Field Recordings

This is the second time the Dead Mule School of Literature has featured a mini chapbook of my poetry. The time before was for the war themed cycle "News From the Front." If I were hard pressed to nail down a theme for these: rural poor, addiction, mental health. Maybe not in that order. "Dem Peckerwoods,"  "Lemonade Stand," "Lemonade Stand is Not," and "Kevron Tells Deon About the Fight" use a fair amount of found language. Most of the poems are not new, per se, but have not been published. "How to Find...Ocean" was featured in All My Rowdy Friends , and made into a podcast by Alpine Strangers, which you can listen to here. 

From Joseph Ryan’ s discussion in the Facebook group: Twin Peaks: the Dweller on the Threshold Today's erasure poem comes from a short discussion on the meaning of the Woodsman's chant/koan/spell "Gotta Light?"--repeated throughout episode eight. GOTTA LIGHT Repeat connections. Sex ritual at the motel. How does that affect the events in 1956? Some song, the picture behind the bed, the possible era of time. Gotta lighten up. Learn, look. I grab your energy. I think people. Translation mix up, this plane, a verbal conscious. See... Him grab heads. His sex, a total devourment of the head, set free from prison, this particular Woodsman.

I spent the summer reading and watching Twin Peaks, the Return with my wife. If you are not familiar with David Lynch’s show, it is a police/FBI procedural, wrapped in a small town soap opera, wrapped in a inter-dimensional chess match of good and evil; it is surreal and nightmarish, often relying on dream logic. In many ways, Twin Peaks is like a Rorschach ink blot. Recently I took over the editing at The Broadkill Review , and so I am learning the ropes, learning the schedule, and needless to say editing time cuts into your writing and reading time. Currently, I am tweaking my own work, several poetry and fiction manuscripts, but I need a project, a chore if you will, to stay sharp. Having never done erasure poetry, and having never created any conceptual poetry, I decided to copy large portions of different Twin Peaks theory chats, and erase them, changing punctuation, and verb tenses when I deemed it necessary.  You do not need to know the show, or the mythology t...

Honored to have this little poem leading off the poetry section of the new anthology from Borrowed Solace, Hinterlands. You can purchase your copy here. "Custis Field" is an imaginary field. An alternate reality Eastern Shore that is not an alternate reality. You know this field, it's just beyond the main roads, tucked away behind a forgotten town. This poem is about tradition, among other things, you know that eternal parent child motif. The poem originally appeared in AvantAppal(achia ).

" In undergraduate school both Martin Espada and Sam Cornish loomed large in my academic and creative life. Both men pressed upon me the importance of advocacy, and social justice. Now I don't consider myself to be a political poet per se, but my subject matter is certainly politicized. I am a writer of the poor rural south for example, and often write about marginalized people such as addicts, alcoholics, and even the gay, lesbian, transgender communities in the rural south." You can read it here.

The above image is the leading poem up on AvantAppal(achia) which features two of my poems. "Custis Field" & "White Rubber Boots" are set on ESVA, but are not "real" or "biographical" in the traditional sense. Personal note: the way this zine sets in margins is not conducive to line breaks. Something I have grown sensitive to as I gain experience working with The Broadkill Review these last seven years. Dozens of journals and zines have restrictions such as these. It's part of my personal mission as the managing editor of The Broadkill Review to preserve line breaks and form as it was intended.

Short weird fiction. I get a lil' Cthulhu here  " But then his legs cracked forward, his kneecaps breaking and crushing, bulging out. A sickening sound of bone and skin rearranging. That was when the doc fell back from the younger boy. And could you blame him? His one hand still on the black and grey thing, the other on the ground catching his fall."