Mag Gabbert @mag_gabbert Twitter profile

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Mag Gabbert

5 years

I don’t know how some of y’all drink and then write poems. I have two glasses of wine and the next thing I know I’m drafting a poem called “Blue October.”

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

2 years

I wish it were possible to rly convey this to non-creatives: It’s not just about having enough time to write (or sculpt, or compose, or whatever). It’s about having enough time to quiet your mind first. That part is the hardest.

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

4 years

Dear Editors, Due to the overwhelming response I’ve received, my rejection portal is temporarily closed. I’ll re-open for rejections on Dec. 14th & look forward to reviewing your rejections then. Thank you for your interest in sending me your rejections. Best, Me Poem Submitter

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

4 years

Prose writers: Woo! Wrote 5k words today! Me, a poet: Having fixed the linebreak in the second stanza, I am going to bed.

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

3 years

Poems are kinda tough to teach in a test-based school system, so instead they’re often framed more like riddles, as things that need to be “figured out” or “solved.” To me, the difference is: Riddles have 1 answer. Poems have 0 answers, but many secrets.

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

7 months

Turns out I did in fact win a Pushcart for this poem that gives zero fucks 😭 Tyssm, poets & editors, for making this happen. Like holy shit.

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

2 years

Just to clarify: You can be a creative who’s not an artist. Or a creative who’s not a “professional.” Or one without “natural-born talent.” Or who lacks the resources & access needed for output. But to be a creative, imo, you must be dedicated to seeking innovation in some form.

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

3 months

Here’s a new poem from my second manuscript in the latest @SoInReview

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

4 years

Hear me out: a residency, but instead of writing we go to have flings & see museum exhibits & swim in the lake & play Yahtzee & get wasted on wine coolers & hookup & make crafts & learn to bake & pet goats & then when we return to our miserable lives we have stuff to write about.

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

5 years

It rly annoys me that writers (esp early on) are expected to be nomadic. To live 3 yrs here for an MFA, 2 yrs there for a fellowship, 6 mo wherever for a residency, 1 yr somewhere for a “writer in residence” gig—as if we don’t (or shouldn’t) have families, pets, or possessions...

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

1 year

Here is my v tiny poem in the new issue of @sewaneereview 🙂

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

1 year

I’m still deep in my grief pit over here, but thankful that the new issue of @GuernicaMag includes this warped & mutating scream of a poem from my second manuscript. Maybe some of y’all will also see reflections of yourself/selves in it rn 🖤

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

1 year

@annelysegelman Tbh tho the OG “chair” poem is obviously great & deserves the new yorker 👀

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

3 years

Just referred to my unborn niece as “forthcoming.” Like a book.

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

1 year

Here’s a weird new lil poem of mine in the latest @BatCityReview 🦇 (& ty to @k_ivertown for the pic, since I’m still waiting on my copies 🖤!!)

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

6 months

I, um, started a new job today. It’s called Poet Laureate for the City of Dallas 🥹

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

4 years

White ppl love to equate the loss of advantages with becoming disadvantaged. We gotta stop that.

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

2 years

This is my real book. It’s real.

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

4 years

Sure, sex is great, but have you ever finished a poem that started as 3 separate poems—all of them bad—& then became 1 awful frankendraft, which you finally somehow managed to wrestle from being miserable to mediocre to pretty ok over the course of many dark & apocalyptic months?

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

4 years

@onbrandbrandonn E.T. = terror The Land Before Time = grief I still can’t watch either one!

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

3 years

Re-reading Sylvia Plath’s collected poems, remembering she sometimes wrote four poems a day 🙄

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

3 years

Imagine my power once I figure out how to finish a poem in less than 6 years.

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

3 years

It comforts me to believe that all poems—even or esp the great poems—are still failed attempts at writing a different poem.

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

3 years

For a long time I dreamed about what I would write in this post, the post announcing my first full-length book. That’s all I can think to say right now—how much I dreamed. And how this is the dream. This is it. Thank you, @KathyFaganPoet & @OSUtheJOURNAL ❤️

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

3 years

So, recently a student in the grad program I teach for asked if I’d be willing to read—alongside a “surprise guest”—for a small Zoom event she was putting on for folks in her research group. & like, I agreed & I just read/attended it. & the surprise guest was....NIKKI GIOVANNI 🤯

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

2 years

I’ve never had work in @AmPoetryReview before, & I got the whole back cover 😭

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

1 year

I need…poems with horses. All of the poems with horses. I know; it’s a lot. Just trust me on this. Go.

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

2 years

Today seems like a fine day to share the cover of my 1st book, which was designed by Derek Thornton. I’m so grateful for the many unexpected blessings I’ve received this year, especially my book. I hope it can contribute meaningfully to the ongoing fight for safe abortion access.

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

1 month

The city’s office of arts & culture asked me to present a poem about “a sustainable arts ecosystem” for an upcoming stakeholders’ event. I wrote this, hoping to help educate/remind folks about the invisible labor of being an artist & create a dialog. They requested a diff poem.

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

5 years

You guys. I won. An award.... I’M AN AWARD WINNING POET!

American Literary Review

@ALitReview

5 years

We're excited to announce the winner of our Rossetti Broadside Prize is @mag_gabbert 's poem, "America." The poem will be released as a broadside designed by @lindsaylusby . We're looking forward to seeing it! Congrats, Mag!

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

4 years

People, this is my Grammy. She’s vaccinated 😭

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

6 years

You guys, I just got into a favorite journal. One that I’ve sent to every six months for 6+ years. Boy did I need this little victory today. Time to whip out the fancy new perfume!!!

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

5 years

People, we need a breakup poems anthology.

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

3 years

When I was 16 I had an abortion here in Texas. I was lucky that mom took me; dad’s side is full of hypocritical/racist “Christians” like our lawmakers. I was gonna post about how I wouldn’t have a PhD, or prob any career at all rn, etc. But actually I would’ve killed myself.

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

4 years

So, my mss was a semi-finalist again. & I’m grateful. But also, 4 of the 6 finalists were well-known poets, w/ not 1 but multiple books each. It’s fucked up that they’re still having to enter contests. & it’s fucked up that ppl like me are out here competing against them.

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

3 years

Rita Dove closing out summer. With one of those summers prob none of us got but rly frickin deserved 🥺💦⛲️

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

4 years

It’s too bad I already have a PhD, because I could write a whole dissertation about why the husband of Patrice Endres in Vol. 1, Ep. 2 of the new Unsolved Mysteries def did it.

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

3 years

Yes, another poem by me about skin & mortality …but this time in @parisreview daily 😭

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

5 years

Today at a cafe 🙄 Random guy: I see you have an extra cookie.. Me: Um, just what I ordered R: Heh, could I try a bite? M: You could just order one R: Haha, k. Guess you’ll be doing yoga later to work those off M: [*staring into his soul*] I’ve never done yoga in my fuckin life

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

3 years

For those who haven’t seen, @HeavyFeatherRev will be taking over the “Where to Submit” lists from Entropy (ty 😭!). You can find info about adding your pub to this free resource here:

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

24 days

An employee at the hotel where I’ve been staying this weekend just asked, “so are you Mag Gabbert, like the writer?” I HAVE ARRIVED 😭

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

4 years

My superpower is grieving what I haven’t lost yet.

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

2 years

So here’s one of the first poems I get to share from my new WIP, which is a weird book so far. It’s dedicated to @chenchenwrites , AKA a legendary moon-dweller, lover of weirdness, & dreamy friend 🌖💖✨

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

2 years

All I’ll say is that, every time a journal/editor fucks up, there are going to be folks with forthcoming work who suddenly have no audience. For some, that pub was the biggest thing they had going. I don’t have an answer about it. I just want to acknowledge how much that sucks.

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

3 years

As a poet, I love asking other ppl what they do so I can be like, “Oh, you’re a plumber? I fucked around with my toilet once.”

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

3 years

My dad, who has chronic, severe emphysema, is in the hospital with Covid, potentially about to be put on a vent. He’s an anti-vaxxer (& he says his doctor told him the vaccine would “kill him”). I’m just tired of feeling so violently helpless.

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

1 year

Yesterday I drafted a poem…& then, as I was revising it, I saw that I could just cut a few lines & it would be finished(!!)…& then I realized those cut lines could also work as their own separate, finished poem. This has been the single most satisfying occurrence of my career.

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

3 years

I...still can’t believe it?

92NY Poetry Center

@92NYPoetry

3 years

Announcing the winners of @92Y Discovery Poetry Contest— @cerena @ina_carino @mag_gabbert and Alexandra Zukerman 1/

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

5 years

Is it just me, or has it been the end of January for approximately 6 months?

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

3 years

So, I’m giving absolutely no shade here bc I *love* a quick response…But y’all. You know that one review, with the certain number of coins? This time I got the rejection before the automated email showed up saying they got my submission 😅

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

1 year

Being a pet parent is in no way the same thing as being a parent. I know that. But there’s a very particular type of difficulty & pain that goes along with being the single parent of a pet who doesn’t have much time left.

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

3 years

Reading this poem by Tomas Tranströmer is like watching the tiny metal teeth on tiny metal gears inside a fancy watch turn perfectly toward and away from each other forever.

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

2 years

Idea: an annual anthology series in which a major living poet just selects 100 favorite poems—e.g. Carl Phillips’ Favorites (2022), Jane Hirshfield’s Favorites (2023), Patricia Smith’s Favorites (2024), etc. I would legit subscribe.

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

3 years

S/O to the guy at Starbucks who just said, “Oh, I like your bag! Did you know that’s Walt Whitman?”

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

2 years

@FiftyFavorites Sure, everyone needs time to themselves. But I’m not just talking about being healthy or even effective; I’m talking specifically about the creative process (which can involve any profession), & fact that this distinction isn’t clear to many folks is the point of my tweet.

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

2 years

Might be weird but I literally think about the last line of this poem 1-2 x a day. Every day. For real. Also, I wrote a poem after @jej_sen & @athenek , a “failed essay” poem, & it’s coming out soonish in @poetrynw 🥲

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

1 year

Still writing weird sex poems! Here’s a new one in @thearkint 🥰

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

1 year

Just thinking about how some ppl worry that verbal consent kills the mood, but the last guy I hooked up with asked me every single time— “Can I kiss you?” “Can I take this off of you?” “Can I [younameit!] you?” & it was sincerely the hottest fucking thing ever.

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

4 years

Y’all ever withdraw a poem from submittable, and in the lil reason box you just put, “it sucks”?

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

3 years

Last week a photographer friend took this pic of me and I really like it. Kinda makes me more excited to have a book one day.

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

8 months

Have you ever taken a whole season off from sending things out / applying for stuff? Like, you just let all the deadlines slip by bc you know that you need to be focusing on the work instead? Was it helpful? Did you keep your sanity?

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

3 years

Imo, true creativity doesn’t always require talent. But it does require obsession.

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

1 year

Here’s a short poem of mine that just came out in @ColumbiaReview . The title translates to “the call of the void.”

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

4 years

The new issue of @WaxwingMag just came out today, and it includes a poem of mine about falling for assholes who can’t say what they mean and being left to connect the dots. Please enjoy!

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

3 years

I’m curious: if a journal doesn’t accept simultaneous subs (esp if they don’t offer ~1 month or less turnaround), does that prevent you from submitting? Personally, I feel like I’d have to be pretty established already to tie up my best poems at 1 place for 3-4 months.

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

3 years

Well, now my neighbor is getting laid & I respect him for that but happy new year to me mfers I bought noise-cancelling headphones!

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

5 years

So, I had some new pics taken recently & would love to hear which one y’all like best—A. The one my mom gasped at and said, “Ugh! Your tattoos!” B. The one mom replied with, “But what are you itching your head for?” or C. “I just wish you would smile more often...”

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

2 years

Impossible to show the beauty & love & friendship that filled my book’s launch event last Saturday in just four pics. I feel stronger for having shared this day with the people I love most in the whole entire world. God, I’m lucky.

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

1 year

I’ve also got a new hell poem in @thearkint . TGIF 👹

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

2 years

Not me about to once again confirm to the non-poet homies that I’m dating @chenchenwrites 😬

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

2 months

Here’s my sweet mom cheerfully crossing off her first round of chemo today. Ugh. She’s so resilient & strong. Pls send her some prayers & light if you can 💜

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

2 years

Earlier this semester @chenchenwrites visited my grad class on creativity…& one of my students just told me she made this of him as a thank-you & asked if I could send it to him 🥺

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

4 years

If I’ve learned anything from 2020 so far, it’s this: there are hard pants, and there are soft pants. Those are the two kinds of pants.

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

4 years

Do y’all remember this poem—“Weeping”—by Ross Gay? I love it so much I almost can’t stand it.

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

8 months

I wrote a poem that is also a Turing test so I can figure out which of y’all is a real human 👀 Jk lol I don’t want to know but ty to the @IowaReview for giving this a home!

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

1 year

I thought nothing in the world could be worse than yesterday when I lost my dog of 14 years…but then I woke up in the middle of the night on my first night without him. Damn this is so hard.

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

5 years

Sometimes ppl seem to feel sorry for me bc I have no partner or social life. Sometimes ppl I love get upset bc I hardly ever go out or make plans. But all artists know this: the #1 requirement is time. Any small success I’ve achieved so far is only bc I’m selfish w/ my time.

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

4 years

Why wait for April? Every month can be the cruelest month.

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

3 years

Just popping in from the center of the void to say PLS PROTECT THOSE LAST SMOKING LIL EMBERS OF THE CREATIVE ORB INSIDE YOUR SOUL!! ⚔️✨🔮✨⚔️ DO NOT LET THE EMAILS WIN!

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

1 year

Two surprises: 1. My chapbook The Breakup was just released 5 months early. You can order it for yourself rn, here: 2. I am growing my hair out for the first time in 15~ years. It will be an extended process, & I hate the process already. The end 🙃

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

2 years

…don’t tell my first book 😬🤫

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

1 year

I live in a v old building w porous bricks. So for an hour I’ve been reading in bed, listening to the young woman who lives below me sob alone. Then she cheerfully called her grandpa for Fathers Day, but when he asked how she was, she broke down. God, life is just hard sometimes.

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

2 years

I…have a poem in Poetry Daily!!(?)!

Poetry Daily

@Poetry_Daily

2 years

Today's Featured Poem: "Ship" by @mag_gabbert , from SEX DEPRESSION ANIMALS, published by Mad Creek Books. Read here:

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

1 year

A really wild part about intense grief is how suddenly you can realize the v finite number of things you give infinite fucks about …& how, if someone/something isn’t on that list, you are absolutely untouchable. You can walk through any other fire with zero fucks.

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

5 years

I *love* celebrating other writers’ successes. Truly. But it’s disheartening to know writers who are getting multiple batches of work picked up from top tier journals, or batches written the week before, all while your sub remains “received” for 9 months. Why have open subs then?

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

3 years

Me: omg my first real adult bedding arrived!!! My family: so you’re…still goth? 🙄

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

19 days

Took a strange pic to pair with a strange thing: my book won the Writers’ League of Texas Book Award in Poetry 🥹✨

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

5 years

I think we romanticize the idea of caring only about ‘the work,’ of being free from material/worldly constraints. But maybe that’s bs? At least, it’s not how my life works or how my writing gets done. I like being grounded, knowing when/what I’ll get paid, & having a home(!)

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

2 years

The latest issue of @Gulf_Coast also includes two sections of my long-poem-turned-chapbook-mss “The Breakup,” which is all about feeling aesthetically~ dismal.~ Pls enjoy 🧑🏻‍🎨

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

4 years

Jean Valentine

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

5 years

Y’all, one of my (very masculine) undergrad students just came by office hours to get extra feedback on a poem he wrote about millipedes, ants, birds, and clouds 😭 he said poetry is turning out to be “pretty cool.”

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

4 years

15 yrs ago I had an abortion. I was 16 & it was my sisters 5th bday. Today she turns 20. The time inbetween was/continues to be complicated, but I’m grateful. & Ive worked my ass off to make the most of this chance I got to be—& to become—myself. Someone I’m still learning about.

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

3 years

I’m back home from my whirlwind magical NYC trip already & I was feelin sad & missing the incredible poets I met but then I read this Sandra Lim poem & now that’s…all I care about?

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

5 years

Every day that my manuscript isn’t published is a day that I get to continue to work on it. Every day it’s not published is a chance to make it stronger.

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

4 years

It’s that time of year when I remember that prose writers can submit to Best American, while poets just wait for a guest editor who [also contributed to that one journal issue / caught their poem on the TL / they shared queso w/ in 2012] to generously drag them out of obscurity.

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

4 years

I don’t know why I’m telling you this, Twitter. Except maybe because saying things helps me process them, and so far today I’ve just been pretending this didn’t happen. Anyway, my 22 year-old-brother—who has a baby due in September—had a heart attack last night. He is alive.

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

3 years

If men want to continue dating me in this lifetime, they’ll need to figure out how to make plans more than an hour in advance. I have retired from whimhood.

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

4 years

Well, apparently I wrote one of the poems that @WaxwingMag is nominating for Best of the Net. Fricking WAXWING!!!! 😭❤️❣️❗️

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

2 years

I just told the other platforms that I’m sharing two new poems tomorrow—but fuck it, I’m sharing one here now. This goes out to all the homies whose FWB recently met someone “special” & stopped replying 💖

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Mag Gabbert

@mag_gabbert

2 years

I’m lucky enough to have two poems from SEX DEPRESSION ANIMALS in the new issue of @OSUtheJOURNAL today, including this personal favorite, which I call “my hell poem.” Maybe don’t read it if we’ve hooked up tho 🥲

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