New poem out! It’ll debut in White Stag Publishing’s SPIRIT Anthology, you can preorder here. It’s called “Walk the Breach.” Not only is it my first love poem in a book, it’s also my only poem to use undefined neologisms. If you like Lewis Carroll and Rumi, you’re certain to love my serpentine, heartfelt fusion.
White Stag Publishing is all about rituals and magic. They suggest candle pairings with each book you buy, to enhance the reading experience. They’re unique, is what I’m saying, and deserve their success in the ever-tightening publishing industry. The SPIRIT anthology would be the perfect gift for the spiritualist in your life, or within.
Some of you may wonder what I’ve been up to this year. Mostly, I spend my days taking care of this video’s star:
The more people that preorder here, the more treats she gets.
PS: As I promised way back when I published my first poem, here’s my shoutout to the best works from VIBE Magazine’s Spring 2022 issue. Don’t remember it? That’s because it’s been a while, and that’s why future reviews will be bonuses instead of promises.
- Ultimate Attention, by Sophie Furlong Tighe. This is a fun one to read out loud, due to its pairing of similar sounds (“Mayo’s biggest tesco,” “slick and snap”). More importantly, it portrays a codependent relationship and how the lovers subsist not on what happens between them, but what doesn’t happen between them.
- Walk Around the Fucking Block, by Ava Chapman. It’s the use of “holding, holding” and the pause afterwards that makes it work. A simple technique, but it conveys the distance the narrator feels from herself. It’s at the end, where she breaks away from metaphor, that you realize the importance of what she talked about before.
- Telegraph to a Constellation, by Ren Koppel Torres. This has the feel of a classic, old-school poem, with its carefully chosen, evocative words and grandiose approach to love. And the romance does come through in this, thought I’ll admit I’m biased because of all the galactic imagery. Read Torres’ work here.
- sage green summer, by kyrah gomes. This one connects with me because it’s super hot where I’m at right now, and I’m also fighting to keep an identity of my own against commercialism and gentrification. This poem does well on the things a lot of great poems do well on: hinting at a much larger world through a few evocative phrases. Read gomes’ work here.
- I Have to Go to CVS, by Jon Conley. It’s one of those poems where you have to bring a lot of yourself into it to find meaning within a scant 23 words. But man, something about a commute that takes the effort of 12 days hits me. All this energy towards self-care when all you want is to glide through the things that make you human. To be let in. Yeah, man, I feel it.
- Keeping Score, by Leah Kindler. Some poems capture a moment so well that after you read it you realize you once felt that way too, you just forgot. “Keeping Score” is about that awkward period as a young adult, where your own growing sexuality feels like a threat and, depending on your opinion of yourself, a burden. Also, I emphasize with being on a soccer team and not doing much.