Field Recordings

My flash fiction story, "In Some Northern Town"  appears in this month's Vagabonds: Anthology of the Mad Ones. The story is about a mother who kidnaps her daughter's child to baptize the baby. The story is told from the POV of children who happened to be at the christening when the mother was arrested. It takes place in the future, in the world of the stream. You can read it here. Another streamworld story was published earlier this year here.   Empty Oaks published The Play's The Thing, about a young woman named March Hayes who meets a mysterious man at an underground Shakespeare play. Shakespeare, is  banned in the future, and the language moves March, and the audience to break the law and risk treason. Stream, a collection of these stories can be viewed here.

I owe the Alpine Strangers a kickass dinner for all the work they have done on All My Rowdy Friends , my first perfect bound collection of poetry from Punks Write Poems Press, out of Chesterfield, VA. One of the books themes is sickness, and this little poem, though only a few lines long, has an expansive sensory galaxy of associations. The Alpine Strangers tapped into some of those sensory associations for your listening pleasure. You can buy All My Rowdy Friends here , and here . You can like my Facebook author page here . Electronic versions of my chapbooks are available through Amazon. You can also contact me about purchasing chapbooks from me directly.

Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice is a mess, but don’t get sucked up into the negative criticism hype. This movie is for fan boys and girls, not critics, and much of the movie (it’s not a film... Batman Begins was a film, The Dark Knight was a...you get it) is ripped from video games, or graphic novels, and thrown into a blender. It is a comic book movie and capitalist hype machine, and though it is getting bashed, it really isn’t any better or worse than Avengers Age of Ultron, or Iron Man 2, or The Amazing Spider Man I & 2, Spiderman 3, or Thor: Dark World, or etc, etc, etc. The critics are exhausted with nerd culture, because nerd culture has taken over the entertainment world. The summer has been the traditional season of superhero flicks, and Batman V Superman is akin to Walmart putting out the swimsuits in March. And this event, as everyone knows, is just one stone in a long road of Marvel, and DC, not to mention Star Wars and Jurassic Park films to endure. I imagine c...

For those of you who like to sample what you read before you buy: Alpine Strangers, pod casting duo Nate McFadden and Cody Grimm, are releasing tracks they have interpreted. They're great, and it was giddy fun waiting to see what they had come up with. For all of you writer folks out there, I recommend working with them. Poetry, in particular, is a vocal medium. It is meant for audio consumption. You can purchase the book here. Check em out here. Today's poem is a what if:  Fetish Batman. Conceived of in Boston, 1997. Lost, revised, redone. Lost again. This version is probably like version 12.4, or something

Back when I was an undergrad at Emerson College in Boston, writers, artists, freaks, hipsters, and the like would gather regularly for writing circles,  impromptu  readings, and workshops. Collaborations would happen, or not, and generally plenty of wine and wassail was had by all. Books were discussed, and lit theories were spouted, sprouted, and planted. It was blast collaborating with like minded folks. Clinton had won the White House, and grunge was our music. It was most excellent to relive some of those glory days again, some decades (yeah, decades...) later. Cody and Nate, back when they were getting their podcast started, recorded one of my World War II poems for their station, "Dinner at Henri's" They did a much more capable job than I could, as long time radio and production wizards, and it was cool to bring them (old and) new work to put to sound.   Alpine Strangers will be posting new readings of  All My Rowdy Friends. The first one is "Sur...

On March 10th PunksWritePoems Press will release All My Rowdy Friends , my newest chapbook of poetry. PWP, a new small press, is located in Chesterfield, VA, a sprawling suburban county where I spent my adolescence after moving from rural towns like Farmville, and Franktown, VA. Like going from 0 to 60, moving to the burbs, in terms of social activities, pretty people, and culture. If it wasn’t for close circles of friends, and working for Sam Goody/Musicland I would have lost my mind (or perhaps because of said friends and Musicland that I lost my mind, in the good way, of course. Cue evil laughter). Jason Bates and company are doing a heckuva job over there, at PWP,  eschewing the inclusive academic publishing model in favor of a Democratic one (as in all inclusive--like Whitman meant “Democratic” to mean). Thus the name of the press. Punk, in its inception, was about doing it yourself. Everyone was welcome to get involved. No experience necessary. What’s special about ...