Seneca Basoalto

{Soto}- Published poet and creative writer with 24+ years of experience

[senecabasoalto]

Long time, no post

I’ve been MIA for awhile due to moving past being on tumblr.

But so many of you have provided me so much support that I wanted to let you know there are many other places to view my writing and all of my MANY recent publications in places like 

NAILED Magazine

Terror House Magazine

Utterance Journal

Foliate Oak

North of Oxford

Breadcrumbs Magazine

Voice of Eve (Pgs. 104-109)

The Glasgow Review of Books

and you can follow me at the below links 

https://www.facebook.com/seneca.l.basoalto

https://senecabasoalto.com

https://www.instagram.com/soto.poetica

My new work has grown so much from my old work. I’m so glad that I have been continuously growing as a writer and not standing still doing the same shit over and over. 

At this time, I am working on a couple projects. I have recently (finally) completed my novella Kinfolk & Paper Maps - which is up for publication soon. Though right now we are in the editing process. So far all the critiques have gone well and reviews are saying that the theme and subject is written in such a way that it’s never been done before. So I am very proud of that.

I am also working on a book of Quarantine poetry. Only 12 pages long. I’ve had Coronavirus since the February but I didn’t know until March due to not having symptoms until I got bronchitis. But I am doing better now. 

I am also re-editing my last book fivethousandcancers because it felt incomplete to me and I am working to make it better so I can release it. It was meant to be released last year, but I moved over the summer. So now I’m in Charlotte, NC in case any of you locals want to get together and collab (or just hang out) once our lockdown is over. I’m always down for a drink!

Feel free to follow my other pages and I’ll follow back. Send me messages and talk to me too! 

Thanks!

[katrinnac]

Hildegard of Bingen

She breaks clean in your hand

Myth-whispers drizzling out,

So much effort, suppress her voice

-

Reorganize, retell, label her

Say she’s symptom, endemic culture

Her efforts at flight, directed by men

Her crash inevitable, defeat by men

A thousand years of voices burned

So she thinks she’s the first

-

Breasts and vaginas cause such fear

When they tell it like it is

-

Her word rushes along the marsh

Nothing cold in her

She drags rich loam behind

Blackened sunshine churning up

-

The ones before, a river running

The quietest liquid, akin to death

A dark pressure squeezing air

There echoes something I can’t make out

Who is she? She? She?

This might be what it says

-

All these years, and I still don’t know -

The pressure, rich loamy legacy,

Suppression be damned,

What shall I will into words?

-

@katrinnac

[laurepalmer]

The exterior of Windsor Castle has been decorated for the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.

[apoemaday]

Big Box Encounter

by Erika Meitner

My student sends letters to me with the lights turned low.   They feature intricate vocabulary, like soporific and ennui.  

Like intervening and kinetic and tumult. He strings words together like he’s following a difficult knitting pattern. He is both more

and less striking without a shirt on. I know this from the time I ran into him at Wal-Mart buying tiki torches and margarita mix

and, flustered, I studied the white floor tiles, the blue plastic shopping cart handle, while he told me something that turned

to white noise and I tried not to look at his beautiful terrible chest, the V-shaped wings of his chiseled hip-bones. I write him back.  

I tell him there are two horses outside my window and countless weeds.   I tell him that the train comes by every other hour and rattles the walls. 

But how to explain my obsession with destruction? Not self-immolation but more of a disintegration, slow, like Alka-Seltzer in water. Like sugar in water.

I dissolve. He writes enthralling. He writes epiphany and coffee machine.   He is working in an office, which might as well be outer space.  

I am in the mountains. The last time I worked in an office, he was ten.   I was a typewriter girl. I was a maternity-leave replacement for a fancy secretary. 

I helped sell ads at TV Guide. I was fucking a guy who lived in a curtain-free studio above a neon BAR sign on Ludlow Street, and all night we were bathed in pot smoke

and flickering electric pink light. Here, the sun goes down in the flame of an orange heat-wave moon. The train thrums and rattles the distance,

and I think of his chest with the rounded tattoo in one corner and my youth, the hollows of his hip-bones holding hard, big-box fluorescent light.

[aikaleegrave]

commission for @thermonous // find me on patreon!

[oldfarmhousefallfeatures]

“The Fog Horn Room Rhode Island (via #sarahirenemurphy@ig)

Look at this natural brick-

[like-fairy-tales]

By: Agata | windmilldreams

[the-bookshop]

Source.

[the-bookshop]

Source.

[charliewykes]

belly’s up (in the hill)

The dread grew compelling As a coyote’s howl let out For no particular reason From never-ending nightmares Always haunting him in bed. Shaking as he stammered down The stairs past the bridge Of his personally prescribed Whiskey shot to keep demons From deserted highland hills To the horse-ridden nature At the foothill near the bay Regardless of any bad news From what the doc had to say As he choked down the bottle Leaving enough in order to save What he could finish another day

[senecabasoalto]

I’ve been MIA lately because I have been diligently working on my manuscript for a contest I want to enter. I have so much work to do so don’t expect much work from me to be posted in the upcoming weeks. I’ll be more active again mid February!

Thanks!

[senecabasoalto]

Protect the Singer

Protect the singer; his cigarettes at 9pm off the desert interstate            Truckstop headlights set fire to dust in his itching chin scruff, Thick smoke, rough love, goosebumps lost from their jean jacket            I step away for candy as you call me a sour patch kid Sugar coated and stripping the buds on your tongue You complete the cancer and follow me through the store            A Subway sandwich scent streaming through every aisle, Echoes of truckers in showers and fresh brewed bad coffee            You slip your hand up my dress between the candy And the corn nuts – pressing your body against mine Teeth biting my ear, sniffing the Tocca in my hair            You lose sight of the public and only see desire, Thick thighs, rough knees, goosebumps under black dresses            I cannot step away from you, you bury me in your chest As a manager haircut bitch shames you for being inappropriate, You roll your baby blues and throw money across the empty counter            Staggering away towards the rental Murano, I pop the top on a Mexican coke while you shove me into the driver seat            Telling me to take us somewhere you can grope me in peace But you wait for no man, no drive, no peace, and those hands wander            As you unzip your pants expecting everything to be handed to you.

Seneca Basoalto

[love]

by Evan Holm

[hopelessheavens-deactivated2020]

there’s an inkblot on my wrist that looks just like you. it’s smeared and smudged and completely drawn in blue. of words I cannot speak and feelings I cannot fathom. that end up in scribbles across the paper. where a hundred metaphors were scrapped for something better. but no words could every completely encompass the wonder we are when we’re together.

[winetruth]

For MAD and the boys like him

Cigarettes at midnight

Cars passing on the interstate

I wonder where they’re all going but not for long

My exit greets me with a solemn nod and I take it

Meeting him in a parking lot at 10pm

He has long legs and calloused hands

He wears smiles and hats and sometimes boots

But he always takes them all off within an hour of us meeting

We kiss and we touch

Sometimes both at the same time

Sometimes just to fill the silence that’s always on our lips

I wonder how many other girls he takes for drives

But not for long because the thought chokes my sentiment mad and makes me want to drink in honor of blondes with blue eyes and my endless desire to enchant them

-a.a.

[aisdead]

[bcourchaine]

What a way to go.

[behindthelastdoor]

Poem 806

He is done by dawn His black handiwork still wet upon the forest And the clouds, he has ground Into a fine gray mist And scattered across the horizon It is quixotic and arbitrary— An adolescent art form He will be a father soon— And wear a white-tipped crown Above his cold and glittering eyes Furious for a baby that he will never know —Young Man Winter