• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
cartoon face 512 pixels wide

Koss Works

Writing | Poetry | Art

  • Home
  • About Koss
  • Books
    • Dancing Backwards Towards Pluperfect
  • Visual Art
    • Photographs
    • Poetry | Video | Experimental Works
  • Awards & Honors
  • Publications
    • Poetry & Hybrid
    • Anthologies
    • Fiction, Flash, and Microfiction
    • Creative Nonfiction
    • Features
    • Reviews, Interviews & Mentions
    • Art and Illustration
    • Visual Poetry & Asemic Art
    • Photography
  • What’s New
  • Creative Services
    • Web Design and Website Update Services
  • Blog
  • Show Search
Hide Search

Publications

2023 Three-Quarter Year Publishing Update | Koss

November 3, 2023 ·

asemic art with earth tones, watercolor, and black ink characters in square format
Asemic Writing Image Published in Cutbow Quarterly

It’s been a busy publishing year and since creating a “What’s New” page, I’ve been really lazy about updating the site. I see people are actually looking at my blog, so I should be writing something brilliant for you (thank you for checking it out). Truth is, my Aquarian brain is sometimes visual, sometimes verbal, and sometimes able to write things. But I’ve mostly been in visual mode all year… so I hope you enjoy those things. I’ve had lots of publications since my last update. You will find some, but not all on my “What’s New” page. If you are not up to reading, you can certainly skip to that page for quick links. But know there are some erasure poems at the end of this article.

Compared to other years I submitted SIGNIFICANTLY less this year, but I did submit some. You may have read the popular blog post suggesting you submit 100 subs. I think 200-300 is a better range if you are serious about publishing. Of course, if you do long-form writing, 300 will probably not be possible, but if you write microfiction, flash, and poetry, maybe…


You will hear criticism about sending lots of subs and, of course, editors would like to feel their magazine is special so you should only submit to them and a couple of select others, but here’s the thing, their journals can still be special while you are trying to take care of yourself. Subbing in quantity is especially important for marginalized people as we don’t have access to the same networks and, I have to say, privileges that certain other groups have. This does not reduce it to a numbers game — you should still send to journals you like and editors you trust. If 300 is overwhelming, then start with 100. If you’re only submitting to say, those university presses and fancy publications, you might get a 3-percent placement. From what I’ve heard, this would not be a bad number, depending on the acceptance rates of the publications. But enough of my advice.

So here are a few highlights of my publishing life since April (when I published my last update). I had five poems including a new erasure published in Speakeasy, a new queer journal. They are to be compiled into their inaugural issue. If you like Transformers, you’ll like the erasure. It’s so nice to get a little love for erasure poems.

Cutbow included an asemic piece and used it for the cover (check out the main image on this page). If you haven’t seen Cutbow, it’s a very professionally managed (by editor, Arden Hunter) print and digital journal for experimental and visual poetry.

pink flamingos with beaver mag text and orange and pink psychadelic background

I have two Wuthering Heights visual erasures forthcoming in the print version of Permafrost. They say it will be released this month after a long delay. Fingers crossed. You can find more of my Wuthering Heights pieces here and here in several other journals including Sage Cigarettes and Beaver Mag, both run by lovely people, I can’t say enough nice things about the Sage Cigarettes staff (Sadee, L.E., Steph and all). Beaver Mag also included one of my crossword poem/collages in their “Tacky and Tasteless” issue this past summer. Beaver Mag is a queer-friendly newer journal with very diverse taste in art and poetry. They are LOVELY and friendly. You should send them work if they seem like a good fit.

black eyeglasses with purple lenses on pink background with promotional text

Another of my favorite journals for experimental work, Petrichor, also published crossword poems in their latest giant issue. They were published in the Pebbles section and they have a new future/sci-fi call up soon you might want to check out. I believe the deadline was extended, but I’d check out their Twitter or Blue Sky page for updates. Petrichor also blew me away with a BoTN nomination for an ekphrastic poem they previously published. Find it here. Seth (EIC) is another extremely professional editor and I highly recommend Petrichor, especially for experimental writing and visual poetry.

I have several new asemic writing pieces up at Up the Staircase Quarterly. They do an excellent job of displaying art and there’s lots to look at in this issue, so be sure to check it out. April is another super-nice-professional editor to work with.


I was lucky to get invited to Second Sunday readings. You already missed it, but it lives on YouTube.


And, finally, I was blessed to receive some Best of the Net nominations this year. You can read about them and find links to the work, along with many of the other nominees on this dedicated page. I’m very grateful to all of the editors for thinking of me, and this happened during a rather discouraging time… Being a writer and artist is a tough path, as I’m sure you know if you’re reading this.


Be well. Keep writing, painting, drinking coffee, and most of all, I hope you’re making space for joy. My recent joys include joining an asemic group on social and seeing all the wonderful work people do. There is something very different about taking in art as opposed to reading for me as it occurs in a “brain-rest” state. I highly recommend inviting visual art into your world. The other joy over the last couple days is the blackout rejection letter poems people are sharing on social. I’ll leave you with several I made. Thanks for stopping by.

Wuthering Heights Erasure Poem | Publication

May 13, 2023 ·

erasure poem white over a page of wuthering heights with jagget lines and holes

Grateful to have erasure work in (Re) An Ideas Journal. Thank you H.E. Fisher and Felice Neal for including me. Pleased to share space with James Diaz, M.A. Scott, Twila Newey, and everyone else!

Check out my other posts and pages for more Wuthering Heights visual poems. They are inspired by someone I love and lost but explore a range of subjects, including grief, women’s issues, and suicide.

See less

2023 Koss Publications | April Update

April 1, 2023 ·

  • Koss 2023 great big publication update—plus when Kali comes to straighten you out—replete with angry gods & convenient skip-to links for busy people
  • Linkables
  • Video Poems
  • Publication in San Pedro River Review
  • Through the Body’s Bramble (from tiny corpus)
  • Two Poems About Cranial Sacral Therapy from tiny corpus

Koss 2023 great big publication update—plus when Kali comes to straighten you out—replete with angry gods & convenient skip-to links for busy people

abstract kali image in blue and purple colors
Thank you Sonika Agarwal for the use of your Unsplash photo as a point of departure.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is beyond-the-frame-600.jpg

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).

Gut Slut Bone Milk II Anthology with photo and poem by koss on black background

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.

pastel handrawn spots and colored scribbles with text - color therapy for beginners - diode poetry

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?

Friday, Saturday flash promo with offwhite door and wall and text anti-heroin chic

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.

pink micro fiction promo for flash boulevard with ventroliquist dummy face and grunge text

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.

Harbor Editions 2023 microchapbook promo with pink background and winner and runnerup text

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.

Get Bent Bending Genres Anthology cover front and back with excerpt of koss zuihitsu

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.”

Linkables

  • Anti-Heroin Chic, #CW, “Friday, Saturday”
  • Anti-Heroin Chic, “Photos”
  • San Pedro River Review, see video below
  • Bending Genres, Get Bent, “Fall of Toby and Lady,” See original publication and purchase anthology
  • Flash Boulevard, four micro/flash fiction pieces
  • Gut Slut Press, Bone Milk II, see excerpts or purchase
  • diode poetry, Beyond the Frame, purchase
  • diode poetry (journal), 16th Anniversary Edition, “Color Therapy for Beginners”
  • (Re) An Ideas Journal, Wuthering Heights Erasure/Visual Poem (forthcoming)
  • Permafrost, Wuthering Heights Erasures/Visual Poems (due out in March?)
  • Moonpark Review, “The Short Lives of Wombats,” (due out in June)

Video Poems

Publication in San Pedro River Review

San Pedro River Review Summertime 2023 Issue

Through the Body’s Bramble (from tiny corpus)

Through the Body’s Bramble from tiny corpus

Two Poems About Cranial Sacral Therapy from tiny corpus

Two Poems about Cranial Sacral Therapy and Grief from tiny corpus

Bonemilk II from Gutslut Press | Koss

March 12, 2023 ·

Honored to be included in this cool anthology along with lots of edgy writers. Bonemilk II is the second anthology from Gutslut Press, edited by Aimee J. Sanghvi and P.D. Hogan. I have a poem, “You, Drawing” in this issue, along with a longer, experimental grief piece, “Dreaming in Tongues” and a caged angel photo. I’m grateful that the gut sluts at Gutslut Press have the courage to publish the hard stuff. Buy it here!

Bonemilk II Poems and Photography by Koss angel praying photo plug excerpt of poems on black background
Bonemilk II Poems and Photography by Koss

Bending Genres Issue 30 | Poems

March 12, 2023 ·

Honored to have two poems published in Bending Genres Issue 30. I’m also happy to be in the company of so many great writers including: Kim Magowan, Quinn Rennerfeldt, Hannah Greico, and many others. I’m behind in my posting and Issue 31 is live, so be sure to check that out too.

green mermaid tail, blue water, bending genres poetry poem text
Koss Poems in Bending Genres Issue 30

Asemic Writing in diode poetry by Koss

March 11, 2023 ·

Very happy to have some asemic writing published in diode poetry this past December. This is the second batch of visual poems Patty Paine published (see previous issue too). For more information about asemic writing, check out this book review in Art News.

three circles with excerpts of asemic writing by koss on black background with text
Asemic Writing by Koss in diode poetry
« Previous Page
Next Page »

Primary Sidebar

Feeling Social?

  • Instagram
  • Twitter

Featured Posts

green tomato

Instead of Writing, I Do This

red curtains with text from MIdway Journals 2025 writing contest winners in white art deco font.

Midway Journal 2025 1000 and Below Flash & Poetry Contest Winners

white box with promo text and pink details for a poetry book review in bending genres for dancing backwards towards pluperfect

Dancing Backwards Towards Pluperfect Book Review | Matthew Freeman | Bending Genres

earth-toned poetry book with birds on wire and promotional text about interview for Dancing Backwards Towards Pluperfect, a hybrid poetry book

Koss Interview by Patty Paine of Diode Editions

pink, red, and bluegreen collage cover of san pedro river review No 17, vol. 3

San Pedro River Review | Issue 17 | Vol. 2 |2025

violet background with five bookcovers for the Lammy Poetry Awards, 2025.

Lammy Awards 2025 | Dancing Backwards Towards Pluperfect

wigleaf top 50 promo with purple, red, black and white and Ran Off With the Star Bassoon text

Wigleaf Top 50, 2025

collage with text from an author interview and the cover of Chiron Review 136 (Spring) showing a drawing of two people kissing. Multi colors throughout.

Hannah Greico Interviews Koss in Chiron Review 136, Spring, 2025

Photo of print journal drawing reproduction of androgynous women in black dancing in a field with a tornado in the background.

The Pinch Journal | Issue 44.3 Spring 2025

woman on a trampoline with two kids watching and a windmill in the distance in black and white

Book Review Dancing Backwards Toward Pluperfect | Carla Sarett | Trampoline Poetry

Categories

  • Anthologies
  • Art
  • Asemic Writing & Art
  • Book
  • Book Reviews
  • Contests and Awards
  • Design
  • Experimental Writing
  • Features
  • Flash
  • General
  • Interview
  • Micro Fiction
  • Photography
  • Poem
    • Abecedarian
    • Aubade
    • Ekphrastic Poetry
    • Erasure Poetry
    • List Poem
    • Poem Forms
    • Prose Poem
    • Queer Poetry
    • Video Poem
    • Visual Poetry
    • Zuihitsu
  • Poetry Mini Reviews
  • Poetry Podcast
  • Poetry Reading
  • Publications
  • Random Stuff
  • Uncategorized
  • Web Design Tips

Through the Body’s Bramble

https://koss-works.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Through-the-Bodys-Bramble.mp3

Archives

Let’s Connect on Social!

  • Instagram
  • Twitter

Copyright © 2025 Koss | Log in