Koss Works
Writing | Poetry | Art
Thrilled to have a piece in the latest issue of San Pedro River Review, “The Opt-out Mother,” an austere piece about ubiquitous mother energy, loss, and well, I won’t spoil it for you. There are lots of great writers and photographers in here, including Marge Piercy. I hate to be swoony, but it’s kind of surreal to be living in the same pages as some of my heroes.
Feral Poetry Space Issue–No. 9 is out today and I’m pleased to be in the company of some interesting poets including Jennifer Martelli. The issue includes a huge selection of 49 poems, all space-themed. Some are about stars, some planets, and some aliens. This piece is a commentary about cyberspace and its dehumanizing aspects, some views Max and I shared. This poem had its ass kicked, and I’m glad it found this excellent home. It’s always an honor to have poetry included in Feral. I have lots of publications coming out in August, so please check back. Here’s the poem.
Honored to have poems today in Harpy Hybrid Review (plus some images and an Imayo broadside). There are other links, but for today, here is one, my usual square “album cover.” There’s lots of great writing in this issue (will add links later). These editors were some of the nicest to work with. They even asked for me to send them an image contract, which I sent. I will be writing a post soon about contract writing for creatives.
Okay, I’m totally giving it all away here, but do read the issue because it has interesting work that is not mine including work by Shareen Murayama, a poet I admire very much (plus she did the cover artwork). Also, I do have explanations not replicated here. This piece is an imayo, a Japanese poetry form originally intended to be sung. It has a fixed syllabic structure: 7, 5, 7, 5, 7, 5, 7, and 5. Some imayos were very melancholy and some conveyed spirituality (you can read more about online and maybe even write some). I feel a bit uncomfortable about this piece as I really feel I borrowed it (I’m not Japanese). I know many poets write/steal/borrow forms including popular haiku, and I write a lot of zuihitsu-like pieces, but this one . . . I hope I honored the tradition which I feel informed this poem, and yet, this was written with the purest intentions and that it achieves a kind of stillness. You can read a bit about it on Harpy Hybrid’s page. Read about mahasamadi online (Sanskrit or Hindi) and in the calm of this piece, there’s something potentially socially explosive if read contextually (Max completed suicide . . .). I will write more about this aspect in some essays in the near future.
I like how the words form a path that curves opposite of the photo, creating a slight tension or opposition. Note, Harpy Hybrid is hosting a reading on July 17th. Will add this to my calendar.
Happy to have five poems in Dreich Magazine (I believe the official name is now the Dreich Quarterly Review). They have changed dramatically since sending them a year or so ago, but happy to have different versions of Max poems sprinkled like ashes throughout the galaxy. “Max’s Bedroom” is an American sonnet about the aftermath of death. It later was reduced (and is no longer a sonnet). Writing is about attachment in so many ways . . . The process . . . The letting go . . .
Dreich, edited by Jack Caradoc, is a newly resurrected print journal from Scotland, and produces “bus-stop” or pamphlet-style quarterly journals and poet-dedicated pamphlets (we call them chapbooks in the U.S.). They are also putting out anthologies. Some of their issues appear to be available for viewing on Issuu. If you’re looking for their site, here it is.
And no, you’re not imagining it crooked. It’s late. I won’t offend any gods with perfection tonight or ever. “Without You” also got cut later, but I am attached to the “chopped up hair,” and glad it is here, chopped up . . . Max knows what it means. And I write, also, to the dead. “Headache” is about neuralgia and the “god’s mouth” or “mouth of god” is a reference I once found when studying acuppressure and marma points (Ayurveda), which basically refers to the atlas, which must be angled properly in order for your brain to properly function.
Pleasantly surprised to find my poem, “My Therapist Sez” was featured on Diode Poetry’s main page (along with an excerpt. It may disappear by the time you find this, so here’s the link to the entire poem. Patty Paine has been good to me and Diode is publishing some really great work in the journal (and in books and chapbooks).
Update: this poem won the 2021 Wergle Flomp Humor Award. Read about the contest on Winning Writer’s site. Listen to the poem on my audio page.
I published a Kafkaesque poem about the trauma of birth in Mom Egg Review #19. If you dig cockroaches and queer cowgirls, this is for you. Can’t share the whole poem yet but I might record it. You can buy the issue from the address shown in the graphic. Too busy to make my own poem album cover, but here is the Mom Egg Review one below. First, an excerpt:
“and you’re left alone in your existential freedom,
so mount Kafka’s cockroach, Gregor, and gallop happy,
butt-slung in black cowhide chaps, yee-hawing queerity
across the embarrassing town you were born in (Howell).”
Bye for now.
