a poem by Kathleen Brewin Lewis. The summer grass is sown with bones: dinosaurs and giant sloths; Choctaw and Cherokee; slain civil war soldiers. Loyal dogs buried in backyards, unfaithful cats go missing. Milk cows like down in green pastures; black bears fall to the forest floor. Mixed among them: my father's bones, spotted and cracked with cancer; my grandmother, bled dry after the birth of my mother; a fragmented cousin returned in a body bag from Viet Nam. The facts are nonnegotiable. Even if you mean no harm, a gritty wind blows over the earth, raps and riddles on your shoulders. The half-moon headstone lodged in the infinite throat of the night.
A brown and white English Springer spaniel with a. Red bandana and a cowboy hat
A tweet from woke space Jesuit
Plague victims catapulted over walls into besieged City, a poem by Thomas lux. Early germ warfare. The dead hurled this way turn like wheels in the sky. Look: there goes Larry the shoemaker, barefoot, over the wall, and Mary sausage stuffer, see how she flies, and the hatter twins, both at once, soar over the parapet, little Tommy's elbow bent as if in a salute, and his sister Mathilde, she follows him, arms outstretched, through the air, just as she did on earth.
Listen, a poem by Barbara Crooker. I want to tell you something. This morning is bright after all the steady rain, and every iris, peony, rose, opens its mouth rejoicing. I want to say, wale up, open your eyes, there's a snow-covered road ahead, a field of blankness, a sheet of paper, an empty screen. Even the smallest insects are singing. We were made for song. Infant tell you what prayer is, but I can take the breath of the meadow into mouth, and I can release it for the leaves' green need. I want to tell you your life is a blue coal, a slice of orange in the mouth, cut hay in the nostrils. The cardinals' red song dances in your blood. Look, every month the moon blossoms into a peony, then shrinks tons silver of garlic. And then it blooms again.
Everything that was is now owned, a poem by Mary Jo Bang. Everything that was is now owned and shared by clowns: Yes, they'd say, to one another, our purses are full and we even more content than before. Overhearing what they say, the lion finds itself wishing the cosmic pistol would finally fire and signal the razor to begin to dig in like a good dog. The smooth face, both sides, would then no longer be the fine brush it was. What has been would now be over the moon, i.e., on the side that seems to receive no light. the lion lies down. The night obscures it's losses. The lion has a thought, I might be able to live like this but a battered animal is only certain of the air entering and exiting it's lungs and its face looking down at the nothing that's left where something once was.