"No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to write."

I'm paraphrasing Goldfinger to let you know poems about fictional crime are fair game at The Five-Two, for example this Star Wars poem by Elizabeth Lash

Yesterday Amazon MGM Studios took over creative control of the James Bond movies from Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, stepson and daughter of original producer Cubby Broccoli. Many on social media are mourning the Broccoli era, fearing Amazon will spin off Bond to death. If you feel strongly about the literary or cinematic Bond one way or another, feel free to write and submit by Monday, March 24.

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Social Media

You may recall I largely stopped using Twitter in November 2022, after Elon Musk bought it. Instead of jumping to something appearance-wise very similar to Twitter, I created a Mastodon account.

Free and open-source, Mastodon is line with my values as a Linux user. It has all the features I want from social media, including custom content warning and post-revising, but it doesn't have the familiarity or user base of Twitter. I wasn't sure how much Twitter got the word out about The Five-Two, but I lost a good deal of my Twitter following in the move.

Mastodon is run by decentralized server administrators. They're better moderators than algorithms are, but I'd feel guilty taking up their limited resources with frequent promotional posts about my projects. With this in mind, I created a Bluesky account two weeks ago, coincidentally the first anniversary of its public rollout. Already I've found many of my friends and Five-Two alums from Twitter there.

Feel free to follow my Bluesky and/or my Mastodon. Most of my socializing and Five-Two promo will be on Bluesky. I'm reserving Mastodon to reply to daily writing-related hashtags.

You can also subscribe to my YouTube channel and leave Likes on Five-Two videos to boost their visibility.

Beyond that, I'm not on Facebook, Instagram, or any other social media. If you are, I welcome your help spreading the word about our new submissions call.

Our Logo

The Five-Two logo (in the right sidebar) is a flamingo pink octagon cutout with the number 52 in the center, a STOP sign, attention-getting, nonviolent, not associated with police like a badge is.

I hope you like it. I'm exploring putting the logo on merch and donating the proceeds to a humanitarian cause. I welcome your input.

Cruelest Month Commentary Needed

In yesterday's post, I mentioned planning to relaunch The Five-Two during April, National Poetry Month. In the past, I've run a 30-day blog tour through April, The Cruelest Month, after T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land."

This is an opportunity for poets and non-poets alike to contribute commentary on past Five-Two poems or other crime-themed poems I can cross-reference.

If you're interested, email your commentary of any length to GERALDSO at GMAIL dot COM by Monday, March 24, 2025. Begin your subj line "Cruelest Month Commentary" and include the text in your message body or attach in MS Word .doc format.

Thank you for being part of The Five-Two's comeback.