Jan 08
Night is a Man A man without hands, without feet. Night has nothing but eyes and ears and a scrap of heart. You left ten weeks ago, and Night is what I sleep with. Tonight, I wake Night up and take him to the grocery store. On the way there, Night looks at the moon, …
Jan 06
review first published in misfitmagazine.net, Issue No. 37, Winter 2024 Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Kiss the Heathens, Roadside Press, available from www.magicaljeep.com 2023, 230 pages $20 Make no mistake about it, Kiss the Heathens, is a big ass book and true to its size and nature, it delivers the goods by taking names and seriously kicking …
Jan 05
review first published in misfitmagazine.net, Issue No. 37, Winter 2024 Nancy Patrice Davenport, Nothing and Too Much to Talk About, Roadside Press, 2023, 86 pages, $15- There is a lot of smoking , all sorts of substances, chilling and communing with cats in Nancy Patrice Davenport’s latest book. I guess it should be expected …
Jan 05
CLOWN GRAVY Vanilla Cupcake was talking shit again, talking about how she would give anything to get in my bed for one hour. One hour is all it would take. It ain’t nothin’ nice bein’ the only African-American in a circus full of wack ass crackers. Sometimes I drop my g’s. Nothin’. Bein’. I’m from …
Jan 04
review first published in misfitmagazine.net, Issue No. 37, Winter 2024 George Wallace. Resurrection Song, Roadside Press, available through www.magicaljeep.com 2023, 250 pages, $20- Make no mistake about it, this is a massive tome that feels like a compilation of a life’s hard work, living, traveling, reading, and contemplating life and literature. The collection is not …
Jan 02
review first published in misfitmagazine.net, Issue No. 37, Winter 2024 Reading Koweski’s latest collection is like a heavyweight fight with life, language, and poetry. In fact, one of my favorite poems in the collections evokes the image of “the lifeless eyes of sonny liston.” The former champion who lost his crown to then Cassius Clay, …
Jan 01
review first published in misfitmagazine.net, Issue No. 37, Winter 2024 William Taylor, A Room Above a Convenience Store, Roadside Press, available from www.magicaljeep.com 2023, 88 pages, $15 Taylor’s latest collection spans the pandemic years and a time of personal health crisis involving serious heart surgery. Perhaps, the most effective ones involve people he meets during …
Dec 31
review first published in misfitmagazine.net, Issue No. 37, Winter 2024 Westley Heine, Street Corner Spirits: poems and flash fiction, Roadside Press, available from www.magicaljeep.com or your favorite online retailer, 2023, 146 pages, $15 Street Corner Spirits is the second Roadside Press publication for Heine following his novel about trying to make his way as a …
Dec 31
Nathan Graziano, Born on Good Friday, Roadside Press, available at www.magicaljeep.com 2023, 80 pages, $15 I was reading the recent anthology from Nerve Cowboy: Selected Works 1996-2004 ( a best of the early years of long running print poetry zine) that featured four poems of Graziano’s from that era, reminding me how long I had …
Dec 20
Susan Ward Mickelberry’s poetry presents a “microcosm of body”—an intimacy of sensory experience found in whippoorwills and windows, fish bones and raspberries, mosquitos and moss, blood and thorns, a standard sink, a red tricycle. But this intimacy of detail, along with gentle rhythms of Mickelberry’s narrative voice, cannot distract from the sheer breadth of content …
