Nat’l Poetry Month 2025

Nat’l Poetry Month 2025

This April, I began posting poems on my instagram and bluesky accounts, in graphic layout, to celebrate the annual National Poetry Month. These poems are all lifted from my manuscript for a book I consider to be the sequel to The Gorelets Omnibus, presently called Bluebird Guts. Here are examples of the first few, to give you an idea of what they look like. You can continue to follow the series throughout April by following me on instagram (or bluesky). And you can be sure I'll post news about any future book publication here, and in the podcast I started…

Filing Jointly — a tax crime poem for 30 Days of The 5-2

Filing Jointly No matter what the Fed says, we always put the tax deadline in the calendar on the 14th so it sounds like a Valentine's Day date to review our year in April. This year is special because I am doing it alone, remembering him, accounting for his actions, and mine, itemizing all the entries. It's an emotional audit. I tear up as I write off the axe I'd hit him with, along with all the other tools I used afterward as "business expenses"; and I smile when I enter the checks I received from his life insurance --…

Shared Psychosis: An Interview with Sara Tantlinger

One of the things I enjoy about National Poetry Writing Month (aka "NaPoWriMo") is Gerald So's "30 Days of the 5-2" Crime Poetry blog tour. He asks poets and readers to contribute something for a calendar day related to his journal of crime poetry. I've participated in the past (and I also published a new piece at the 5-2 just last month for "Pi Day") but this time around I decided to do something different: conduct an interview. As luck would have it, I knew one of the recent contributors to the journal, because she's working with me as a…

Things to Do in Denver When You’re Undead

Use the "cold activated" Coors beer bottle as a body temperature probe. Make them run to the hills, where the air is even thinner. Visit all those new head shops downtown, seeking fresh brains. Eat the best Mexican. Gallop into a Bronco game on Thunder, as one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Show them what what their state name really means.   A busy month in my day job, but I'm trying to write horror poems here and there all month in a loose celebration of National Poetry Month.  Most of them will be kept offline for later…

AVENGER – my Peter Gabriel-inspired crime poem for 30 Days of the 5-2

AVENGER I know something about opening pimpers and whores I know how to kill quietly and mop up bloody wooden floors I know how to hide body parts behind my cabinets and drawers Clipping the strippers Clipping the strippers of their spinal cord wires Their stunned paralysis inspires Inspires me I like laughing at lap dancers when they're tied to chairs I like listening to harlots when they make their final prayers I like watching while they clutch their throats for air Avenger's happy in the dark Avenger's come Avenger's come to take away your mark, devil's mark devil's mark…