Poem: My Neighbor in the Apartment Across the Hall
(This first appeared on Year Zero Writers)
She’s an obese woman whose clothes
don’t fit: shirts that ride up too high
her belly hanging out her pants
suctioned to her strangely pegged legs.
Her ballooned cheeks are always chapped pink
her lips little slivers peeled back over
small beige teeth like riverstones
set in swollen gums. Her hair is
luxurious but she doesn’t seem
to know what to do with it; she often
touches loose strands when people walk by,
a nervous tick perhaps.
Her sister is always visiting and they
gather outside my window
pacing and talking in loud practiced dialogues
about their collective woes.
She’s married to a Mexican man
half her size named Marco whom
she fights with daily, usually about
their daughter, a small wispy thing
that never makes a peep.
She has eyes like wildfires
but you can tell, talking to her even briefly,
that she doesn’t expect to get
to where it is she wishes she was going.
My short story “Make Moves, Chikie” featured on Year Zero Writers
Cool news. Year Zero Writers, a collective of über-talented writers, is featuring my short story “Make Moves, Chikie” on their site. Woo!
Check it out here, and make sure you scroll through the rest of the site…they got some good stuff on there.
All the “Seal of Solomon” reviews you could ever want…in one place!
We’ve consolidated all of the reviews of the newest Ex Occultus one-shot “Seal of Solomon” over at the Saint James site so it’s easier for you, the reader, to do your thing and check them out.
The full list is here (under the image).
Interview with Cosmic Book News
My Saint James partner Jesse Young and I did an interview with the comic book site Cosmic Book News – where we discussed the comic industry, our series, the nature of digital publishing and more – which you can check out here.
Enjoy.
Poem: Lvoe
like a hundred cracks of thunder
or my brain seizing up, going all floppy on me
little whirlwind dreamscapes brought to life by a single touch
a single look
the look she knows how to throw
perfected since adolescence, perfected since her first crush on that boy, Kevin
her first kiss
but she can take that same look and change it, make it hard and mean
a woman scorned
her look like daggers coming fast and hard
a train barreling toward you
and you wonder what you did
what did I do?
but when its good its good and her body
you have it memorized
you know how it tastes
smells
feels against yours
and even on the worst of days when things are bad
between you two and the world
even on those days it’s pretty damn good and you wonder
how you could have ever lived without her
and during those moments the world is a very beautiful place
and you two, the last survivors of love, make it your own
Poem: Jodie
In her eyes I see the world.
Her laugh like a sunrise her smile says it all the world is hers and she has it
in her hands.
Too beautiful for words,
she sings the song that has no name.
For she is the one they sang of long ago:
She Who Knows How to Make Right Use
of the Heart.
New buttons! So shiny!
I wanted to make it as easy as possible for people to purchase my chap books and/or comics. So…introducing the new buttons!
The top button links to my Lulu storefront, which lists anything and everything I’ve printed through the site, and the second button, for now at least, links directly to the Saint James Ex Occultus page – there, at the bottom, you can purchase the different one-shots in a variety of formats (look for the “Buy Now” button). As other Saint James comics become available, I’ll post about them, so fear not.
Yay!
Protected: Getting There: The Sights, Sounds and Tastes of Seoul
Poem: Kate
(This first appeared on Year Zero Writers)
It’s that laugh of hers that gets me
(gets me every time)
like an electric shock it wakes me,
pounds me prattling into cohesion,
and with one look in her eyes
(those greenmarbled sunsets)
I know.
She sees the patterns no one else does,
the beauty of it all,
her words floating up and around
over me
over us
always beaming bright, that smile that laugh of hers
(those greenmarbled sunsets).