Open Skies Quarterly is a print and digital journal that recently teamed up with Shrouded Eye Press to create a series of anthologies, and their most recent is called Dreamscape, in which all poetry touches on the themes of dreams, nightmares, daydreams, etc. The collection includes two of my poems, “The Ghosts of Flat Tires and Dead Flowers” and “The Cold Northern Edge of Your Rope.” The latter is somewhat apocalyptic and political while also being one of the more calming and peaceful poems I’ve written in a while. The former is about daydreaming in my living room and appears in my latest book, Beyond the Wounded Horizon, a split collection with J Lester Allen. You can download the Dreamscapes Anthology for free, or purchase a copy in print form. Thanks for reading!
My Top 10 Books of 2020
This has been a strange year for reading. It started out with a reinvigorated love of using the local library, and then the pandemic hit. One would think that working from home would allow me extra time to burn through more books than usual, and yet I read less this year than in previous years. I also stumbled into a stunning series of DNF (did not finish) roadblocks than ever before, a whole string of books that lost me a chapter or two in. Oddly enough, many of those books took place in libraries and bookshops, much to my heartbreak. I wanted at least one of them to be good, but they weren’t. However, these books below are the ones that captivated me the most and I’d recommend any of them.
Read more"Bereave" in Up The Staircase Quarterly # 50
I have had the great privilege of placing work in numerous issues of Up The Staircase Quarterly over the years, and they remain not just one of my favorite literary journals, but one of the best journals online. They actively seek out diverse voices, fresh talent, and their website is always clean, organized, and beautifully supported by a rotation of new art and photography, and showing up in their 50th edition is a true honor. I’m also excited that my poem “Bereave” appears next to writers I greatly admire, including Rachel Nix, Emily Blair, Kate Wright, Rasaq Malik, and others. Thanks for taking a look, and for all of your support over the years!
"Derelict" in Redshift 4 Anthology
My poem “Derelict” now appears in the fourth edition of the Redshift anthology, published by Arroyo Seco Press. The publisher, Thomas R. Thomas, teamed up with guest editor and prolific L.A. poet Kevin Ridgeway to sift through all the submissions to put together the final lineup, which features an absolute landslide of fantastic poets, including a bunch I previously published in Hobo Camp Review. It was great to see so many familiar names, such as Rob Plath, John Dorsey, Wendy Rainey, Jennifer Lemming, Gabriel Ricard, Jason Ryberg, Jeanette Powers, Alexis Rhone Fancher, John Grochalski, William Taylor, Jr., and many many others. I had a great time reading through and seeing the works of so many writer aquaintences I admire, and I highly entourage you to give this collective a shot. The anthology is now available online. Thanks!
Coming Soon: Beyond the Wounded Horizon
Our impending split-book of poetry Beyond the Wounded Horizon, co-authored by myself and J Lester Allen, is important to me on so many levels. Not only does this collection contain some of my absolute favorites of our work, but I have wanted to publish Lester (as many of us knew him way back when) for years, ever since he worked so hard on my 2009 release Maybe A Bird Will Sing through his then publishing house Bird War Press. He added so many wonderful details to the now out-of-print book: special bands to hold together the bundles of saddle-stitched copies, bookmarks, stylized watermark art on the cover and back. I was so impressed and so grateful, and it feels like I fulfilled a bucket list item by attempting to return the favor in some small way with Beyond the Wounded Horizon, which should drop in early summer.
We met back in those heady days of MySpace when it felt like artists and poets could connect with so much more openness and ease, mostly because all our pages came with blogs, readily stocked with new work we could browse as we got to know each other. I met so many writers in that period that I still communicate with daily and weekly, but the camaraderie and connection I made with Joe (as many of us know him by these days) felt different. Even though we didn’t speak as often as I did with other writer friends, getting to catch up over a quick chat, a phone call, a beer at his place or on the road, it felt like talking to an old friend from another life, someone I didn’t need to impress or entertain, and each conversation was a comfort.
Some of the poems in this book speak to those moments of ease and fun (the cover photo is even from our first hangout at Bleecker Street Bar in NYC), and many more speak to that whole era of life when he and I were on the move, crossing the country on separate journeys, zig-zagging bars and highways all through California, Texas, NYC, the Midwest, and the small towns of Pennsylvania and western New York state. Some of the poems come from that chapbook of mine Joe published, and some come from a chap he released back in 2010 as well. But many poems are new, many are reflective, and there are poems that show where our separate journeys have taken us, to somewhat steadier lives where work and love and peace are still punctured by strangeness, by nights of music and nostalgia, and by an eagerness for more, more of the lives we left behind along those dark highways, but also more of the quiet goodness we’ve found along the way.
And we’re not finished, not in any sense, but I admit that this book is one I would be proud to leave as a capstone, a collection that combines the past and the present in such a meaningful way. But I’m sure it’s not the end. The itch to write, to hit the road, and to track down friends for another neon race through the bars and diners of some distant city will call once again, someday, but for now I’m very proud to offer you all this book of new and selected poetry, one we wrote in honor of those old days of burgeoning friendships and madness, and one that tips the hat to the many more nights of wonder to come. Thanks for all of your support over the years, and we hope you enjoy this book.
A Bookshop Tour of Southern Vermont
It feels like a hundred years since the “Before Times” when I could travel around and hunt for bookshops, and Vermont has always been one of my favorite places to do that. My latest Bookshop Hunting column, “A Tour of Southern Vermont,” explores that region and is now up at AlbanyPoets.com, a fantastic literary website that covers upstate NY, the Capital District, and surrounding areas. I typically write these columns about one trip that spans a few bookshops, but this one is a culmination of many trips over a few years, and if I happened to have missed a new (or old!) shop along the way, I’d love to know! Thanks as always for reading, and please keep supporting your local indie bookshops during this pandemic!
New Poem in the Spring Issue of Black Coffee Review
My poem “Phone Booth in Tujunga, CA” now appears in the Spring Issue of Black Coffee Review, alongside some excellent poets like Kevin Ridgeway, Alexis Rhone Fancher, Bunkong Tuon, Julianne King, and Alan Catlin, and many others. My thanks to David Taylor for accepting the piece and putting this issue together.
This poem is a throwback about a visit to California in my mid-20s, and the piece also appears in one of my recent poetry collections, Feral Kingdom (Kung Fu Treachery Press), which includes a number of poems from the last ten years or so that have to do with the time spent between “lives,” the gulf between those places and periods where things feel settled…until they’re not again. The book is available for $15 and supports not just myself but a great small press. I hope you enjoy, and thanks for reading this poem!
My Top 10 Books of 2019
As with all of my annual “best books of the year” lists, these don’t have to be “new” books, but they’re all new to me, and the list includes no re-reads, only first-timers. I’m pretty happy with this year’s overall batch. These are the ones that kept me up late into the night flipping pages and reading on, and as usual, I cheated a bit and added more than 10!
Read moreNew Interview With Albany Poets
Last month, Rebecca Schumejda took a few minutes to interview me about one of my latest books (Feral Kingdom), my online literary journal Hobo Camp Review, my bookshop review blog The Bookshop Hunter, and other projects I have coming up with poets Kevin Ridgeway and J Lester Allen. The interview is now posted over at Albany Poets, the best website for finding out what’s going on in the literary world in upstate New York. They do a lot of great things for the community and I hope you’ll check them out. Thanks for reading!
The Ice Cream Soda Float Challenge, Round Six and the FINAL RESULTS
And so we have come to the end of our scientific jaunt into the deepest realms of the ice cream soda float universe…or something like that. We have come to the final round, the root beer round! And once I reveal the final results of the best root beer soda to pair with vanilla ice cream, I will also share our final tally of the winner in each category. (Cover Image: “Root Beer Float” by Sharon Drummond.)
Read moreNew Story Published in Red Fez
My short story “The Poison and the Pain” now appears in the latest issue of Red Fez. The story is a mix of grit, desolation, and fantasy, and it originally appeared in my collection of stories called Nights Without Rain. This book has 50 short stories and is going for about $10 on Amazon. I’m happy the tale found a home at red Fez, which has been a big supporter of my work in the past, and I hope you enjoy reading it. Thanks!
The Ice Cream Soda Float Challenge, Round Five
After exploring the various flavors of Cola, Cherry, Pepper, and Cream sodas paired with vanilla ice cream, we have arrived at the largest and most diverse round of them all, what we’re going to call the Fruit Round. Now not all the sodas here are technically fruit flavored. For example, Big Red is technically a red cream soda, but we are not going to explore a round of that specific type, and it didn’t really fit the regular cream soda round either, so here it goes, alongside the other bright rainbow-esque colors and flavors of the fruit sodas. Our possibilities were almost endless here, but we settled on eight and only eight, partially so our hearts don’t stop beating from diabetic shock.
The sodas include Big Red, Stewart’s Key Lime Pie, Grape Nehi, Orange Nehi, Flathead Lake’s Huckleberry, Coke’s California Raspberry, Coke’s Georgia Peach, and Swamp Pop, a strawberry flavored soda popular in Louisiana.
Yeah, that’s a lot of fruit soda…
(Cover Image: “Root Beer Float” by Sharon Drummond.)
Read moreRanked: Every Album by The Cars
The Cars have been one of my favorite bands since around the time I transitioned from middle school to high school, which was the mid-90s, perhaps an odd time to become a fan of 80s New Wave. Nevertheless, I would listen to them obsessively on my Walkman cassette player and later on my Discman—so super cool, I know! Or rad! Or whatever we were saying back then. Anyway, after Ric Ocasek’s unfortunate passing this September, I revisited those Cars albums and decided to rank them in order of my personal favorites, because I’ve already done the same with so many other favorite bands, including my favorite of all time, Tom Petty, so why not The Cars? With that said, let’s go!
Read moreNew Poem in San Pedro River Review
My poem “A Sunday Like This” now appears in San Pedro River Review’s latest issue, alongside the poetry of such writers as John Dorsey, Ann Howells, Kevin Ridgeway, Ken Meisel, Megan Merchant, Justin Hamm, and Mela Blust, among many, many others. This particular poem is one from a series of semi-apocalyptic poems I’m putting together for a small collection I’m hoping to shop around next year, and I’m glad this early piece found a home. San Pedro River Review is one of my favorite publications of all time run by the incredible Jeff and Tobi Alfier, and I haven’t taken a shot at submitting with them in a while, so I’m doubly honored to appear there once again. Thanks for reading and for your support!
New Essay in Blue Mountain Review
My essay “Giving Stray Poems a New Home” now appears in the Blue Mountain Review Issue 15, which includes poetry, fiction, essays, and interviews with such writers and artists as Tim Suermondt, Laura Page, Hope Jordan, Ashley Hamilton, Ellen Malphrus, Tim Gavin, and many others. The essay appears on page 68 and details how poets can compile older pieces that don’t have a home, pieces that may seem disparate at first, but putting them together, you may be able to find an unforeseen theme, and then refine them with fresh pieces to create something new, something I did to create my last poetry collection, Feral Kingdom (available from Kung Fu Treachery Press). My deepest thanks to the editors for letting me include the essay. I hope you enjoy!
"Feast" now appears at Winedrunk Sidewalk
My poem “Feast” recently appeared in the online journal Winedrunk Sidewalk, a blog that posts poetry, photos, and artwork about life under the 45th president. Not all of it is about 45; most focuses on the world and society in general over the last few years. They’ve published a few of my pieces in the past and this is a newer one that I’m including in a chapbook I’m putting together, which I’ll be shopping around soon. Thanks for reading, and be sure to send them your own work about your experiences of being “shipwrecked in Trumpland,” as Winedrunk editor John Grochalski puts it.
The Ice Cream Soda Float Challenge, Round Four
We now have results from four rounds of ice cream soda float taste tests, with the Cola Round, the Cream Soda Round, the “Pepper” Round, and now the Cherry Round complete. I’m pretty confident that I can speak for both scientists involved when I say this has been the most delicious round yet, a round that included: Cherry Coke, Boyland Black Cherry, Virgil’s Black Cherry Cream, Stewart’s Cherries ‘n Cream, and Cherrwine.
(Cover Image: “Root Beer Float” by Sharon Drummond.)
Read moreThe Ice Cream Soda Float Challenge, Round Three
With the results from the Cola Round and the Cream Soda Round now tallied, we move on to the Pepper Round. Now this name might not quite fit since a couple of these sodas aren’t in the same exact vein as Dr. Pepper, but they share some traits and fall into that pepper/medicinal/spiced soda realm in one way or another. And we had to cluster at least four sodas together somehow, so this is what we ended up with: Dr. Pepper, Pibb Xtra, Maine Root Sarsaparilla, and Moxie.
(Cover Image: “Root Beer Float” by Sharon Drummond.)
Read moreFeral Kingdom is Now Available
My latest collection of poetry, Feral Kingdom, is now available from Kung Fu Treachery Press, and you can find copies at either Barnes & Noble or at Amazon. A small number of signed copies will be available at future readings and free reviewer PDFs are always an email away, just ask! The collection features poems about that wild and lonely landscape between old lives that have fallen away and the new ones we have yet to find, a place of raw nerves and awkward nights, of bars drenched in neon and highways promising something better. There’s a feral kingdom out there, and all of us have to walk through it, live it, survive it, one way or another. For samples of the kind of poetry you’ll find within, check out “Spiders at Night” from Up The River, “West Texas Skyway” from Punch Drunk Press, or “My Ex’s Father” from Foliate Oak Literary Magazine. My deepest thanks to Kung Fu Treachery Press and to all of you for your support!
The Ice Cream Soda Float Challenge, Round Two
And now that we know the results of the Cola Round, we move on to another flavor altogether: cream soda. I have never had a cream soda float despite having a soft spot for root beer’s golden-pale cousin, so I was pretty excited to begin. Before I introduce the flavors we picked for this round, let me give you a quick recap of how we’re doing this challenge.
(Cover Image: “Root Beer Float” by Sharon Drummond.)
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