January News

Happy New Year, all! My 2023 is off to something of a frantic start-- in addition to SIX publications this month, my husband and I are closing on a house, I'm working with two publishers on forthcoming poetry collections, and I'm working with my supervisor at the University of Kansas to publish a collection of poems to thank nurses for their work during the pandemic! So if I collapse sometime between now and March, you'll know why. Still, I am filled with hope and optimism for the coming year. I hope you are too.

Publications

I missed a publication from 2022 - Stone Poetry Quarterly’s November issue included three of my poems, “Endlings,” “Faded Ink,” and “Night Shades.” Many thanks to editor D. Ward Hey.

 

Illumen Magazine, edited by Tyree Campbell, published two of my speculative poems, “Backwards and in Glass Heels,” and “Haunted Algorithm” (the latter received an Honorable Mention in the 2022 SFFP Speculative Poetry Awards, long form.) The Winter 2023 issue is available in print or e-copy from Hiraeth Publishing.

The Writers Place of Kansas City released Voices from the Writers Place, Volume 2, an audiobook of local poets. It’s available for purchase on Bandcamp. My poem, “Alligator Tooth,” is included. Many thanks to James Benger.

Lothlorien Poetry Journal, one of my favorite literary spaces, published five of my poems, “Medusa Browses the Beauty Aisle,” “The Ghost Forest,” “Curse of the Spider Woman,” “Snakes and Boxes,” and “Root.” Many thanks to editor Strider Marcus Jones for giving my work a home again.

The Dope Fiend Daily published “Earth and Sky.” I am eternally grateful to editor Scott Simmons for giving my words a home on the regular.

The Rye Whiskey Review published "Birdsong." Thank you, as always, to editor John Patrick Robbins.

Written Tales published my poem, “Home for Christmas.” It’s a subscription magazine, but they offer a free 7-day trial to view content. Many thanks to Kevin for accepting this piece.

And finally, my prose-poem, “The Two of Coins,” appeared in Decomp Journal’s Issue 6: Refugee Futurities. It includes an audio version of the piece. This poem will also appear in Midnight Glossolalia, the poetry collaboration I did with Scott Ferry and Lillian Necakov, forthcoming from Meat for Tea Press.

Appearance

Scott Ferry, Lillian Necakov and I will be on Meat for Teacast this coming Thursday, Feb. 2, at 7 pm. The Meat for Tea Podcast is on Goodpods, Apple and Spotify. Many thanks to Elizabeth MacDuffie for not only publishing us, but for inviting us to talk about our work. If you can’t tune in live, it will be available to listen later.

Forthcoming Publications
Midnight Glossolalia, the poetry collaboration by Scott Ferry, Lillian Necakov and myself, will be released by Meat for Tea Press in March. 

Synopsis: In Midnight Glossolalia, three poets braid their voices into a kingdom of dark matter, speaking in tongues on subjects both modern and mystical. These 63 poems are an alchemical brew composed of gods, ghosts, UFOs, alternate dimensions, ancestors, science, technology, math, music, nature, and Fruit Loops. They are the chemtrails of lost songs, a muffled heart piano swelling with the mystery of existence.

My latest solo poetry collection, Moonlight and Monsters, will be released by Gnashing Teeth Press in June. 

Synopsis: The poems are divided into three sections, Moonlight, Monsters, and General Weirdness. They are poems that find a home in the fantastical, in the celestial, in magic and mysticism, in indigenous beliefs, in mythology, and in folklore. In examining things that are considered strange, other, or even monstrous, they strive for something relatable and universal. They look for the human stories beneath the sideshow, a way into and back out of the labyrinth.


Don’t forget to check out my other works!
Poetry collections: West Side Girl & Other Poems,* Requiem for a Robot Dog (Cajun Mutt Press), High Water Lines (Prolific Press), and Languages, First and Last (Cyberwit Press)

Fiction: Our Miss Engel* (a vampire novella), The Order of the Four Sons series* (a six-book series)

*Available on Kindle Unlimited

New poetry collection from Gnashing Teeth Press

I am thrilled to share the official news - my latest poetry collection, Moonlight and Monsters, will be published this year by Gnashing Teeth Press. Many thanks to editor Karen Cline-Tardiff and congrats to my fellow writers.

Synopsis
These poems are divided into three sections, Moonlight, Monsters, and General Weirdness. They are poems that find a home in the fantastical, in the celestial, in magic and mysticism, in indigenous beliefs, in mythology, and in folklore. In examining things that are considered strange, other, or even monstrous, they strive for something relatable and universal. They look for the human stories beneath the sideshow, a way into and back out of the labyrinth.

Here is a sample poem from the collection:

Acheiropoieta (a cadralor)  

1. Catechism

I discovered masturbation when I was three. My mother caught me and slapped my hand, 
told me I mustn’t ever do that again. When I was five, I spied on an older cousin 
in the shower. When I was seven, my catechism teacher told me that touching myself 
was dirty and displeasing to the Lord. Well, Lord, I remember thinking, this is where you and I 
part ways. The nuns, also, were quick to rap the knuckles of a budding sinner. 
But I wanted to feel everything. Sometimes, I’m afraid of just how much. 
There were times when I abstained, when the guilt and the shame wore me down. Now, 
I can make myself come without touching. Look, Ma, no hands. It’s like a loophole. 
It’s like tantra, fantasizing so vividly that I achieve cerebral climax, pleasure 
radiating outwards from the mind, third eye unlocked. My cup runneth over.

2. Cancun

We wear the jungle air like wet silk, drink spiced honey tequila and mezcal, 
agua fresca and chaya juice. Even a plunge into Ik Kil’s subterranean depths does nothing 
to cool our ardor. In the open-air lobby, birds rustle in the rafters, clay-colored thrushes 
and doves pecking at crystals from a spilled sugar packet. A slaughter of iguanas basks 
in the rock garden. In the breezeways and cafes, the waiters bring us bowls of ceviche. 
We pick out bits of shrimp to share with feral cats, gorged fat as tourists on resort food. 
We hop a bus to Chichen Itza. In the Mayan village, they feed us the tenderest pibil pork, 
roasted in pit ovens in the Yucatan soil. The 16th century cathedral is built from pillaged stones 
of former indigenous strongholds. Kulkulkan itself obscured by vendors hawking souvenirs. 
My mind rings with an afterimage of a black skull wall, the clap, the nine-times echoes.

3. The Condemned

He's lived more than half his life on death row. 
Now he makes delicate origami cranes, threads them with filaments plucked 
from his own meditation cushion. He sends them to me by the envelopeful. 
They spill forth, scatter the table like stars, upcycled scrap paper, brightly-colored pages 
torn from books on Buddhism. I take them out into the world and photograph them. 
I leave one on a Dia de los Muertos altar, among the hundreds of other notes left for the dead. 
Others I save to hang on a little white Easter tree. 
They dangle like hanged men, southern trees still bearing strange fruit, a resurrection. 
For he so loved the world, that he still wished for it to know peace. 
One hundred down. Only nine hundred more to go.

4. Epitaph

I don't know where any of my people are buried. I am a poor santera. 
Instead, I go with you to your family plots. Sometimes, we pack a picnic, 
eating pears and cheese, chocolate and almonds, in the shade of a sycamore. 
We pour one out for the ancestors. Sometimes, we sweep graves, pull weeds. 
The mowers have been through, and they're careless about running over plastic floral 
arrangements, toppling mementos. We pick up the debris, right what was desecrated. 
The dead are like God. Maybe they’re here; maybe they're not. Maybe they can hear us; 
maybe they can't. Maybe they turn a deaf ear. We do shrooms to try and see them. 
They appear, but never like you expect. I don’t think they tell us anything 
we don't already know: What you are, I have been. What I am now, you will be.

5. Soil

My grandfather was an artist. I used to play in his studio, where two mirrors 
faced each other. I liked to see myself, caught in this silver crosshatch of infinity. 
It's the same feeling that I get standing under a pure blue sky, looking up 
into the branches of a birch, searching for nests. I eat and drink the earth. 
I ask the same questions everyone has: “Can you hear me? Do you love me?” 
All I hear is my own voice, echoing back, Hear me. Love me. 
The hand and the speaker do not reveal themselves. My grandfather’s hands, 
like the farmer’s and the pit cook’s, were soiled and chapped from his labors. 
You learn to read the brushstrokes and furrows. 
I take up clay and begin.