Koss Works
Writing | Poetry | Art
Very honored to have two poems in Feral Poetry this month. One is a sort of zuihitsu abecedarian and the other is about suicide and shaming. Too much going on to make photos for now, unfortunately. Here are the links, however, and there’s lots of other interesting work. Feral is a newer feminist-leaning hip journal made with love. Five for and Through the Body’s Bramble.
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.
Update: Lumiere Review disappeared themselves and their magazine in 2024 after holding a call for a new issue earlier in the year. Note their GoFundMe is still active. They offered no explanation to the community and their editor refused to answer queries. This was very sad, as it was a promising ‘zine that myself and many others supported. It’s also sad when your important grief work is discarded so callously. I am not the only writer who was publishing about suicide and other difficult topics. I will be writing more about writing, publishing, and grief in the near future and updating this page. Alternate Thanksgiving was published in December (uncannily) in Chiron’s ’24 winter issue. Lumiere Review is now some kind of girly game/gambling site, so if you also published there, I recommend removing your links so they don’t redirect to the site. Also, dead links hurt your Google ranking (that was how I discovered this–analytics)!
Pleased to have two pieces from One for Sorrow published in The Lumiere Review today. “Alternate Thanksgiving” is the first piece in the book. “Twelve Past Dead” appears in a different form (two consecutive poems) in the book. Know that each contains references to grief and/or suicide. There are other poems in the issue that do as well. Note the content warnings in headers, a great idea that I’d like to see other journals implement. Links removed because Lumiere Review is now some kind of girly game site. However, you can find “Alternate Thanksgiving” here or in the winter ’24 issue of Chiron. I also have an indigenous Thanksgiving piece published in this issue called “Giving Thanks.”
