Genevieve Beltran

Teacher, writer, language lover. Repped by @jilliganjonze
she/her

2023 Bread Loaf Nonfiction Returning Contributor Award

[Genevieve Beltran @genbeltran]

@AFB16 Both are beautiful but I’m drawn to the black and white.

[RobertAllenPoet @RobertAllenPoet]

I don't use the word, "lovely" very often, but this just is

[Marysia @marysia_cc]

good morning
illus. François Ghebaly

[Read A Little Poetry @readalittlepoem]

“People don’t like to leave a party / unless the house is actually / on fire.”

— Charles Rafferty

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This poem appeared in The Southern Review, Winter 2026. Shared here with deep gratitude.

[Tristin Hopper @TristinHopper]

I was an extremely guilty child, constantly wracked with shame. I'm happy to report that this trait has not translated to my daughter, who just fumbled a large watermelon, watched it explode on the ground, and declared "oh well, it was heavy."

[Bianca Stone @biancastone]

WS Merwin

[Allison Field Bell @AFB16]

My new business website is live! Please share and give me a follow on Instagram!

https://t.co/DOyWEKgqPv

[Greg Cwik @cwik_greg]

Only a writer as profoundly talented as DeLillo can open a novel like this (!) and it's not even his best opening.

[Tom Snarsky @TomSnarsky]

Nikki Giovanni

[Jim Beattie @JimBeattie18]

I love the contemporary paintings of
American artist David Ligare.

[Jose Hernandez Diaz @JoseHernandezDz]

One of my favorites, and also a fellow former (and I believe the first) visiting writer in residence at the University of Tennessee, Jack Gilbert.

[Jose Hernandez Diaz @JoseHernandezDz]

Anne Carson

[zack rosebrugh @zackrosebrugh]

Colored pencil drawing I did a couple years ago is the cover of the current issue of the NYRB 🙂

[Francisco Ribeiro @fraveris]

Jim Holland

Summer reading

[Joseph Fasano @Joseph_Fasano_]

my god *this* is a grief poem

[RobertAllenPoet @RobertAllenPoet]

Linda Pastan on insomnia. It’s 3:08am and that counts as insomnia, so I remembered this poem:

[Allison Field Bell @AFB16]

Dear writers, if you see a lil business post of mine, I’d so appreciate a like and a share! I’m trying my best to make something happen with my brand new baby workshop business and I keep getting close to zero visibility on here 😔

Thank you 💕

[Genevieve Beltran @genbeltran]

@_Damilola_O @kenyonreview Congratulations!

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

Stateside, a gas station. I drank a frozen blue beverage too quickly, and was struck down by a punishment this entire nation knows, and accepts, and has named.

The drink is called a slush. Ice, sweetness, and a blue that does not occur in nature. The day was hot. I was thirsty. I drank like a soldier at a river.

The pain arrived in my skull like a war horn.

Behind the eyes. Above everything. Total. I gripped the roof of my car. I may have made a sound.

"Brain freeze," said the cashier through the door, with no urgency whatsoever.

It has a NAME. The affliction is so common it has a household name, like a cousin.

"Tongue on the roof of your mouth," called a man at the pumps. He did not look over. He prescribed the remedy mid-pump, casually, the way one mentions weather.

I pressed my tongue to the roof of my mouth. The war horn faded. The healer nodded at his pump, finished, and was gone in a Chevrolet.

In my land, punishment follows crime by way of courts and seasons. Here, the sentence is instant. Drink with greed, and the ice strikes the mind directly. No trial. No appeal. Perfectly fair.

And here is what moves me. EVERYONE has felt it. The cashier. The healer. Children. Elders. An entire nation united by the same small lightning, all taught the same cure, all passing it on to strangers at gas stations, free of charge.

You cannot fully distrust a country once you know it shares one pain.

The freeze does not punish thirst. It punishes haste.

I finished the slush slowly, like a scholar. Blue tongue. Clear mind.

Then at the door I forgot everything, drank deeply, and was struck down again.

"Tongue, hon," said the cashier, without looking up.

Discipline is a journey.

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

The World Cup begins tomorrow, and many will watch the matches. Soccer reminds us of something we must not forget: life is not a race to show off on our own, but a path we learn to walk together. Anyone who does not know how to pass the ball, even if they have talent, has not yet understood the game. Anyone who does not know how to live with and for others has not yet understood life. #ApostolicJourney