Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Foxhead Books Set To Publish My First Collection

I received my contract for review from Foxhead Books yesterday evening. Foxhead will be publishing my full-length short story collection, The Same Terrible Storm, as of now and at some point later on my collection of flash stories, Where Alligators Sleep.

Needless to say I'll be signing that lovely thing. It's twenty-three years coming, this book, and I'm enjoying every moment of it.

In the meantime, have a look at Foxhead's first offering, Paul Kerschen's The Drowned Library. This collection will be available November 1, but visit the link and read a sample. I'm in extremely good company.

Sunday, September 25, 2011

I'm Totally Down With Shelby Lee Adams. BOOM!

I recently had the pleasure of an invite from photographer Shelby Lee Adams to visit Louisville and interview him and follow that up with a review of his latest book of photographs, "salt & truth".

This came about after Shelby Lee read an essay of mine published at PLUMB and included on his links page at his website. I was very much honored, to say the least. We've exchanged emails over the past few days and I feel I've found a kindred spirit who I already admired.

The link at Shelby Lee's website to the PLUMB post can be found here. It's just below the first of his many fine photographs.

Here's a song for you. You'll recognize the song and hopefully recognize the singer, and, if not, you gotta get on that. Enjoy.

Friday, September 23, 2011

I'm Better With Numbers

Let me count the ways. Allow me that, and listen closely. Please.

One. Through and through, a blessed stone arrowhead beneath the tree root to the far end of the ridge.

Two. Miles suspended in all the water the earth offers while seconds, for once, gear down and step away, giving in. Just this once, in this life.

Three. While spinning in a ramble like a blackbird breaking the morning, even then, more then maybe. Never less. Dark-walking across those words, my fingertips chopping at the places where light once lived. Rambling with my heart slipped from shoulder to sleeve to palm.

Let me count the ways, and count and count and count. I'm better with numbers when your breathing can be heard.

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Buddy Bolden's Blues and How Michael Ondaatje Caught That Magic

Read Michael Ondaatje's COMING THROUGH SLAUGHTER and read it now, people. Serious. Put things aside and read it. It's about the jazz pioneer Buddy Bolden, but, in wonderful Ondaatje fashion, it is fiction and reality and music and literature cocktail. Here's a sampling of Buddy's Blues:

Monday, September 12, 2011

Permanent Reminder

I never saw a wild
thing sorry for itself

- D. H. Lawrence

Inked mirror-backwards across my heart so I can read it clearly every morning I wake is going to be sweet.


Saturday, September 10, 2011

Amputated for the Obit

They said it was congestive heart failure.

Don't whine.

They said pneumonia was a contributing factor. Fluid. Actually they didn't say anything. You found out in the papers. His face, serious, the edge of your twelve-year-old head just off to the side, amputated for the obit.

Cry me a river.

But you know the end was just a noble knight, a fellow soldier, pushing mercy through his chest by saber, by hook, by crook. But you know that was only the end. Death began years before and years to follow, self-inflicted wounds, stabs so subtle and kept in such secret no one noticed and no one cared. Until now.

The world's smallest fiddle.


Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Welcome, Nicolette Wong, to A-Minor Magazine!

Oh, the joy of seeing something I feel to be fine and good come into the hands of a capable and talented writer! Nicolette Wong is going to do things with A-Minor Magazine hardly imagined, folks. Please do send your best, those of you lucky enough to have Nicolette's hand on your work. Trust me, you'll not be sorry.

When Nicolette agreed to take the helm at A-Minor, she didn't ask why I was stepping aside, and I loved that. She is an energetic and fresh voice and talent. I like the idea of A-Minor with a new captain, someone who brings a different eye to that world. I like it a lot. Visit A-Minor and see what's up, what's new and SUBMIT, SUBMIT, SUBMIT.

Thank you. Here's a song:

Saturday, September 3, 2011

Inward (with Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds)


Inwardly all seems well. A stalactite hangs grinning, dripping its name so slowly you can hardly hear it above the humming of electrical wires. This is no cave. This is no abandoned street. This is inward, and inward is none and all things.

"Stay," says the nameless speleoth. "You must."

But though inwardly all is dark and well, you know, I mean you truly know, this place is no place for a person.

"You are not a person," it lies.

Hands made into anvils and arms boneless so they are muscled-strong as dock rope you swing away, breaking apart generations of collected whispers until, inwardly, there is light and a path now growing beneath your feet.

There is a fruited tree ahead and you set your gaze and walk and then run and then sprint and then fly for every broken thing to see. Listen to their cries, weaker than before and for sure defeated.


Thursday, September 1, 2011

Sounds Like a Breakup to Me

By Heather McCoy


Silent’s kin keel

Yore absents hertz two thee corps

Eye knead ewe, mown four ewe, whale fore ewe

Half two halve ewe

Fill ewe inn ma sole

Yore cent inn habits thee steel heir

Theirs know lite win yore aweigh

Theirs know piece

Aisle knot heel

Ewe cowered, ewe lyre

Eye maid ewe!

Ewe suite, vial prints

Eye caird fore ewe

Eye dyed four ewe

Eye lade bee sighed ewe mini knights

Ewe war vales too hyde yore pane

Yore torcher

Yore tiers

Sari eye deed knot sea

Silent’s kin keel

Prize Fight

Little water, they call it. It has properties and kick, remains in the head and soul upwards of two days. You have fought it and lost, won, came to a draw. Often and hard, you have judged the fight and thrown the punches, rang the bell and swept the trash when the world was empty. Silent as snow.

Music sounds different under that water, muted. Voices, too. And love, it suffers inwardly, unfamiliar with this kind of abuse. You recognize and retire into a brightness. Everything is concrete and random but important. Table, hat, kiss, touch, glass. Clear is the music and love lets go its suffering and you fight, ego strong.

I Asked Leah Hampton Some Chaos Questions

Leah Hampton, the chimera herself, "sat down" for a Chaos Questions interview with me at Hobart . She is also the self-espoused Ho...