Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪

@neonpajamas

tiny poems & strange movies // 🚫🤖 // EIC at @pizamapress.bsky.social // chapbook soon with @gasherpress.bsky.social // writing prompt every Sunday via Substack (neonpajamas)

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Bluesky

Ist das dein Profil?Übernimm es — dann gehört dir neonpajamas.dirty.social.Profil übernehmen

Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪@neonpajamas· 24d

some notes

Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪@neonpajamas· 25d

today's poem + prompt by @artfulherring.bsky.social is perfect for #smallpoemsunday cc: @tomsnarsky.bsky.social

At the Waystation

When I licked yellow
lilies, the monarch
mocked my tongue.

Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪@neonpajamas· 26d

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read this wonderful poetry collection

Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪@neonpajamas· 26d

Mikko Harvey

Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪@neonpajamas· 29d

I love both of my children equally @pizamapress.bsky.social

Split / Game of Little Deaths by Réka Nyitrai

Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪@neonpajamas· 29d

Printers Row Offsite! Stacked lineup @robertkloss.bsky.social / @kathleenmrooney.bsky.social / @timothymoore.bsky.social / @augstone.bsky.social / @maudlinhouse.bsky.social / @alwayscrashing.bsky.social

Elastic Arts on Saturday, September 12, doors at 7, readings at 8, hosted by Maudlin House, Long Day Press, and Always Crashing

Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪@neonpajamas· Jul 14

Lily Hoang

POST SCRIPT

As the fairy tale goes, it is the Rat who crosses the threshold of the Great Race first.
And then the Ox.
And then the Tiger.
And then the Rabbit
And then the Dragon.
And then the Snake.
And then the Horse.
And then the Goat.
And then the Monkey.
And then the Rooster.
And then the Dog.
And then—finally—the Pig.

Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪@neonpajamas· Jul 14

reading at the beach >

Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪@neonpajamas· Jul 12

Danika Stegeman

Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪@neonpajamas· Jul 12

80 weeks of poems & free writing prompts today's is courtesy of @danikastegeman.bsky.social neonpajamas.substack.com/p/080-poem-p...

Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪@neonpajamas· Jul 11

walked 14 miles in the last two days

Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪@neonpajamas· Jul 11

brought these six books with me on my trip

let the world have you by Mikko Harvey, Ventriloquism by Prathna Lor, A Bestiary by Lily Hoang, Light Boxes by Shane Jones, The Babysitter at Rest by Jen George, Wild Milk by Sabrina Orah Mark

Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪@neonpajamas· Jul 10

an odd triple feature while on an eight hour flight

Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪@neonpajamas· Jul 9

hell yeah

new issue of Oyez Review, out July 10 (physical and digital)

Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪@neonpajamas· Jul 8

mood today

illustration by Skinkeape aka Marianne Gretteberg Engedal, a person covered in cacti reading a book

Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪@neonpajamas· Jul 8

Sarah Jean Grimm @sarahjgrimm.bsky.social

PEP TALK

Buy yourself some flowers, damn it.
Wear whatever you'd wear to check the mail.
You came into this world with six fontanelles, no ideas.
The future buffered like a mobile over your soft head.
Now you keep several plants alive at once.
You are a good professional.

Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪@neonpajamas· Jul 7

TONIGHT

Sabr Tooth Tiger x Dodo Eraser

Madeline Blair / Travis Shosa / Ben Niespodiany / Julian Martinez / Bobby Vanecko / Johannah Simon / + open mic

Chiqueolatte Chicago / 2643 N. Milwaukee Ave / July 7 / 6:30pm doors / 7:00pm start

Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪@neonpajamas· Jul 7

UNCLE TIME is coming soon! I’m really proud of this collection of surreal prose poems & I hope you’re able to grab a copy. I can’t thank @gasherpress.bsky.social enough for selecting this as the 2025 chapbook prize winner. I still can't wrap my head around it. www.gasherpress.com/product-page...

cover of Uncle Time by Benjamin Niespodziany, 2025 poetry chapbook prize winner

For release in October 2026
Pre-Order
Description: Uncle Time is a collection of surrealist vignettes loosely inspired by Niespodziany’s upbringing in Nowhere, Indiana. Told through a series of narrative prose poems and micro snapshots, this chapbook taps into childhood, both real (his own seizures, his mother’s cancer, his uncle’s death) and imagined (his father eating a phone, his grandfather living in a clock, his mother keeping her knee caps in a jar). Uncle Time is inspired by the harrowing yet magical prose of Swiss author Aglaja Veteranyi, the minimalist visual poetry of Ohioan Barton Smock, and the domestic surrealism of Norwegian writer Gro Dahle. Playful and absurd yet devastating and bleak; a children’s book for adults or a cartoon not meant for kids.

Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪@neonpajamas· Jul 7

Bianca Casady

Moonlit
the pale wood
of her silent
praying hands

talking to God
mouth stitched by death
the void is filled with angels
whether we sense them or not

Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪@neonpajamas· Jul 6

three more work days before paradise

Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪@neonpajamas· Jul 6

Jacob Schepers @jacobschepers.bsky.social

Taxonomy

When I open my mouth, Linnaeus, all you hear is muffled.

Blah Blah Blah.

When I open your mouth, you lion, I stick my head right in there.

Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪@neonpajamas· Jul 5

Ivor Cutler

THE NATURAL HEIGHT OF CLOUD

The natural height of cloud is a distance neither too high nor too low. I played a film of rain backwards and noticed that it returned to cloud at a natural height, thus affirming my contention. I then played a film of smoke backwards. Characteristically, it vanished down the chimney.

Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪@neonpajamas· Jul 5

back on my bullshit (writing poems using LinkedIn language)

Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪@neonpajamas· Jul 5

Paul Cunningham

“TERRARIALANTERN”

“As sunlight and ashes I'll meet you again.”
— Will Cookson

the terrarialantern reveals
what will flutter and what will die
butterflies have often come to my side
when what should be recognizable is no
longer shown no longer conceivable to humans
a gold gossamer barrel of elegant horrors
wings and wings
purple silk plain-weave roses
and green silk velvet leaves
the old ghosts still hover glowing
in the expanse of a light left on
you can see it for miles:
wings and wings and wings and wings

Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪@neonpajamas· Jul 5

a previously unreleased poem (and a free writing prompt) inspired by a dress full of live butterflies @p-cunning.bsky.social neonpajamas.substack.com/p/079-poem-p...

Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪@neonpajamas· Jul 4

🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

Distant Patriotic Crop Top
America is
a sea

of fake smoke
bombs, calmer

than a magician
getting frisked by police.

America
is a sunburnt

tongue.
A jungle

in the trunk
of a limo.

A tumbler
full of dew.

Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪@neonpajamas· Jul 4

Happy Fourth of July 🇺🇸

Patriotism

As they approach him
and prepare to eat him alive
he covers himself
in the American flag
as if that will help.

Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪@neonpajamas· Jul 4

P. Scott Cunningham @cunningpscott.bsky.social / @autumnhouse.org

Ode to Humidity

What am I if not what happens
when I try to run away?

Water falls out of me like
an opinion. I'm like a screen
door banging between two rivers.

Dear air, what's inside me
you're so desperate to take?

I put on the Atlantic like a sweater.
My head bobs on the surface
of a lake I'm named after.

Where do I belong?
My head asks. My body
exasperated, answers.

Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪@neonpajamas· Jul 3

halfway through a second draft

Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪@neonpajamas· Jul 3

György Pálfi deserves so much more love. I've seen all of these except Hen, which isn't on streaming yet. Some of the strangest, most surreal movies you'll ever see.