Field Recordings

This poem is special for a number of reasons. I wrote it in response to a colleague's death, and though  it is about her, it is also about her sons, and the nervous anxious state of the small rural town the summer she passed. Last summer the tension was high, partly due to her death's impact on the community, as well as several other high profile scandals which threatened to tear the town apart.  In many ways, the  forest did feel like it burned down. I drew upon on some syllabic magic from the Lord of the Rings trilogy, as well as shortened linguistic syllabic expletives (for lack of a better word) to create a prayer-like elegiac tone. You can read it here.

The Dun-in man is a mute tracker with an unsavory post apocalyptic education. He's a character in the late, late history of the #marshpunk universe that "begins" with Mulch , a magical realism novel set in present day, to the Stream world, which you can get a taste of in "The Play's the Thing" . He's the main character in several stories, and the "Han Solo" role in a sci-fi book I am currently on break from working on (working on a realistic/supernatural novel, also set in the same universe, during the near future).  This story finds the mute tracker after a runaway from the colony. This story is a "chase and fight story," fully aware of the B-movie attention to pacing and action.  Chronologists place this towards the end of the world's timeline. "I, Tiresias," a currently unpublished, but submitted story, is the following chapter, though some months later.