New Poem in The Mantle, Issue 14

My poem “Fugue” now appears in The Mantle, Issue 14, alongside the works of Emily Scudder, Elise Houcek, Blue Nguyen, and other writers who are definitely worth checking out. It’s a small lineup but editor James Croal Jackson picked a great slate of folks, and I feel very fortune to appear alongside them. The poem itself is about the cyclical nature of life and fate, and what is lost will be found again, only to fade back into the night. I hope you enjoy!

Mason (from Nights Without Rain)

This short story appeared in my book, Nights Without Rain, and is a fictionalized account of my trip to Mason, Texas to explore the remote Hill Country town where my great-grandfather once lived.

Mason 

He stood in the cemetery west of Mason, where sun-bleached headstones and granite crosses punctured through the tall yellow grass in irregular rows. Stunted oak trees stood together and reached upward like the twisted legs of dried-up dead spiders. He turned in place and surmised the landscape with a disappointed eye, a man in a place out of time offering little but dust and wind and the chittering whine of locust in the summer heat. Texas in June, wet blanket waves of swelter, the kind that made mere breathing a discomfort. He fanned his collar and conceded the fact that his great-grandad was not in this place. His name was not among the strangers long forgotten and blanched by time and the relentless stoicism of weather generations heartless. It seemed to the man they had both come all this way for nothing.

Crickets and pale lime Katydids sprang from his path as he cut through the grass to his truck, a small thing in a state of behemoth vehicles in both form and function. The once cool interior had quickly changed to stifling, and he let the air conditioning run with the windows down for a few minutes as he again surveyed the landscape of the cemetery, including the abandoned well house just beyond, a decayed stone and stucco square with a wooden water tank resting atop like a bloated sleeping monolith waiting for night to fall before wrenching free its moorings, stretching limbs over the cemetery audience, and launching into the expanse. The man had poked his head inside the fallen wall of the old well house and jerked away from the writhing assemblage of brown recluse spiders that scattered at his presence. That had been his last pass through the cemetery, looking one last time over the stones for the name he knew by then would not be there. Let the spiders have their roost, he though as he rolled the windows back up. There was nothing he wanted less than another moment in that place.

Mason did not contain multitudes. The gathering knot of five or six disparate roads leading into the one central square belied the otherwise geometric mediocrity of the town’s construction, with small neighborhoods surrounding the square laid out north and south and east and west in streets as flush to one another as cinder blocks in a prison wall. The small homes of brick and clapboard stood identical to each other save for the fact that some owners cared for the green grass that came with attentive watering and pruning, while others condoned the yellow and brown colors of the surrounding hill country, a mix of grasslands and dried arroyos cluttered by oaks and knotted tinder-brush. But for the most part the placid neighborhoods resisted the wilds on all sides. He glanced at each passing house while moving toward that central square, the taller oaks there providing shade and respite, a space somehow cooler and almost gentrified with benches, sidewalks, lampposts. He parked his truck along one of the many open parallel parking spots on the square’s south side and stepped forth into the high heat of the day.

Surrounding the square he saw a pharmacy and general store, a men’s clothier, a large café, a newspaper office, a closed real estate office, assorted empty storefronts, a stone jailhouse fenced off with a historical marker out front, about three banks, and at the far end was a small movie house called The Odeon. With letters askew and in various faded shades of red the marquee above The Odeon’s unlit neon sign read, “There Will Be Blood,” a film that had been out for nearly six months. The man wondered if it was simply a second-run theater now, or if The Odeon had gone under since the grim drama’s final showing the winter prior. He walked the length of the square for a closer look and found the doors bolted and dusty, the interior difficult to parse through the dark glass.  

An assortment of scrambling children turned the corner and halted before him, surprised to contend with an adult in their chosen journey. Half the gathering cackled with wondrous guilt and sped away down the sidewalk clutching small plastic water pistols, shooting one another. Three children remained, and one asked the man what he was doing.

“Ain’t no more movie there no more,” a boy of about six told him.

“I can tell. Any of you know anyone with the last name Thurmond?”

“Nope.”

The three remaining children stared at him until the tallest, a girl of about nine, tugged on the boy’s shoulder and they all turned and began to run. The boy paused and called over his shoulder, “Our daddy’s in the café yonder with Uncle Hugh. Ask them!”

After a few more seconds of call-and-answer laughter echoing back to him from around the corner, the man looked across the square toward the café. A red truck passed. Pairs and groups came and went through the door. He began that way accordingly.

The dull cowbell clattered against the heavy glass door and a waitress bumped into him, edging the man into three families waiting for a table. It was a long room full of cattle men, overalls, dirty Stetsons, and older women in plain blue or white dresses. Some bounced infants on their knees. Families and weekend laborers, a Saturday gathering before the next day’s holy deferment of chores. The waitress said she couldn’t spare a table for one but offered a spot at the small bar. It didn’t serve alcohol but had become a depot for knives and napkins, water glasses and round wooden food trays piled atop one another. He sat at the far end alone and studied the menu.

“You bein’ a stranger I’d suggest the chicken fried steak,” the waitress suggested as she set fork, knife, and spoon before him, and then a tall glass of water. “You want potatoes or coleslaw salad with that?”

He said potatoes and waited for his meal as families sat and ate and left and returned with only slightly adjusted faces and clothing, a seeming Rubik’s cube of rural humanity hungry for steak and salads and pies and sweet teas. He wondered if this café had been there when old Wash Thurmond had owned the filling station on the western edge of town, if he ate there, if he took his son and later his grandson to that very café, a place he was never able to take his infant great-grandson before passing away in a nursing home, horizons away from this place, only returning in a box. So he’d been told.

The waitress had been right. The chicken fried steak was fearsome in size and worth any wait, smothered in white pepper gravy tasting of that floury richness that accompanied so much southern food. Potatoes and two biscuits later he pushed the meal away and smiled at the waitress offering a hearty congratulation. She insisted on pie as well and asked him about the circumstance of their meeting. He told her about the family name, the filling station, a house he couldn’t find and a grave he could not reconnoiter despite all evidence and advice from his family back in San Antonio. She told him the name was unfamiliar but the filling station was something she knew, although it had been torn down a decade prior. She couldn’t recall anyone knowing the owner, however.

“Which is a mighty odd circumstance ‘round here. Everyone knows right about everyone, but not everyone, I s’pose.”

“I suppose not. Every place has its own social circles.”

“That’s one way of sayin’ it. You know who you know, and you can’t fit everyone inside.”

“Exactly. Thanks anyway.”

“Which cemetery? The one out the Dairy Queen or the one out 29?”

“There’s more than one? I did pass a Dairy Queen, heading west. I was told he’d be out that way.”

“Maybe, maybe not. You might want to check the one out 29, east of here. Go on east, take a left on the Old Pontiac Road, the second one, not the first one. There’s about three out that way, believe it or not. The second. If you hit the Starks farm you done gone too far east.”

“I’ll check that one. Thank you.”

“You do that. Hope you find yer grandaddy.”

He nodded and fished out the money for the meal, and the tip was the last of his cash. He had just a little bit more in the bank, and a tank of gas. He wished he had more for her though and stood up from the bar and waded through folks waiting by the door, which shunted him back to silence once it closed behind him. The sun was now angled to impact its heat directly into his eyes seemingly no matter where he looked and he walked into the shade of the square where he watched cars rounding the corners and pinwheel off east, south, north, all directions. It looked as if the town’s somnolence had stirred up the morning hibernation and the café was but one of many active corners visible from his sanctum beneath the trees of the square. It was a happy sight, but it also hurried him somehow, as if time began passing in ways no watch could portend.

The man restarted his truck and let the air conditioning come to life as he considered the day, the time, the drive home, and the people of the town of Mason walking the sidewalks and disappearing from view, reappearing. He thought of his great-grandad and the picture the man kept in his wallet of old Wash Thurmond standing beside his filling pump sometime in the late 1930s, sepia-toned and handsome, when he was young Washington J Thurmond.

He’d remain that way, a sepia-toned image in the mind of the man who turned the truck not east but southeast instead, down Route 87, the way he’d come that morning from San Antonio. While history was a thing resistant to change, memory was another matter. Sometimes you didn’t want it to change. Sometimes it was best to let sleeping memories lie. The man considered this as he passed the edge of town and did not feel any remorse in the knowing he may never return. Not in that life, at least.  

Two Poems in New Dreamscape Anthology

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!

"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!

New 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!

New 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!

New 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.