D.W. Baker

@lowermelody

submerging poet, dad, editor ~ place, bodies, belonging, the end of the world ~ masthead @VariantLit.bsky.social @PhillyChapbook.bsky.social ~ he/him ~ 🪐💀🏳️‍🌈🍃

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D.W. Baker@lowermelody· 29d

The third section of "Traversing Floodwaters In Helios' Cup," one of my linked tanka experiments, recently published in @cincinnatireview.bsky.social's miCRo series

III. In

interior castle
intentional halo
insulating field
interfaith geometry
interdimensional fluid

D.W. Baker@lowermelody· Jul 11

Have started printing out all my digital review copies of shorter works. Also appreciate receiving print copies of longer works much more than before... The marginalia process just gets much better results than typing notes on a screen, for me at least

a lap desk with a printed copy of Atropa Belladonna Coursing Through My Veins by Sudikshaa Amar

D.W. Baker@lowermelody· Jul 8

My son just asked if I have ever played chess, which gave me occasion to bring out this artifact of my childhood in Pittsburgh. I had a 1200+ rating and spent many a Saturday on the tournament circuit before giving it up in middle school.

a trophy, shaped like a knight wearing a crown, labeled "1st place - 2000 - 27th annual public library chess tournament"

D.W. Baker@lowermelody· Jul 8

Here, translation choices as an example of Simic's "endless tinkering" -- an exercise in combinatoric possibility using one of the smallest canonical forms of verse: www.bopsecrets.org/gateway/pass...

Matsuo Basho: Frog Haiku

(thirty-two translations and one commentary)

D.W. Baker@lowermelody· Jul 8

The final paragraph of my latest review, "The Hologram and the Hunted: on FOLLOW THIS BLOOD TO FIND A DEAD THING by Charles K. Carter" (Ferbwood Press: 2026), published by @variantlit.bsky.social

Regardless of which illusion is targeted, Carter’s work points continually towards acceptance: of self and others; of the natural world’s dangerous beauty; of the ugly necessities of survival. As the speaker of “Interloper” states: “I want to find a way to belong in this wilderness. / Even if it is to feed its beasts of prey” (39). In an increasingly holographic world—social media feeds, manufactured consent in mass media, unrealistic pornography, AI-generated facsimiles of human creativity, and more—work such as Follow This Blood to Find a Dead Thing is a welcome reminder that authentic vulnerability’s reward is worth the risk.

D.W. Baker@lowermelody· Jun 28

"Meteorite," a short poem featured in my microchapbook LOVE'S THE BURNING BOY (@fifthwheelpress.bsky.social pride series 2026), was first published & nominated for Best of the Net by @identitytheory.bsky.social

Meteorite

You are both:

the impact;

the celestial space
created on earth
once

everything in
the crater
burns away.

D.W. Baker@lowermelody· Jun 28

as a short form enthusiast, here is one of my favorite takes on tiny poems, from Charles Simic's 2013 interview with Granta

CS: Of all the things ever said about poetry, the axiom that less is more has made the biggest and the most lasting impression on me. I have written many short poems in my life, except ‘written’ is not the right word to describe how they came into existence. Since it’s not possible to sit down and write an eight-line poem that’ll be vast for its size, these poems are assembled over a long period of time from words and images floating in my head. A brief poem intended to capture the imagination of the reader requires endless tinkering to get all its parts right.

D.W. Baker@lowermelody· Jun 21

Happy Solstice ☀️ a snippet from my "Solstice Hymn," published last year in Amethyst Review

May the longest day
stretch possibility
May the shortest life
stimulate urgency

D.W. Baker@lowermelody· Jun 20

Celebrating father's day early since I'm working overtime tomorrow. My son (6) drew this picture of us playing Pokemon cards together. My heart is full!

D.W. Baker@lowermelody· Jun 15

from the second part of my essay-in-halves, "Sonic Pressure and the Lexical Poem," published last fall in @version9magazine.bsky.social

D.W. Baker@lowermelody· Jun 6

"Proverbs 20:27," one of the golden shovels in my new chapbook, LOVE'S THE BURNING BOY (@fifthwheelpress.bsky.social), was first published in @turningleafjournal.bsky.social in 2024.

Proverbs 20:27 I was nine, ten? when the ruinous edifices of human language molded my spirit into altared forms. It is rote entanglement, the serpent’s apple: my lamp bears its own witness. Of course, sixteen was the age I defied the Lord of red letters, searching instead for colors every me includes: the inmost hue, of which I am part.

D.W. Baker@lowermelody· Jun 3

Here is the opening paragraph of my latest review, up today at @phillychapbook.bsky.social: "The Lines of Landscape: on THE CATASTROPHES by Marie Scarles" (2025: @finishinglinepress.bsky.social)

Readers of The Catastrophes, a chapbook of poems which revolve around the place and space of regional Connecticut, will frequently encounter a satisfying blend of painterly imagism, documentarian fidelity, and subtly resonant use of ordinary language. Over the course of 24 poems, poet Marie Scarles uses this toolbox not only to represent actual landscapes on the page, but also to explore how their constraints, affordances, and incentives can be understood as lines which shape the course of human lives.

D.W. Baker@lowermelody· Jun 2

My new (micro)chapbook, LOVE'S THE BURNING BOY, part of the @fifthwheelpress.bsky.social inaugural pride series, is titled after the last line of Elizabeth Bishop's "Casabianca." These poems are instruments of self-confidence that helped me begin to publish my work. Price starts at $0

D.W. Baker@lowermelody· May 31

@janehuffman.bsky.social's contest-winning poem in Midway Journal. One of my favorite contemporary poets for her work with sound and repetition.

Beauty is made my fear

Jane Huffman April 15, 2026

A few notes on a misprinted poem by Laura Jensen

What slips from me is what
slips from me. Slippage
is the hinge on which my life

hinges. When the text
emerges with a mark missing,
I kiss it. The error ablates

the face I was making
when making it. Eros, a mistake.
When I faced it, I lost it.

When it slipped from me,
it slipped from me, and I let it
slip from me: errant tear.

D.W. Baker@lowermelody· May 28

Caught up on website maintenance today. I've published 19 poems so far in 2026, and have several to look forward to in these venues. Particularly excited to be part of the Cincinnati Review's miCRo series! dwbakerpoetry.com/poetry-publi...

forthcoming

three poems forthcoming in Apocalypse Confidential

one poem forthcoming in The Cincinnati Review

one poem forthcoming in Plague Circus Press

one poem forthcoming in Eulogy Press

one poem forthcoming in Antifa Lit Journal

D.W. Baker@lowermelody· May 28

I have a pair of biblical golden shovels in the summer 2026 issue of Union Spring Literary Review. Here is the first, "Proverbs 11:4," written in a form which foreshadows my more recent riverbed pieces

Proverbs 11:4
D. W. Baker

counting riches
nations do
but not

trees: profit
neutral in
side the

selfsame day
crucible of
gradual wrath

D.W. Baker@lowermelody· May 27

And now for some speculation: "Human/After," a contrapuntal formed of two microsonnets, published in the MOTHERBOARD anthology from @fifthwheelpress.bsky.social.

native language
common sense
solve the captcha
Turing test
fuzzy border
memory
present moment
you and me
truth and doubt
body’s taste
reference point
ask around
double-faced
private choice

networked brain
retrospect
common past
hypertext
broken down
photoreal
knowledge shroud
royal we
abdicate
species need
regicide
database
optic feed
public sight

D.W. Baker@lowermelody· May 19

Delighted to receive my gorgeous copy of Electric Pink's first print issue, dedicated entirely to musical golden shovels. One of my riverbed forms, "Transformed Stone," after Rage Against the Machine, is included.

electric pink
for language that lingers
ISSUE 1
musical golden shovels

D.W. Baker@lowermelody· Apr 19

A new Ekphrastic anthology, MURALS, is now available from Press Pause Press. First published by @thehooghlyreview.bsky.social & curated by @fbereaud.bsky.social, it features an international collection of public art & writing in response, including my "Microsonnet for the municipality sweepers"

A paperback copy of MURALS, a special issue of The Hooghly Review, curated by Francois Bereaud, now available in print from Press Pause Press

D.W. Baker@lowermelody· Apr 18

This got a far larger reaction than I expected. Relatable content, it would seem. Apropos of that, here is Bertolt Brecht's "Motto"

Motto

In the dark times,
will there also be singing?
Yes, there will be singing
about the dark times.

D.W. Baker@lowermelody· Mar 25

from the opening paragraph of my latest review, "Rhythm and Somatic Consciousness: on AUTOCARTOGRAPHIES by @evaalterpoet.bsky.social" (2025: Eulogy Press), published in Dodo Eraser. It was delightful to write about my favorite kind of verse: rare form delivering rare insight on the body.

Like many of the poems in Autocartographies (2025: Eulogy Press), Alter’s debut chapbook, “Balancing Rock” features prescribed syllable counts, limited punctuation, and use of blank space, choices that prompt readers to experience the poet’s concept of “rhythmed” awareness. By employing such experimental forms of rhythmic language to encounter, map, and re-integrate the dissociated aspects of an embodied self, the five sections of Autocartographies offer not only a vulnerable window into the world of the writer, but also a fascinating pairing of concept and procedure that readers might use to re-examine their own interior disunities.

D.W. Baker@lowermelody· Mar 23

Drop a movie that traumatized you as a kid... it was the mirror eyes that got me.

D.W. Baker@lowermelody· Mar 20

(e)laments is now available from @stonecorpse.com! This collaboration with @gr8earlofhell.bsky.social is available from the publisher in PDF (free!) and print ($7 + shipping). I will send you a signed copy with a bespoke, hand-written short-form poem for $15 (shipping included), DM me

Many copies of (e)laments, a chapbook with a collage cover featuring classical art with pink and blue hues, spread out on a wooden tabletop

“(e)laments is an experiment in the potential of the haibun, a Japanese form originated by 17th-century haiku master Bashō that utilizes the dynamism between two conversant parts––one verse, one prose. Baker and raum demonstrate what the haibun makes possible beyond its inherent juxtaposition: these poems’ halves illuminate another, in both form and content. As they interrogate the fluidity of body and identity (“i am a force which inundates & washes away”), often partaking in the kind of “self-erasure” T.A. Greathouse offers in their form, the “burning haibun” these poems are both whole and partial. (e)laments is a feat of simultaneity.”

Jane Huffman, author of Public Abstract

D.W. Baker@lowermelody· Mar 15

Excerpted from my review, "Soundscape, Landscape, Ghost: on FIREFALL by Heather Lang-Cassera" (2025: @unsolicitedpress.bsky.social), published in @panoramajournal.bsky.social last year

The book’s detailed soundscapes of repetition and rhyme transcend the distinction between formal verse (featuring wide varieties of pantoums and sonnets) and free verse (featuring sparse lyrics and narratives with bespoke sonic architectures, in the American tradition of Dickinson). In concert with lush natural imagery, and ornamented by flights into symbol, linguistic sound is a central pillar in Firefall’s project: not merely recording specific landscapes, nor simply evoking their effects on the body, but using the established dialectic between body and environment to interrogate the limits of the individual subject.

D.W. Baker@lowermelody· Mar 14

Catching up on emails and website maintenance tonight. Currently have nine poems forthcoming later this season. More available here: dwbakerpoetry.com/poetry-publi...

three poems forthcoming in Apocalypse Confidential

two poems forthcoming in Union Spring Literary Review

one poem forthcoming in Electric Pink

one poem forthcoming in Sabr Tooth Tiger

one poem forthcoming in Eulogy Press

one poem forthcoming in Cosmic Daffodil Journal

D.W. Baker@lowermelody· Mar 7

I was a contributor to Libre before joining the team. Mary published this contrapuntal piece, "Manic/Depressive," which is very dear to me. I am sad to see its home disappear.

Manic Depressive

brain bomb brain tomb
fast lane contemplate
five songs dead weight
autoplayed costume
gravitate heavy moon
magnify frame rate
pilot flame joy delay
flashing lights panic room
warning signs starve house
rapid speech crash car
credit lines hidden debt
gasoline trickle down
wild burn carve skin
scorched earth trial death

D.W. Baker@lowermelody· Feb 13

Returning through this poem again... "Burning Brain" published last month in @aprosexia.org, along with a poem about the flip side, "Sad/House/Keeping"

Burning Brain

generator

smokestack

altered state

insomniac

bright black

turning blue

hourglass

horseshoe

postlude

fading out

centrifuge

slowing down

seatbelt on

gentle stop

D.W. Baker@lowermelody· Feb 11

reading tonight to celebrate the release of (e)laments from @stonecorpse.com

D.W. Baker & nat raum & Erica Leslie Weidner
invite you to a reading in celebration of

identity sbagliato
&
dry stoner
&
(e)laments

February 11 @ 9PM EST
Hosted on Zoom
Contact any reader to RSVP

D.W. Baker@lowermelody· Feb 10

Here is the first of five linked golden shovels, now available as part of the inaugural @acropolisjournal.bsky.social project, Time As Falling Atoms, about differential perceptions of time

I HEARD MYSELF THROUGH GRAVITY’S HINGE
Linked golden shovels after work by other project participants
D.W. Baker
1. I HEARD
“I was sure I heard howling / but realised it was me”
—Claire Marsden, “Passage of Time”
Not merely semantic or cognitive dissonance, I
think, but something more physically woven: I was
out of phase. It was hard to be sure,
since my data points are within the realm of I,
but something imperceptible to ears was heard
within my body: incongruence's gap, howling
where my asymptotes grow always closer, but
never meet their shores. It was then I realised
this sonic frequency was the key, and that it
revealed the acoustic shapes of the lock—it was
the quantum-entangled versions of me.

D.W. Baker@lowermelody· Feb 9

"air," a Pushcart-nominated poem from the microchapbook (e)laments (coming Feb 23rd from @stonecorpse.com), co-authored with @gr8earlofhell.bsky.social , first published in @genrepunkmag.bsky.social pre-orders now open!