Waiting Behind

 

Temple in a City (which could be this temple, in this city, or not) published a poem by me involving the stars. Not from Hollyweird, but above in the firmament. Read it here.

A Blogpost Dealing with the Relative Size of Things in the Literary Universe and the Effect of Adding Another Link

 

Not sure about the relevance of this image. But certain editorial powers above chose it to represent my work. 

The Yesterday Review published two poems of mine. Feel free to celebrate with me. 

They did so in their first issue, aptly named First Draft

Of course my work is in the poetry section 

And if you have read this far, enjoy the two poems I got published

Getting Big in Swindon

 

Thanks to THE SWINE, put out by Poetry Swindon in the UK. 

Calming the Polychrome Masses

 With my poem in The Swine, Calming the Monochrome Masses

Click with this Beetle

 

Wireworms come from these beetles doing the nasty

Wireworm Magazine has published a piece of experimental writing called Median Opportunities which I wrote and rewrote and rewrote again until it could now find a home. 

Rush for Some Rhyme

 Poem at The Rush Magazine maybe the first rhymed verse I've published

Take a Break from Politics to Read about the Sunrise

 

Sage Cigarettes has published a poem of mine in their latest issue. It is page 28 in the issue, page 33 when you scroll in the reader. The title refers to a genre of writing from Byzantium that focuses on the intricaies and practicalities of siege warfare.

Ben Takes a Gothic Turn

Pictured above is Frederick III, German Emperor. He was Kaiser for only two months in 1888, until he succumbed to throat cancer. This early demise paved the way for his son ,Wilhelm II, to take charge of the German Empire. We all know how well that went.

What does this have to do with me? Thanks to Macy Skov at A Suffer's Digest, a short story of mine based on the Kaiser's malady is now published. It is called Bureau of Barbarians and is up and ready to be read.

A Freshwater Space Opera

 

Click on the link below to see it more clearly

A new poem of mine called Space Opera is in the journal Freshwater. It's run by the fine people at (take a breath) Asnuntuck Community College. I think I got it right.

Probing Flies in the Sandy River Review

 

Where the magic in "La Mosca" happened

Poems in pairs, ladiex and gentlemxn! Where? At the Sandy River Review. One involves Astronomy, the other Etymology. Read on and...learn? 

137 Is a Natural Number Following 136 and Preceding 138

It is the 33rd prime number, and more than that, it is a Chen prime (and the fourth Stern prime.) It is the most common age of death mentioned in the Bible and in California, it is the penal code for an officer bribe to influence testimony. 137 is the numerical value of the Kabbalah and it might even lie at the heart of the Grand Unified Theory.

137 is also the page where you will find my poem "Plus a Lineup" in the second issue of Black Moon Magazine. All praise 137!

Soundscape Theater presents "Nessie" an Audio Play with ME (and others)

 

Listen to Soundscape Theater's latest work "Nessie," a short audio play written by Christine Stoddard, directed by John Cappello, with sound designed & edited by India Stachyra. As for the voices, they are supplied by Donna Morales and yours truly. Listen to it at YouTube or the above links.

Brown Bagging Some Poetry

The first issue of Brown Bag is out and there is a poem in there from me. Scroll down to find my work, which is called "Rat Park." The title is taken from the famous experiment on addiction. Structure-wise, I formed the sentences using a random Facebook status generator, which created new statuses for me based on ones I've previously posted. It's part of a series I wrote back in 2015. They were inspired by my time working at the Arlington Court House. I wanted to create a form of poetry that resembled the legal documents I read. Since I was taking on a legal structure, the topic of the poems took on a similar theme, essentially putting an alter-ego of myself on trial. In the end, my work resulted in a book length collection that's still unpublished as a whole.

This particular poem is a success story about endurance in publishing. I've submitted Rat Park over the past couple of years to dozens of journals, reviews, and web pages. In total, something like a hundred total venues. Every time I got a rejection. But that's the writing life. If you're not ready to deal with rejection, you're not ready to deal with submission. I suppose that's really what the submission is, giving up one's attachment and allowing an editor free reign over the piece. Anyway, after so many submissions and so many rejections, I finally got it accepted. Of course, in between the rejections I tweaked my poem here and there, and made a couple of edits. Every ten rejections or so I think you should look over your lines. I even chopped up the poem into something new and released it under a different title: Rat Spark, which was published by Nauseated Drive. 

So poets of America, keep reaching for that rainbow!

Damn You Charles Darwin!

A new poem about Charles Darwin in the Spadina Literary Review

All Watched Over By Readers of Loving Grace

Science fiction time! Five on the Fifth has published a short story of mine: All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace. I can't recall if I got the title from the poem by Brautigan or the documentary series which was also named for the poem. It all goes back to Brautigan either way.

I also have some poems here at Birds Piled Loosely.

Isaac Newton Lives!

Well, he lives on in a poem I wrote and was put online by the good folk at En Pointe Magazine. You can join the conversation there, change the world. Or you can just read what I wrote. They took the pains (I'm sure they were painful) of putting the spacing in just right. Next month, they'll be publishing another work of mine.

Sharkopedia: A Book Review

            Some of you might be looking at the title of the blog post and think I’m reviewing a book of ironically titled poems which is trying to cash in/mock the current obsession (a sharknado of interest as it were) with sharks in our country. Rest assured, this is one book you can judge by its title. However, if you want to read shark-themed poetry, you can do so here. Anyway, back to the basics. Sharkopedia is 192 pages long with over 400 photos of dozens of different species of sharks. In case you were wondering, it is published in connection with Shark Week by Time Home Entertainment. Thankfully the book only makes a small mention of the program in the credits section. Its main link to the Discovery Channel’s offering is the inclusion of tidbits from shark expert Andy Dehart, who has appeared on the show.

            Now, this Sharkopedia is meant for readers ages 8 and up, so in this review, I had to consider the full range of people the book is intended for. I would not recommend it for anyone younger, unless they understand that most sharks cannot live in freshwater and that none can live in a chlorinated swimming pool. Otherwise, the pictures would give them unfounded nightmares of being attacked.  I remember when I was young and I thought it was possible for a great white to wiggle its way up a drain and start chomping away at me in the wave pool at Cameron Run. For some reason, I assumed it would only attack me right as I was leaving the water. Hey, that’s sounds a good idea for a TV movie. Get on it Hollywood. Sharks in sinks! Sharks in tubs! Sharks in baptismal fonts!

            Of course, a kid 8 years or older might have similar fears after reading this book. However, they will be easier to reason with. For instance, they will learn that bull sharks are the only shark to worry about when they are in freshwater. More importantly, they will learn that shark attacks are few and far between and they are rarely fatal. Only about 5,000 shark attacks have been reported in the whole world since the 1500s, resulting in roughly 500 deaths. In turn, half of these shark bites were provoked by humans. More people have probably been killed in hippopotamus attacks. While Sharkopedia does do a good job of stressing these facts, it tends to focus too much on anecdotes of shark-on-man violence, which makes it hard for the mind to accept sharks as nothing more than an ever-present threat lurking in the ocean, hungry for human flesh and thirsty for our blood.

            The bulk of book is colorful and informative. All the major sharks are heavily featured: the infamous great whites, megamouths, hammerheads, nurses, makos, and tiger sharks. In addition, there are dozens of other species pictured and hundreds more listed by name. Sharkopedia does a good job showing the great variety and diversity of all eight orders of sharks. There are small sharks, giant sharks, colorful sharks, sharks that look like carpets, sharks smacking into seals, and sharks basking for zooplankton. However, there is precious little information on sharks loaning money at prohibitively high rates of interest and breaking legs in lieu of seizing collateral.  

            I admit, when I started to read the book, I was put off by looking at these creatures up close. I am not sure what it was exactly. Sharks do seem to be a strange mixture of other animals, a chimera of the seas. In a stereotypical species one sees the body of fish, the fins of dolphins, and the wide toothy mouths of lions or tigers. The dark eyes are reminiscent of what one finds on a massive cephalopod or one Allie Brosh’s characters from Hyperbole and a Half. Gradually, I warmed up to these creatures, aided by the discovery that some of them are capable of thermoregulation. It was also difficult to feel threatened by the pictures of blue, sharpnose, or goblin sharks. If schools of sharks were capable of dances, they would be the perpetual wallflowers unable to land a date or a partner for a song.

            Sharkopedia passed an important test expected of any book meant for a younger audience. It kept me up past my bedtime, albeit one which I have set in accordance with the dictates of health and reason and not school or parental controls. Whenever I finished one page, I immediately wanted to go to the next one, eager to look at more pictures and learn more about this collection of animals so misunderstood by the general public. No matter what section of the book I turned to, there was plenty to learn. While any of these facts might be found online, nothing beats the way a book like this can appeal to the curious reader in all of us. It also provides an enlightening and entertaining reading experience for a parent looking to take a dry and safe dive together into the world of sharks with a child.