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J.A. Otto

@jaotto.writes

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📍Poet in Salt Lake City.
✒️Writing about love, loss, motherhood and the roads between.
✈️Often in airports. Rarely unpacked.

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She’s real. She’s printed. She’s on my kitchen table.

One of the most intimate poems I’ve ever written, now living on page 38.

Gather: Selected Poems 2026 is out now, link in bio at @gatherpoets

Soooooo many props to the amazing poets in this book and @theguelphpoet @isabellecorreawrites
@lovealberts @marymckenzieg @hnnnhlvy
@alinakay66 @r.cliftpoetry @laurenrichwrites

And yes, it’s tea, the poem is aspirational 🤪 by @jaotto.writes

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8 days ago

October prompts for a month that feels like a séance.

Six new beginnings:

what follows you
strange hunger
things we bury
what refuses to die
the ghost was me
how to haunt a house

Take one. Take all six. Take them somewhere I never would.

If one becomes a poem, tag me and use #jaottoprompts so I can find your work. I’d love to read where you take them and share.

Save for the blank-page days. 🕯️🍂👻

And go check out a few of my faves from September from @addythepoet @thedaggerchronicles @toniyoungpoems

#poetryprompts #jaottoprompts #poetrycommunity #octoberwritingprompts by @jaotto.writes

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12 days ago

What the Children Know—a September prompt.

She checks the locks. We check on her.

A poem about the vigilance that gets passed down like a family recipe — and the small kindnesses children invent to answer it.

—

What the Children Know

Mama checks the garage
three times before
she locks the door

then tries it
then tries it again.
She leaves the hallway light on

and climbs
into the top bunk
when she finally sleeps

she turns
and the slats
tell on her.

Some nights
she wakes
to sounds we don’t hear.

She walks through rooms
touching windows
counting locks

our house has so many
little mouths.

In the morning
Mama makes our lunches

her keys
are in the freezer

we don’t tell her
we already knew.

I leave Teddy
by the door
before I sleep.

—

poem about motherhood · poem about childhood · contemporary poetry

send this to someone who grew up in a house like this.

#poetrycommunity #poetsofinstagram #motherhoodpoems #contemporarypoetry #jaottoprompts by @jaotto.writes

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15 days ago

An apple a day, but make it poetry. 🍎

Feeling very lucky to share pages in An Apple a Day, curated by the amazing @chris_kads, with so many wonderful poets.

I’ve been slowly reading my way through the anthology and wanted to share a few pieces that made me stop, reread, and dog-ear the page (with a post-it of course, because I’m not a monster).

🍎 “Playing Eve” — Maggie Devers @rembrandts.cure
🍎 “Ambient Hesperides” — Michael Dubon @dubonmad1
🍎 “Apple Season” — Toni Young @toniyoungpoems
🍎 “Toward an Orchard Cosmos” — Caitríona Walsh @tone.down.the.blonde

There’s something I love about an anthology: you arrive for one poem and leave carrying around someone else’s line for the rest of the day.

Go find these poets. 🍏❤️🍎

#poetry #poetrycommunity #poetsofinstagram #contemporarypoetry #poetryanthology by @jaotto.writes

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a month ago

The Mare

written for the September eyes poetry exchange run by the one of a kind @thistooisholy 🖤

my penpals:
@damagedsolarplexus
@footnotes_and_afterthoughts

I gave her the forest.

#poetryexchange #poetrycommunity #contemporarypoetry #jaottowrites by @jaotto.writes

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a month ago

Neon Nights ❤️ by @jaotto.writes

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a month ago

September prompts for a month that feels like a threshold.

A new season, four new beginnings:

what the children know
first cold
who is absent?
permission slips.

Take one. Take all four. Take them somewhere I never would.

If one becomes a poem, tag me and use #jaottoprompts so I can find your work. I’d love to read where you take them and share.

Save for the blank-page days. ✨🍁🍂

#poetryprompts #writingprompts #poetrycommunity #septemberwritingprompts by @jaotto.writes

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a month ago

My favorite people are those who will put dangerous women in books, like the amazing @chris_kads

🍏🍎🍏🍎🍏🍎🍏🍎🍏🍎

“Grant Me Eve’s Hunger and Vashti’s Refusal”
in An Apple a Day alongside an incredible crew of poets. by @jaotto.writes

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a month ago

A poem about the rituals we keep long after they stop keeping us.

#poeticreveries_ #contemporarypoetry #odyssey #greekmythology #jaottowrites

A broken pantoum about love, longing, repetition, and all the small rituals we keep performing for people who are no longer there. About promises carried too long, grief becoming habit, and the peculiar ways we practice for someone’s return. About abandoning habit. About seeking devotion. by @jaotto.writes

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2 months ago

Desire, close to dependency.

#poetry #contemporarypoetry #poetryreels #jaottowrites #poem

A contemporary love poem about intimacy, desire, reincarnation, and wanting to remain woven into the ordinary rituals of someone’s life. by @jaotto.writes

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2 months ago

Some wreckage is chosen.

#poetrycommunity #contemporarypoetry #poem #jaottowrites by @jaotto.writes

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2 months ago

A whole city
beneath us

and still

nowhere else
to put my hands. by @jaotto.writes

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2 months ago