Koss Works
Writing | Poetry | Art
I’m honored and grateful to receive a Best Small Fictions nomination from Midway Journal for a flash piece, “No One Knew,” one of my most-read pieces, published in 2024. Find the other nominees in this promo…
(6 minute read)
Thank you for visiting. I’ve decided to post this early because I’m not expecting to have any more publications this year. Some folks do an “eligibility post” because of nominations. To skip to the link list, click here. Republished pieces are clearly marked with a bold “reprint” and many are new. I’m including art publications, interviews, readings, and and other stuff just to be a completest, and you can see the visual pieces on my visual Instagram account.
It has been a mixed-bag year which is ending on a very troublesome note with the election results and its accompanying existential shit. There have also been blessings in the form of people, literary wins, etc. with a big gift being the publication of my debut book (from Diode Editions), a very good thing for which I’m grateful to Patty Paine, Law Alsobrook, and Zoe Shankle Donald for. And there were also many other publications, the joy of seeing some of my friends published, some poetry readings, new writer friends, and a good start to next year’s garden, which is worthy of it’s own blog post. ’24 has included, I’ll admit, some heartbreak and a lot of hard work, but with rewards to accompany it.
It’s also been the year I stopped trying a lot of things, and well, I let go of a lot of STUFF, including some dreams. Some lit journals. I stopped counting publications, stopped tallying rejections, and quit Duotrope, which saved my attention for other things. I muted annoying people also, and I stopped wanting to be published by some journals. I made a big effort to be more intentional and not give my energy to people who don’t value it also. Fortunately there are some who do…
I’m hoping to usher in something good and new in ’25, despite the anticipated political and social upheavals. I’m putting most of my hope for America’s future in millennials and Gen Z as I think they embody the Age of Aquarius spirit… and are not afraid of change… Or at least that’s how my Aquarius brain sees it. The fear of change, I’m afraid, is a very self-sabotaging energy, which I feel certain parties have shown over and over. And there’s my big political statement for the year. That’s all.
I cried my guts out over the 2016 election, but this year, I started planning and preparing the earth for a garden, a glorious, scalable vegetable garden, a resistance garden, a fuck-you inflation, fuck-Trump-humping, white supremacist-hater-crotch-rocket-gun-happy-neighbor-vegetable-haven. I’ll let you know how it goes next year.
My book release nearly coincided with the election (October 30th), but it was a joyful thing despite the election dread as some people in my writing community made it matter, and I’m so very grateful. Seeing people share photos of the book online and share kind words such as, “I couldn’t put it down” and “I laughed and I cried,” really warmed my heart. I don’t think I could ask for a better reaction. Also, some very kind folks volunteered to interview me and review the book. Please see links, my Instagram account (I have two), and for this year, my Unlinktree page for quick links to recent publications.
I published a lot of reprints this year, submitted way less, had a couple of finalist awards, and it’s all great. I’m grateful for the journals/editors who published me−and grateful for the nominations for Best of the Net for art. I received a bursary for a Granta memoir workshop which was an interesting experience (it isn’t quite finished). I didn’t finish the book but will have something significant to pitch.
This year has gone by really quickly, and I’m feeling super-run down as I embark on this last leg of it. Thank you, friends for being in my world this year. I think a lot about support and what it means to “show up,” what a mysterious and sometimes elusive thing it has been throughout my life. My grandparents who mostly raised me were clearly supportive, but many others in my family and circle, not at all, so when I found support accidentally in the lit community, well, y’all showed up at a good time in my life. I appreciate you, your work, your camaraderie. I’m sad to see people dumping Twitter, but they may be back, as this has happened before. And Instagram seems to be changing shape and people communicate more there… We’ll see. Enjoy your holidays, if you holiday, be kind to yourselves, and hang in there. We go on… We keep trying… We persevere.
Thanks for checking out this page. I hope you find/read/hear something that resonates with you here.
*Note if you are here considering eligibility, my ’23 year-end publication list is here!
It has been a very busy month, so I thought I’d do a quick post with some links to things. But along with these publications, I want to share that I’ll be doing more self publishing, along with producing some prints, and further off, some broadsides. Please keep me in mind if you have a broadside project. I’d love to work together.
I have self published in some form since I was very young from the third-grade comic books, to punk art xerox books made in college and after. But in recent years, I got on the hamster wheel of publishing in journals, and as you probably know, it can be EXHAUSTING!
I’m not knocking it. I appreciate all the labor that goes into publishing, and am super-grateful for my publications. It is nice to see your work in print, online, and to get the recognition and approval that comes with it–and, of course, benefit from the readership a journal has built. I will still publish in zines. I’m not quitting. Just considering other ways to get work seen.
Mythic Picnic, a Twitter Zine (see my publication link below) also got me to thinking about alternative ways to publish work. I think publishing on social is really fabulous and empowering. You should check their account and see what they’re up to (and maybe even send them something. They consider previously published too.
A couple of writers reminded me of what is great about DIY print publishing. Those writers are Jimmy Broccoli and Angel Rosen. Both publish their own poetry books, and Jimmy also publishes anthologies of writers he likes.
Services like Lulu have made it really easy to self publish–and no I’m not endorsing them as a service. But some of these services even allow publishing from Word. No InDesign skills necessary.
I’m getting a little ahead of myself. I do not have a book I’m publishing yet (I do have a book Diode is publishing in the fall), but I will most likely be publishing an asemic art book–plus I have some prints in the works, which will be listed here on my website once the details are ironed out. Plus, I’ll be offering packages with my Diode book coming out this fall.
So my less ambitious self publishing project is just that I’m going to be publishing more visual work online, both here and on social. I created an additional Insta account. This one, for now, is public. Please follow it here if you need some visual pleasure in your mornings (perusing art on Insta is one of my favorite activities). Koss Visual Poetry should be interpreted in the broadest sense. Consider I’m a hybrid writer with blurry boundaries, although I like to think my real-life ones are fairly intact. All of the works will have a visual element, even if they are concrete poems… Think erasure poems, collage, my crossword puzzle poems, and asemic art.
The coolest thing about online publishing for art is that artists get to show their work without it having to be legitimized by dealers. And there is potential to reach much bigger audiences, and not share fifty-percent with dealers.
Also, did you know that you can self nominate for Best of the Net when you publish on a blog (writing and art)? Most journals don’t nominate for art, so there’s that. And Winning Writers hosts an annual contest, The North Street Book Prize, for self published books with multiple genre categories (I’m sure there are other contests out there also). I believe you can submit to some Lambda prizes too… Also, there is the Eric Hoffer Award, which is open to small presses and self-publishing authors. So maybe you don’t have to wait and hope for a nomination. It’s okay to be a bit proactive about your work.
Self publishing is personally empowering. No Submittable or fees. No waiting. No lost submissions. It’s immediate gratification with no anxiety, no rejection.
And now, the promised links to April pubs. Thank you lovely editors for the publications. And see you, readers, on social. Thanks for stopping by!
And don’t forget to follow my new Insta account. And if you have any thoughts about self publishing, feel free to share in the comments.
2023 has been a year of uncertainty, change, and loss, but it ends on a welcome high note as Diode Editions has picked up my long chapbook, Dancing Backwards Towards Pluperfect, for publication. See more about this in my contest announcement post. The book will be published in 2024, and I’ll post updates as things progress (here and on social).
Rather than make this a 1/4-year post, I’m switching the format and including the entire year’s publications and events on this page. My publication page has grown unwieldy, as has my unlinktree page, which I’m shortening. So here they all are in one convenient place, minus the publications that didn’t appear as scheduled in November. If they miraculously appear online this year, I’ll be updating this and posting on social. It’s Tuesday and I’m glowing inside and grateful to the editors who have published my work, the folks who read and shared my work all year, and especially grateful to Diode who has supported my work over the last few years. I respect their mission to publish diverse voices and am honored to be one of their authors.
Erasure Poem | (Re) Ideas
Erasure Art and Asemic Work x4 | Sage Cigarettes
Photograph | Bonemilk II Anthology
Crossword Poem/Collage | Beaver Magazine
Visual Poetry x 6 | Anti-Heroin Chic
Crossword Poems x 2 | Petrichor, Pebbles Vol. 3
Asemic Pieces & Erasure Collage x 4 | diode poetry Vol. 16., No. 3
Asemic Cover Art and Inside Publication | Cutbow Quarterly
Visual Poem | Beaver Magazine, October ’23
Asemic Pieces x 3 | Up the Staircase Quarterly Nov. ’23
Cover Art | Gone Lawn 52, Nov. ’23
Three Poems | Anti-Heroin Chic
Five Poems | Speakeasy
Storm | San Pedro River Review Vol. 15, No. 2
Color Therapy for Beginners (hybrid, prose, zuihitsu?) | diode poetry
Ms. Liberty | Beyond the Frame Anthology
Two Poems | Bone Milk II Anthology
To the Girl | San Pedro River Review Vol. 15, No. 1
And So On in a Week (hybrid, zuihitsu, prose?) | Bulb Culture Collective
47/August 11/Black Synchronicity (hybrid list poem) | Red Ogre Review
Eight poems | Roi Fainéant
The Short Lives of Wombats | MoonPark Review
Four Micros | Flash Boulevard
Fall of Toby and Lady (hybrid zuihitsu/published in the journal too) | Get Bent Anthology
Friday, Saturday | Anti-Heroin Chic
Backyard Passages (double haibun) | Soflopojo
Photograph BoTN | Anti-Heroin Chic
Artwork BoTN | Sage Cigarettes
Cover Art BoTN | Gone Lawn
Prose Poem BoTN | MoonPark Review
Poem BoTN | Petrichor
Second Sunday Readings | YouTube
Make the Yuletide Gay, Queer Reading & Open Mic (Dec. 24) | Sign up
In 2024, if all goes as intended, I have publications forthcoming in Reckon Review, Action, Spectacle, Sugar Sugar Salt Lit, Bull, Fifth Wheel Press’s garden anthology, Milk and Cake’s Dead of Winter III anthology, and Amy Marques’ Duets Anthology, so lots to look forward to in publishing.
Happy end of the year to you and may the new year bring you love, health, and everything you need.
I see people doing eligibility posts for the fiction award nominations on Twitter. I’m not sure about the etiquette here, but here are my fiction, flash, and microfiction pieces published in ’23. And they could benefit from some more reach. Grateful for the publications, y’all. Thank you for checking these out.
While I’ve been super-blessed with numerous publications recently (thank you, kindly, editors), the strangeness of this year has given me pause on all fronts including curbing my submissions and creative production. Of course, I’ve had worse years with more calamity—even recent ones, but this is like a cosmic tornado, kundalini-crisis-scale stuff where all you want to do is take a spring walk and the sky hurls shitting cows, canceled things, broken furnaces, and, of course, rejections from overhead, and mostly not the nice smudgy-ink handwritten ones that don’t really feel like rejections. That was in another incarnation, actually.
You know you should take cover, but there are only vast roundup-laden fields in shades of faded VanDyke brown surrounding you—and no socialist-sexy-dyke-farmers-with-tractors sowing those fields. There’s nowhere to hide from the insistent sky, its angry, driven gods and their secrets, and relentless unmet needs and bullshit. (Note I’m more at peace than I seem, but I like how this sounds. I’m sort of a writer, after all).
Whether this life shit is due to karmic debt, a cosmic bad hand, or just my own bungling is unknown, but we are living in the age of Kali Yuga, and things have not been easy. *If things are easy for you, and you have a success secret, feel free to leave it in a comment. Feel free to also indicate if Kali (the goddess) has chopped off your ego or the ego of someone you know. What might this even look like? Did you make awkward small talk after she did the deed?
From what I understand, Kali shows up for writers all the time. I saw a somewhat funny video by a healer (Tanishka) that implanted some of this imagery in my head, so I can’t take full credit here, but Hindu goddesses have always resonated with me. So back to comments, please do leave them: Your comments remind me I’m not alone in the cyber void and WordPress is not really my personal diary after all.
My Submittable queue is sparer than my vegetable/fruit bins in my broken fridge, but it’s okay. As I trudge through life sludge and sundry disappointments while worrying excessively about the predetermined and determined things, I know it’s cool to take a break and reassess (what I tell other writers) where I’ve been and where I’m headed, and don’t worry about me. I’m fine because I take ashwagandha. ;-).
*If you’re here to find links to my recently published work, feel free to zoom down the page using my magic link and skip the details. Or check the summary above or click to scroll down to see some cool video poems from recent publications, losing winners, etc. When I feel stuck in life, I provide dizzying options for bouncing on a page, which is actually a lot easier in terms of movement—plus you can just sit there. *Hint, if you follow me on Instagram, I usually get around to posting there. I know it’s the show-and-tell platform (do they do that anymore in school?), but rest assured, there won’t be a zillion selfies in my car there. It’s mostly art, poems, and other people’s work I share.
If all this damn text scares you, I don’t blame you—it fucking scares me too! Someone throw us a life jacket! This blog post was modeled after my grandmother’s Canadian cousin Vera’s family update letters that no one wanted to read, but that she sent out religiously after each annual camping adventure with that Texan dude she abducted after they both became suddenly single in their late 60s. Like the gods with their cows, she was determined in all the ways, which included driving her big RV across the continent, changing tires, starting multiple health food stores, practicing homeopathy (along with pendulum reading—plus other kinds of divination), and bagging conservative Texan widows she mistook for exotic, all while proselytizing religion (Reorganized Latter Day Saint). She was amazing really—in all the juggling, comical, and spectacular ways. He was, however, unremarkable and a know-it-all—which spared the rest of us from having to know or contribute anything to the get togethers other than food.
I realize something Vera didn’t: Nobody likes to read, and the Book of Mormon is no exception to this fact (I say this as one who was raised Reorganized Latter Day Saint—the book is frightening—the decapitations especially—none of it stuck—I had my own “non-denom” thing going on, and yes, I realize Kali is not cuddly, but I just can’t resist a sword-swinging goddess, as she showed me this year). Without friction, I accept the failure of our culture to appreciate words including RLS ones (also because I take ashwagandha). But I write anyway because I have compulsions and other things wrong with me. But why do you read?
What are you doing here, really? Do you know? Thank you for coming, regardless. I love you (really).
Despite my complaints this year, which I’ve really only dramatically hinted at, I’m blessed, like I said, to have some work coming out, so this post is, among other things, a gratitude post to those who had the kindness, discernment, and, in some instances, guts to publish my work. Again, the links are in a convenient clickable list below, not because I want you to go away, but because I love you enough to convenience you. I have work included in several anthologies this year, including Gut Slut Press’s Bone Milk II, Bending Genre’s Get Bent, and diode poetry’s Beyond the Frame (an ekphrastic anthology based on Patty Paine’s photos). All of these are fabulous! I’m so grateful to the editors and volunteers! The gut sluts at Gut Slut Press publish some really experimental and difficult work, and they can because they’re gut sluts. One of my pieces is a sprawling, hallucinogenic, trauma piece, plus a photo and a reprinted piece called, “You Drawing,” also published in Bending Genres.
In journals, I have a range of micro, flash, poetry, photographs, and erasure art published or forthcoming. I had a sort of fun, yet strange, “zuihitsuish,” poetic manual called “Color Therapy for Beginners” published in diode’s 16th anniversary issue. Couldn’t have written this piece without working a marketing job for years which included writing about organizing and decor and feigning interest in plastic yard rocks and chrome shelving. I’m hoping to write more pieces that riff off this past experience. I generally don’t aim to write likable things, but this one should be a pleaser with straightish women, trans women, queers, toy collectors, and well, everyone.
I also had a piece published in San Pedro River Review (I’m so glad neither the Alfiers nor Patty Paine have grown tired of me). I made short videos for these. I know some might think it’s grandiose to make videos and album covers for individual poems, but if you don’t celebrate your own stuff, who will?
Anti-Heroin Chic published photos and one of my most important pieces, a flash, about suicide, “Friday, Saturday.” This piece has garnered some mixed attention from good to really bizarre. As with previous suicide pubs, I immediately lost about 10 Twitter followers (talk about people not liking to read). The surprising twist though, Twitter friends were generous to share, and this piece is becoming one of my most-read pieces along with another piece published by Anti-Heroin Chic. So along with the usual unfollowing, I was really touched by the support. This was the last “must-publish” piece from this body of work. I’m sure I’ll still need to write about grief and suicide loss, but it felt good to put the lid on this particular container. I’m so grateful to Dylan and James for this publication—and to Roy for the photo selections.
Flash Boulevard accepted four micro-ish fiction pieces. So grateful to Francine Witte for this publication, which includes grief, rats who are culinary experts, naked bosses, and ventriloquist dummies. These pieces span many years, so it’s nice to see them share a page.
Also, I have work coming out any minute in Permafrost (the print issue) and (Re)An Ideas Journal (a Wuthering Heights erasure). Not sure about the dates. I thought March and April on these.
On other good notes, my micro-chap, tiny corpus was a runner-up/finalist in Harbor Editions contest. Congrats to Donna Spruijt-Metz, the winner, and all the finalists and semi-finalists. Ya’all should be proud. I decided to publish the poems in no particular order on Instagram (follow me to read them)—I post lots of graphics there, including most of my over-the-top “album covers” for my poems. I may illustrate them and publish a book at a later date, but right now, at least they are out there. All but one appeared previously in journals. The cranio poems in video below include a soundtrack that might induce a trance—or just put you to sleep.
If you made it to this point, the rewards are below. Or maybe the rewards are scattered throughout. I’m not likely to write anything this long in the future, and eventually, I’ll be posting short pieces about sundry things, including other people’s work, which I have done a bit already. Also, I’m working on a gallery of artwork, just something basic. If you need cover art, illustration, or web design services, feel free to contact me using my web form. Thank you so much for stopping by. Without you, there’d be little reason to do this! Of course, I’m open to you proving me wrong about “no one likes to read.”