Posted inGorelets: Unpleasant Poems

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…
April 18, 2014Posted inGorelets: Unpleasant Poems1 Comment
Posted inAmbulations

AWP14 Seattle

Last weekend, I attended the 2014 Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference (aka AWP14) at the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle. The AWP website boasts that with over 12,000 attendees and 650 exhibits it is "now the largest literary conference in North America" -- and it certainly was the largest I've been to in my life, with a shopping-mall sized number of tables (featuring colleges, writing programs, presses and publishers) at the bookfair and plenty of superhuman writers as guests (Sherman Alexie and Ursula LeGuin gave readings, for example). Seton Hill University had a table for our MFA…
March 8, 2014Posted inAmbulations
Posted inGorelets: Unpleasant Poems

Onward Christian Scanners

Imagine if Cronenberg had written and directed The Exorcist. In it, Father Damien Karras is not a psy- chiatrist but a psychic, capable of reading thoughts and moving objects with merely his mind. This superpower, he believes, is the Power of Christ, and it compels him to study the art of exorcism under Father Merrin, who trains him to become a "Scanner" -- a psyche-soldier in the Christian Army, capable of not only sensing a sinner's guilt and truly knowing the nature of their crimes, but also able to circumvent confession altogether and directly absolve them, should they genuinely regret…
August 5, 2013Posted inGorelets: Unpleasant Poems
Posted inWeblog Exclusive

Outlaws At the Treffpunkt: the 5-2 Crime Poetry Weekly

In co-celebration of National Poetry Month with my friends at The 5-2: Crime Poetry Weekly, I'd like to take a moment to put the spotlight on a writer I am becoming fond of lately. His name is Angel Zapata. He doesn't know I'm doing this. And I don't know Angel at all. I only know him from a few pieces of writing I've seen online. And I think he's doing really interesting work. Angel Zapata strikes me as one of those guys who is writing for the love it. From my review of his website, I can tell that he…
April 4, 2013Posted inWeblog Exclusive1 Comment