Bruised Peach Press

I had the good fortune to have my haiku published with Bruised Peach Press. You can check out their newsletters as well as my work here

My writer's block mutates into paper bag owls.

Ghost Town

I am very grateful to have two of my poems published in Ghost Town, a magazine published by California State University San Bernardino. The edition features Bob Hicok as well as many other great poets and writers. Please check it out, you can order copies here.

My poems included are "Avalanche" and "At the Crosswalk: a Car and a Man" dedicated to my grandfather (Funny Grandpa) who passed a little under a year ago. Here is another poem that I wrote about him at the time:

Birthday Parties

Funny Grandpa is the type of person
Who won’t show up at the park for his own
Birthday party, even though it is his favorite
Place to stroll with a book on Sundays

He does not want you to go out of your way
For his sake, surely you have better things to do
Than swing a bat at a piñata and eat cake
With chili peppers for candles

Instead he sits at home petting his pit bull
Ashing pages of poetry, probably contemplating
How people do not exist when they are out of sight
How parties dissipate when he does not arrive

The first time he forgot to call and cancel, my aunt cried
She is crying now though absence is common on occasions
Still we all sit here in the shady trees eating carnitas tacos
Toasting to that Funny Grandpa with homemade jamaica

His Secret Garden

Please check out Compass Rose's blog. My poem "His Secret Garden" is an editors' choice this week, which you can read here: http://compassroseonline.wordpress.com/

The Marvelous & Ovum Leathers (two small poems)

The Marvelous

Elevators Hum
Moths Revalue

Heart Volumes
Earth Volumes

Mahouts Revel
Amulets Hover



Ovum Leathers

Mauve Holster
Helmet Savour

Several Mouth
Mouths Reveal

Volute Harems
Stem Overhaul

The House Appeared to be Virgin

The house appeared to be virgin,
but we knew otherwise.

When the builders slept
she left herself spread open

When she exposed her framing
we carved our names in her wood

When they gave her tiles
we lay on top of her and counted stars

When the walls became solid
we kissed in her corners and shadows

When the locks were installed
the first couple moved in,
and we walked past with our hands clasped.



(Published by Produce Literary Magazine)

in the belly of the beholder

Ethernity + Etsy craft party = Poem Collage

Ethernity Card



Just open...



Flip the top page to the right



And close!




The other night I was lucky enough to go to the Etsy Craft Party, where they had music, drinks, silkscreening, letter press, a photo booth, and free giveaways! So these photos are the results of that party. The background is the bag that we silkscreened (side note, while I was at the Renegade Craft Fair I bumped into the silkscreen designer, Virginia!) and the card is the letterpress print that we did. The collage images that you see were taken from the coupons and giveaways that they handed out at the Etsy event such as Craft-In (ed. Kathleen McCafferty). The poem and the sailboat, I cut and organized, but I should give the real credit to Christian Bok for the inspiration. Below are my/Bok's words on Ethernity:

Ethernity

interzones
describe, existence
a man has lost
his tuning fork
a fiat lux ex nihilo
reality built
out of thought alone
navigators make land
not find it, provide it
a Wunderkammern Wonderland
a body becoming a book
a papyrus cadaver
an unscroll
a musical score
a superman
an absurd vessel
a sieve of words
…perfect nonsense
hyperbolic exactitude
suggests a drive through
elastic crystal skin
exponents in a vacuum
the surface of a leaf
exploded transparency
the truth exists undeniably
in error in ur in
faith in swerve

Dumpster Dress

Here's an old poem that was published on Nameless Magazine online, but is no longer available on the site. Nameless updates their online fiction and poetry regularly and have a great assortment of work that I would recommend checking out!

Dumpster Dress

And here, pulling up in the Wal-Mart Shopping cart,
comes the unforgettable Miss Blech.

Last time she stepped up to the red carpet,
she was adorned in a classic potato sack
custom-made and hand-stitched.

Tonight she is garbed in a risqué bubble wrap,
quite possibly shipped as an industrial size roll.

There isn’t a fan out here that can take his eyes off her.

The translucent material is wrapped mail safe
around her chest into a provocative tube top;
the plastic forms a white haze like thin clouds grazing her skin,
so that her nipples are no more than two mysterious red suns.

The skirt is also crafted out of those delightful air pockets,
a blue-hued tissue paper trims the edge,
and just barely spills to her thighs.

This is quite a fashion statement.
One of a kind
A kind of one
A one…kind of
She has received several eye-popping glances now.

But this gown is only as appropriate and revealing as
other award winning celebs’. What more could be done
to push the envelope other than wearing a discarded envelope?

Besides…
Torn tin foil for a bracelet,
Colored funnies from the Sunday news for sleeves,
Packing peanuts instead of precious pearls,
A Pete’s Pizza box in place of a brand name purse,
or straws as a stand-in for sweet cigars?

The little accessories that keep her mediocrity
from hitting the hot or not page.

She is now approaching the spaghetti sauce trail.
Let’s see who the next arrival is.

Loveliest Poison Erasure

The last two posts have been on the "Loveliest Poison" erasure that I experimented with. I had only intended at first to upload the poem and explain how to go about doing an erasure, but realized as I was posting it that the formatting does not carry over without me having to upload the doc as an image. I have to admit I am not tech savvy at all, so instead of attempting to teach myself how to do that (which may have been the easier route now that I look back at it and my google search bar) I attempted to illustrate the piece. Here's what I came up with. Unfortunately I'm not a professional designer or illustrator (my sisters snatched the sketching genes and left me with the words) but I still had fun with the project.

So, if you want to do an erasure, pick a book or a song or a poem etc. and just take white out or a black marker to the words and delete things until there's an outcome that you're intrigued by or until there is nothing left. The work that got me started on this is called Radi Os by Ronald Johnson. He did an erasure on Paradise Lost, which is a great example that I'd recommend checking out. It's especially entertaining if you've had to brave the full journey of Paradise Lost.

I hope you like the poem which is written into the illustration, but also below (formatting be dashed) in case my handwriting isn't sufficient.