Todd Dillard

my issue of Threepenny is here! here’s my poem “Present Tense,” I would love for you to give it a read! “I know this so loudly I don’t hear, at first, my father’s silence.”

lately everything I see on the news reminds me of how there are no bad reviews for the terrible parachute

second-most* wonderful benefit of having regular readers of your drafts is when you get the feedback that you can go a little further in some part, it shows both honest engagement and trust in your own skill. always wonderful to get. *readers not running away and screaming is the most wonderful

my dermatologist has some weird name that includes “cancer center” which is boring to know EXCEPT the AI that summarizes my voicemails into preview text just informed me “Bruno Mars getting cancer forwarded your prescription to CVS”

Did you have a similar poster in your classroom? You may notice some slight differences from the original.... Get it on a t-shirt, hoodie or Mug... bollocks.wales/collections/...

poem that’s an alphabet banner from a pre-k classroom but it’s for language lovers and starts with things like “arugula” and “botched” and “Cheshire” and ends with stuff like “yeoman” and “zephyr”

“What if we made a children’s tale for adults” but what if you made a good, new movie

my cat has figured out if she screams in my room when it’s dark out I will kick her out but if she screams outside my room while it’s dark out I will make sure she’s ok at which point I’m already up so I might as well feed and pet her 😪

Catapult shuttering and BioWare getting axed is Not Great for my specific demographic of nerd who likes writing that is good

This chapbook is full of bangers

art

there’s no quick path to writing success. there’s no long path either.

an odd thing that has increased recently is the number of people asking me to do all sorts of writer/editor-related work for them, but for free, and also I have no idea who they are

i love writing. i love how you can say something like 'grief is a clawfoot bathtub full of rubber ducks' and then you can write about laying down in it, about the sad chorus that leaks from you just existing in a certain, specific way.

at the Y and a parent just warned the swim instructor that her child loves bellybuttons and might try to touch hers

it's always "impress and editor with these cover letter tips" and never "impress an editor by singing the entirety of 'Part of That World' in a guttural Johnny Cash basso profundo after doing a keg stand in an Arby's parking lot"

did you listen to the wind today? no? then you probably won’t get an award

I love classical music but so much of opera sounds like “I am but a wee orchid taking an overcrowded southbound 4 train during rush hour to my job at the cheese rind factory” to me

poems used to be like "Fall's big boot / stubs out flowers / as oaks catch fire" but now they're like "at the season theme park where i work as Fall Incarnate i chase down coworkers in flower costumes and beat them" and the first line is like "with a piece of foam / shaped like a French baguette"

Here's one of my favorite poems from my new MS of ekphrastic prose poems (this one appeared in @bulbregion.bsky.social) AND here's a link to the animation that inspired it: 35mm.online/en/vod/anima...

Holy shit.

This will be a thread of essays I recommend to students in my creative nonfiction workshop: