Nassau, a New Collection of Poems and Photos

I grew up outside the small town of Nassau in upstate New York from about age 8 to 15. We lived in a trailer park, and this collection is not about the park itself (that’s another book of mine called We Are All Terminal But This Exit Is Mine) but of memories of Nassau and the surrounding area. The book is filled with poems inspired by people and places there, perhaps not as autobiographical as my other books, but the voices and lives within the poems exist within the memories I have of the area. The book contains 30 photographs and 30 poems and is also inspired by the Bruce Springsteen album Nebraska. Poems featured include “Johnny ‘89,” “Cedar City,” “Townie Cops,” “Hand-Me-Downs,” “My Mother’s House,” “Used Cars,” “Blood of Nostalgia,” and many more!

The book is now available! Here’s a sample piece from the book. Thanks for taking a look. Your support and interest means so much to me!

Used Cars

A ‘91 Pontiac with rust stains on the roof. We took it up and down the streets in town, passed the ball fields and the gun shop and took a right at the Sunoco station back to the edge of the village. On the first turn I could tell the CV joints were going out but all she did was stare out the passenger window and tell me how she didn’t like this town. She had to get out. It was going to trap her like it did her sister. The faint smell of smoke came from the air vent. I wasn’t sure if it was residual ghosts of old cigarettes or maybe the engine. The gauge said the temp was fine but that didn’t mean anything. She put her feet on the dash. Bare and pale in the early summer sun. I thought of footprints, but who cares? I wasn’t buying this old Pontiac anyway. Not from Jeff at the Fix-n’-Go outside of town. Not after he made that racist joke about what PONTIAC (as an acronym) stands for. I’d heard it a million times. I mean, on one hand, who cares. But I’d heard too many guys I went to school with (who reminded me of Jeff at the Fix-n’-Go) who belittled my best friend, a half-Mexican, as a “spic” or “wetback” and I made the decision at age nine not to fully trust anyone who said such dumb shit. Another turn. Another cul-de-sac. The wind played with her hair. Caramel whippets dancing around the headrest. She sometimes joked about robbing a bank and she smelled like a department store perfume counter, and I like both of those things. She sighed, looked at me. I winked. Maybe it was too late for us to get out. I pulled into the Fix-n’-Go garage beside the line of used cars and told Jeff I’d like to try the ‘88 LeSabre too. He said he had to find the key. I said that was fine, I didn’t have anywhere to be. I’ll bet when he came back out to find us gone, he was pissed. But to hell with Jeff Sawyer. We headed to Smith Pond. Watching the way her feet bobbed above the water and caught the light of the sun as she tried to float with the abandoned summer camp on the hill was worth another week of hunting used cars, just something to get us from Point A to anywhere but here.

Tributaries is Now Available!

My latest collection of poetry, Tributaries, is now available from Maverick Duck Press! This collection is a series of poems about the Hudson River, from its humble beginnings in the Adirondacks all the way to the Atlantic Ocean, and the poems examine at the people and places dotting its winding path.

The poems were inspired by my friend Meg Marohn, who wrote me a poem on her typewriter at the Troy Farmers Market in 2017, after a conversation we had about all the places we lived along the river. After her tragic passing in 2022, I found the poem and wrote this chapbook based on its spirit and vision, and I dedicate this book to my friend. I think she would have liked it, and I hope you do too. The book was published by Maverick Duck Press in July, 2023 and is available now at their website. Thanks for taking a look, and if you’d like a signed copy, please reach out to me! Here’s a sample poem from the book called “Warrensburg,” and I hope you enjoy.

Now Available: Both Ways Home

My next book, Both Ways Home, is now available by messaging me at jamesnyduncan@gmail.com or by visiting Amazon or my online shop. In these 80 poems and 12 short stories, I explore my two hometowns of Albany, NY and San Antonio, TX, the allure of each as strong as magnetic poles over the many years I’ve crossed the vast American landscape to one or the other in search of work, love, friends, and futures unwritten. Marquee lights, Halloween nights, and familiar neighborhood cafes populate the poems, while the stories range from biographical to quiet studies of those struggling to make ends meet and discover their own paths forward in each city. In “Bring Your Son,” a mother contemplates how her divorce might affect her little boy’s future; in “Little Victory Diner,” a runaway works off his meal by washing dishes and bonds with a lonely waitress; a search for a mother’s grave in the Texas heat goes awry in “Empty Spaces”; and in “Dominion,” a young girl lost in the outskirts of a wealthy rural community learns who to trust and who to leave behind as the lights of San Antonio guide her to a future where she is in control of her own destiny. I hope you’ll enjoy this book, one of my most personal to date.

“This vibrant, heartfelt collection beautifully connects two hometowns, and James H Duncan masterfully brings to life the people and places dear to him. As readers, we are lucky to be going along for the ride and to make it home safely, caked in the stardust of daydream believers driving over the horizon, in love with everything that surrounds us.” - Kevin Ridgeway, author of Invasion of the Shadow People

Proper Etiquette in the Slaughterhouse Line

Now available from Gutter Snob Books! Order from the publisher or order from my Big Cartel shop!

“The work we do, all of us, this whole universe of spreadsheets and emails and wrenches and lesson plans and bus routes, this work we do is just to keep us from thinking of Love.”

When our value is judged by our productivity, when we’re seen more as cogs in a machine than human beings, when the warnings of a world on fire are ignored by CEOs and politicians cashing in at every turn—doom is inevitable. These poems explore the grinding, churning world of the working class waiting in line for their turn in the slaughterhouse, and when the world begins to fall apart after years of dour warnings, we’re still expected to come in and punch the time-clock as the bombs fall, the water dries up, the toxins spread, and the end comes for each of us. But the boss is throwing a pizza party at 4 p.m., so don’t punch out too soon!

“James Duncan shows his work. He is thorough and true. There is a cadence to these poems that goes beyond the poems themselves. The entire book moves like a train. Duncan uses language as a vehicle in which the reader truly travels. There are depots and little worlds along the journey. There are tiny poems inside each poem itself. His poems are crafted like stories told between friends, stories too painful to tell, stories written in real time and reflection, stories that are windows and stories that are lessons learned through the grinding grief and unpredictable joy that define nearly every life ever lived. Duncan reminds us that our lives are large, real and precious, but so much is lost in the paperwork and the phone call and the everyday business of our lives. This book is a catalog of the glory and the desperation of being alive in a world that challenges decency. These poems fight to deny that challenge, to disregard it even as we live it and see it out the windows of our brains, our bargains with ourselves and as we bump along the tracks of our lives. Duncan reminds us that "if you’re going to die, die with decency.” — Dena Rash Guzman, author of Joseph and Life Cycle

“James Duncan's new collection of poems punch me square in the teeth. Most of us work a job we hate just so we can survive in a world that would rather see us exhausted than in love, that would rather see us depressed than creative, that would have us put our heads down and live among the meaningless than to look up and discover awful truths. These are poems in the vein of Carver, Bukowski, and James Wright. Workers, fighters, and people with little hope, trapped in a system they cannot beat, but sometimes can beat late at night during the exhausted hours. These poems take the everyday mundane existence we are force fed eight hours a day and show us there is hope, but only if we are willing to open the doors of the slaughterhouse.” — Frank Reardon, author of Loud Love on the Sevens and Elevens, Blood Music and others

“With Proper Etiquette in the Slaughterhouse Line, James H. Duncan does a superb job of showing us our humanity exactly as we are living it, the pain, the struggle, the sickness and all the manifestations of any joys we can find to keep ourselves grounded. Duncan’s poems are both heartbreaking and equal parts exuberant within the expression of the simplest speck of human minutiae. This book of poetry exposes our very soul.” — John Grochalski, author of Eating a Cheeseburger During the End Times and P-Town Forever

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.

New Poetry Collection, Feral Kingdom, Coming Soon

My latest collection of poetry, Feral Kingdom, is coming soon from Kung Fu Treachery Press. The collection features poems abandoned and cut loose, crawling through the holes in the back fence, running beyond the town line, and disappearing down sprawling country roads into a world unknown. Between the lives we lead, the loves and jobs and homes we claim, there is a place of raw nerves and lonely 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.

More details are on the way, including an exact release date and information about reviewer copies and PDFs. For samples of the kind of poetry you’ll find within, feel free to 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. But the collection will mostly feature unpublished poetry, and readings and signings will follow upon its release. Thanks for all of your support!

"Ages of Us" from Nights Without Rain

My new book Nights Without Rain contains 50 brief stories, and this is the newest story of the bunch and the last one added before publication. Signed copies of the book are available and you can find both print and digital versions at Amazon. I hope you enjoy!

Ages of Us

Incandescent afterglow 3 a.m. where the streetlights stain brick walls and dumpsters yellow, orange, filthy neon silent in the southern nights, cigarette ash on my shirt, on the floor, out the door to the broken pavement where the wind carries everything away in time, nothing really yours, never will be mine. I cannot afford a motel room and I cannot afford to call her again. All that is left is the rest of her cigarettes in this pack that I’m burning through one by one and the single REM cassette she left in the dash radio, Dead Letter Office.

It plays on near-muted repeat, insufficient willpower to turn it off, up, or change anything. Drinking Jameson dregs from a pocket bottle all the way down until it’s just the taste of glass on my lips, dull and bitter. Held up to the light, the bottle reflects a dead street, a blurry line in the sand, empty hours approaching 4 a.m., dawn, and whatever comes after.

It was the long drive through Vermont that started it all, a silver creek running along the back dirt road to an A-frame she knew was empty for the summer. We stayed a week, driving into town to find food and liquor and things to talk about.

We met at a party in the town of Hudson and decided to drive north, easy as that.

Want to go for a drive?

And the days took hold, along with black flies that swarmed our eyes during long walks through the forest, but at night they disappeared as we’d slip into that silver water rushing, stony footholds, orchestral turmoil, sweet and daring, holding hands to keep balance. Nocturnal extravagance in the earthen pitch of night. Wet as all things when they begin.

A derelict honeymoon of stupid love.

She began smoking again in Nashville after some good panhandling and stealing quarters from pool tables. We both had the look now, dark rings under our eyes at all hours, unshakable desires that glued our piecemeal existence to one another. We would take the money and feed jukeboxes up and down the back streets where the tourists fade to distant shadows and blinking lights. Her weight against my weight as she played all her favorites: Dead Letter Office, Chronic Town, Life’s Rich Pageant, Document...

She ran her finger down through the condensation along the side of my glass of whiskey and anointed my forehead with a thick bead of water, a blessing. “St. James of New York,” she said, and I asked, “Patron Saint of…?”

In the neon dim of the bar we would pray over glasses and bottles and jostle elbows among rising plumes of smoke and circular stains of dampness on bar tops. Halos cast aside by long dead sinners and saviors. Holy nights of music and her finger wet with condensation, her lips a eucharist I gratefully accepted and returned with all the fumbling grace I could muster, leaning into the night and neon of the bar. We ate the music and stole any drinks we could scrounge up, leftovers, free popcorn at this bar, peanuts at that one. We slept in a parking lot down by the river with legs entwined and music whispering from the dash. She was never far from music, never far from the home we built within one another.

Outside the car the remains of her cigarettes scattered as the wind carried everything away in its own good time.

“Going west is going home,” she said, “all of us going home.”

In Tujunga, CA we ate at diners and would watch for unattended tips left too long on tables, coffee going cold. We got by like that, but by that point our silence with each other stung and we worked that pain like a tongue into a dead tooth stinging long and deep and undeniably pleasurable despite the gutting pain. There was a bar there with red leather booths that opened at ten in the morning and we’d go, play pool, watch the TV showing black and white movies with LuBelle the bartender on weekday mornings.

It was nearby in Montrose where she met the country club chef, tall and rangy and funny, so it wasn’t long before we lost track of one another. The west held little else for me despite the months I spent holding on to any scrap of life that tumbled by, and when I heard she was not long for this world I tried to find her again. But the nurses said she only cried when they told her I was outside waiting, and they would not allow me through.

I like to think that whatever remained of her after the ravenous transition of her body ascended into the fog and warm California nights, thick with condensation and holy silence. I like to think she rose northward beyond Los Padres and Morro Bay, beyond the Big Sur wilderness and the aimless seagulls calling her death song, flying in damp rings in the sky, the lights of Monterrey and Santa Cruz like distant bar signs, calling us home.

But not my home yet. We had lost something at every dot on the map when we headed west, so I headed east, hoping to find a few of those pieces along the way. But whatever I found only made the loss hurt more, made the glaring absence in the passenger seat just goddamn intolerable.

Now, through the blur of windshield rain, the lampposts all catch fire and explode in the 5 a.m. light. The Jacksonville dawn edging on, dashboard clock dead, instincts ticking that internal clock toward the last grain of sand. I’m sobering up now and thinking maybe I’ll drive until I find a boat ramp and roll this old Honda into the sea to find what the land and all its cities have kept for itself all these years, jealous of all us wanderers and what we seek.

I’ll go down there into another age, down into the cool deep, where the holy jukebox music cannot go, where the fire cannot follow. It might be worth it to find her again, and it couldn’t be any worse than this chronic sort of life without.

New Release: The Girl Who Loved Halloween

The Girl Who Loved Halloween is a story I wanted to write for a long, long time, and I finally sat down and infused all of my favorite Halloween and October memories into this tale of one little girl who loved the holiday just as much as I did, maybe even more so. The details within are heavily autobiographical, but the events are totally new, especially Hannah’s discovery of her unique talent and the people and things this talent brings into her life one Halloween. Here’s the back cover text:

"It’s finally Halloween weekend. Hannah has waited all year for the parties, the pumpkin picking, the costumes, the decorations, the scary stories, and especially the candy. She thrives on the spooky fun so much that her imagination begins to cross boundaries, and dancing skeletons and flying witches evolve from playful daydreams into eerily realistic visions. And on the afternoon before Halloween, on an innocent visit to a local cemetery to make gravestone rubbings, Hannah discovers why her love for the holiday is so special, and so frightening..." 

The book is a standalone story released as both a physical booklet and a digital ebook for Kindle and Fire readers. If you aren’t able to access those versions and would like a free PDF in exchange for a brief review at either Amazon or Goodreads (or elsewhere!), just let me know. I’ll set you up. Thanks, and Happy Halloween!

Dead City Jazz coming soon to Epic Rites Press

Epic Rites Press has selected my poetry collection Dead City Jazz for inclusion in their Punk Chapbook Series. This is the second season of their series, which includes 12 chapbooks released over the course of a year to subscribers for just $40, a little over $3 per book. This is an exceptional deal considering the subscription includes work from Ally Malinenko, William F. Taylor, Karina Bush, and many other talented writers, with more to be announced.

Dead City Jazz is a collection of San Antonio poems, of late night breakdowns and smoky bar crawls, of darkened streets and glowing cantina lights, of fading love and frightening lust, of death wishes and jukebox laughter. I'll see about getting my hands on signed copies, but I don't have full details yet on how the series works as far as that goes. But at the price listed for all of the chaps in the series, it really is a good deal to go all in. Many thanks to Wolfgang Carstens for accepting my work! More details coming soon.