• 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
You are here: Home / Koss Blog

Koss Blog

Instead of Writing, I Do This

September 18, 2025 ·

lettuce, basil and tomatoes on and in front of porch with brown mulch
Porch plants

This spring and summer, instead of writing, I retreated from lit, (except for a thin online presence) and grew a garden. I was feeling tired, had a very difficult ’24 fall and winter with things going wrong on all fronts, expensive home and now auto repairs, and clients and friends blowing me off, causing hardship on all fronts. Also, my social/online community was ripped into fragments, and two of my accounts were penalized and destroyed by Meta and X. How could I publicize my book? I had worked years to connect with a community and grow those accounts, then, gone! Relationships diminished by algorithms.

I had already taken a pause in the fall while doing a Granta workshop and wading through a lot of problems, the loss of a family friend, and some strange family shit I can’t even write about. 2024 was a sucky year, it ranks among the worst, and it should have been great because my book released, and I had some writing windfalls, but…

I was trying to write memoir and felt like the universe was sabotaging my opportunity with security issues, family issues, and canceling clients with the accompanying financial troubles—the universe unleashing its players and tricksters, and me feeling helpless in all of it.

One day, in the fall of ’24 while I was attempting to finish up the workshop, my nervous system just shut down, and I said, fuck it, I’m going to try growing a garden again, and am going to make compost for the spring and recycle things on my land to enrich my soil. Escapist, maybe, but in my typically obsessive style, it became my main focus (along with my book release) and what I most cared about in those months. It can be liberating to separate from language and live in your body, I’ve found.

I had tried to grow one in 2019, the spring after Max died. Put hours into it and a lot of money, and in one night, the deer downed my beautiful tomatoes and practically everything (it must have been a herd). The main garden had large, four-foot fire rings I bought before before they became trendy. I’ve always liked plain, utilitarian things. Also, there are other, smaller and larger metal beds of various shapes scattered around the property.

I had planted memorial flowers around my property for Max, perennials, that were also eaten by the deer. Today, one lavender plant remains; it survived my neglect (also, deer don’t like lavender).

2019 Memorial Plants

After the deer invasion, I let everything grow over and it sat for several years until the fall of ’24 (when I decided to give it another shot). I bought some wire fencing used to make animal-proof cages, some posts, and hauled piles of grass and leaves which I meticulously chopped for organic compost. I added worm castings and other compost to the beds, which I, by then, knew had terrible soil (a bad online purchase dumped on my property). I raked, blew and chopped endless bags of leaves and covered the beds, which proved to be beneficial over the winter. I planted some bulbs, potatoes, and garlic for over winter, which turned out to be, mostly a failure, due to poor timing, bad soil, or bad luck.

I needed something to look forward to. Something that had nothing to do with humans judging, accepting, or rejecting me, either in literature or in my real life. Something that was mine and mine only. Something no one else, save for the weather gods and the beasts, could undo. I needed some hope when I had none. And know my lack of hope wasn’t due to organic depression or misfiring, it was because I was getting hit with a barrage of shit and bad luck. So much, it was hard to take, and this gone-hope, while exasperated by my personal “unluck,” seemed to be also part of something collective, given world events and the election, all hitting hard in a dark synchronicity.

For as much value as there is to be present, in the moment, what the gurus say, I find that hope is grounded in a future, in plans, and in possibilities, but also in the way we can openly greet the unknown… And we need hope to thrive, to even get through each day, and we need it for trusting the power of attention, intention, and all of the benefits of mindfulness. I can’t control who is in office, fascism, the publishing world, who buys my book, who parented me, who loves me and who doesn’t, but I can sync myself with nature and feel the powerful sense of belonging that comes with that, which, in my active, sweating, laborious meditation as I am working the earth, listening to the plants, and observing the magic order of nature, feels greater than all the inequities and injustices I have been, and continue to be pained by, like so many other millions of people… If I could only do this, garden, nothing else, I would be happy all the time.

Max, who is now gone, started gardening the year she suicided. She rented an allotment and built some beds—spent hours in the hot sun, removing grass, refreshing the shed that came with the plot. The day, she left this world, we were supposed to build beds with some thick, green timber I bought…

rich black compost pile om yellow green grass

She wanted to worm compost, in part, because it could be done in a small space. Assured me that was the best way. I knew nothing of it without her mentioning it, but I have taken her advice, which is only one small way in which she lives on. It’s not as macabre as it sounds. I acquired a multi-level worm hotel from Facebook Marketplace for cheap and acquired some red wiggler worms. I’m still learning to care for them.

There’s a learning curve to any composting, and it has really been just this spring and summer where I learned to hot compost outdoors, and I also worked out the ratio of food/water/bedding/etc. for the composting worms. I admit there is still something that gives me the willies about worms, but I have a wee bit of something nurturing in me, and I liked having something to take care of, or a worm someone. What I didn’t know was that somehow gardening and learning composting, all the kinds, and DOING IT, would help me somehow better accept death and the painful comings and goings of people in life, the way some things are seasonal and/or the cyclical nature of all things.

Porch plants

I was once a caregiver for someone I adored. I am not a caregiver type, however, as much as partners and others have wanted to make me so. I’m weird. Withdrawn. I don’t like schedules that aren’t of my own making. But somehow, this year, I’ve tuned into the needs of plants. Each day in the morning, I feel a kind of hope. The first thing I do is head out to the plant beds and see what is blooming, admire the bees pollinating, and watch the butterflies and wildlife, all doing what they were intended, or just what they know. There’s a sense of not knowing what will come next, how big it will be, how green and what shade, and, of course, how long it will be here.

 plants in green

I deliberately overcrowded most plants, so some of the beds look like mini forests. In the beginning, they were lush and green. I ignored what the seed packets said about spacing (which are really geared toward commercial farming) and let the plants touch each other. The tomato forest with one-foot spacing I chose not to prune did the best. It was god-awful hot, and as it turned out, they needed the shade provided by their unpruned side shoots. Plus, tomato plants are social. They like to touch each other and other plants. They relish their basil and hot pepper friends. And the lone lavender plant was thrilled to have companions, thrived in fact, after years of neglect. I am letting the plants live their full lives by not pruning them to death, and they are still giving me something, food on my table, the anticipation of color, the gorgeous, greens, oranges, yellows and reds.

The one bed, where I did properly prune and mulch and spaced them more widely, performed poorly by comparison, until I moved (crowded) six sizeable container tomato plants into the mosquito tent with them. Then they all went crazy, their “arms” grew and entwined; they became a wild jungle. Then they started blooming and producing fruit. It was amazing. Perhaps I would get way more fruit if I pruned the hell out of them, like every YouTube gardener insists upon, but here’s the thing, I think they are happy and thriving in their overgrown, tangling green state, and that was as important to me as food.

Next year, I may experiment more, along with building a long overhead tract with hanging apparatus for them, or maybe arched cattle panels to support vines. But to imagine a plant possessing its own joy, that a plant has a consciousness, is part of my spiritual growth. Did you know plants/forests/ecosystems have mycorrhizal networks that extend for miles and allow plants to communicate and even transport nutrients to one another? In return, plants give the fungi sugars and carbs. So plants have a collective consciousness too, and to foster this on my property, even on a very small scale has made me hopeful, but also, I gradually realized that I was part of this magical thing, these processes that are what nature intended in a world being destroyed by industry and greed. By opting out of certain things, I was opting into something life changing, potentially self-sustaining, and moral. And, I have to add, spiritual. A lot of it was paying attention and listening to what the plants have to say, how they live in the world.

This year, rather than doing expensive fencing, I cobbled temporary fencing and rods together to hold up plants, protect them from wildlife, and secure some food for me, not just the creatures. It has been amazing and transformational. I made most meals from scratch once the garden started blooming and had fresh salads for weeks with fistfuls of herbs. Cucumbers haven’t tasted this good in years, nor tomatoes. It has made me realize even the organic food I bought at stores is crappy.

yellow spaghetti squash on ground

And now it’s September (I started writing this in August), and my community, did, in fact show up throughout ’24 and ’25, despite the ways we became scattered, as did many other folks to promote, interview, and review my book. I am, indeed extremely blessed and humbled for all of the support I received. But still, just as expected, the penalties on my accounts profoundly impacted my reach. At the end of July, the book was named a Lammy finalist, and, this fall, I placed third in a writing contest, all wonderful things, and yet the wind has again shifted, and life has thrown some shit my way and some devastating blows to Americans, ICE is disappearing people en masse as we watch, helpless. NEA grants were canceled (can these be an unrealized freedom?), an influential/harmful person was assassinated, and people want to re-frame his life to suit their agendas, and much of our own lives are presented more as fiction than fact, I find, all while our first amendment rights are being stripped away (and this is only a bit of it). And then there is Gaza/Israel… Devastating, and so much suffering with no end in sight…

So here we are again, and how do we find hope in these existential/surreal times… To turn on the news, go on social, or where I live, leaving one’s home even feels like submitting to gaslighting. It is sometimes too much to hold.

But I occupy myself with tasks, chopping the dried, finished plants, the once-green cucumber leaves and dark-spotted basil, all for compost while preparing several new beds for next year with finished compost I made and some improvised hugelkultur from the mess the tree trimmers left in spring. Preparing piles of dead wood for chopping. Filling tin-can ovens with wood chips for making bio-char and looking forward to the burning and renewal of the soil next year, as I wonder about the larger burning and where we are headed as a country and a world. Hope in uncertainty is a task of the tallest order. What are you doing for hope these days? Does it involve color or language, a calendar or a candle? A tree, a song, or a soft hug from someone you love?

I wish I had more answers or any, but sometimes hope is just a lot of work, as is happiness. Maybe we can hope that from all of this violence, disruptive politics and burning that we will find some fertility in the ash and that a new order will emerge up the road. It is the age of Aquarius after all, meaning change, the transformational kind… Let’s imagine a world in which people behave like mycorrhizal networks, sensing what the “other” needs, rushing to provide sustenance. I see it in my small lit community. We survive, it seems. Thank you for the support, kindness, and for fostering possibilities—one of hope’s more elusive qualities—from the bottom of my heart. And thank you for stopping by.

Lavender Fields, England

Midway Journal 2025 1000 and Below Flash & Poetry Contest Winners

September 15, 2025 ·

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

So happy to have placed 3rd in Midway Journal’s Contest! Congratulations to the other winners and finalists and big thanks to judge, Lee Roripaugh, Ralph Pennel, Suzanne Richardson, and all of the editors of Midway Journal. From their promotions, here’s the complete list:

Winners:

1st Prize: “Grooves,” by Jay McKenzie

2nd Prize: “Beak,” by Meggie Royer

3rd Prize: “How to Avoid or Survive a Crocodile Attack,” by Koss

Honorable Mention: “Mushroom Hunting: A Villanelle for The End of The World,” by Emma Kaiser

Lee Horikoshi Roripaugh had this to say about the first-place winner:

“Grooves” sings its strange song with verve, elan, and surrealistic flourish. The language here is a tour de force of musical word play and sonic artistry. With powerful subtexts of desire, pain/self-harm, ritual, and the sacrifices of art, this story is a dazzler.

Finalists:

JJ Pena

Kelly Gray

Tiezst Taylor

Chey Dugan

Ryan Russell

Sejal Spicely

Rachel Bae

Jennifer Pinto

Lynne Schmidt

Nicole Reed

Jordan Franklin

Semifinalists:

Richard Hamilton

Zachary Bos

William Preston

Hunter A. Allund

Debra Coleman

Joe Dooley

Pamela Balluck

Look forward to reading the winners and the issue in October!

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

September 15, 2025 ·

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

Honored to have a micro review in Bending Genres written by poet, Matthew Freeman! Check it out here, and find out more about the book on Diode’s site. You can purchase there, or, if you’re in the U.S. I still have some copies as of 9/13/25.

Koss Interview by Patty Paine of Diode Editions

September 2, 2025 ·

poetry over with earth tones and mint green with promotional text and review quotes

I’m very happy to have this interview by Patty Paine of Diode Editions in their Substack newsletter. Note you can access it here. I’d be really grateful also, if you share this on social. We discuss working-class writing, humor, and talk a bit about my contest-winning and Lammy-shortlisted chapbook, Dancing Backwards Towards Pluperfect. And there are some bonus photos you might enjoy.

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

August 21, 2025 ·

collage cover of san pedro river review no. 17, vol. 3 with pink, spruce green, and cropped women parts

Pleased to have work in San Pedro River Review, No. 17, Vol. 3, Fall 2025. This issue has color art pages and work by several artists including JC Alfier. This is a gratitude poem from a series. They are a sort of spiritual pulling oneself up by the bootstraps. Find the issue on Amazon.

Text photo from Koss poem of a publication in San Pedro River Review.

Lammy Awards 2025 | Dancing Backwards Towards Pluperfect

July 31, 2025 ·

violet background with five book covers for the Lambda Literary Lammy Poetry Awards, 2025.

I’m humbled and blown away to learn my chapbook, Dancing Backwards Towards Pluperfect is a finalist for the 2025, 37th Annual Lambda Lammy Poetry Awards! The winner has not been revealed and will be announced later in the fall with an online awards ceremony. Read the entire list and find out more about Lambda here.

I’m very grateful to Patty Paine and the Diode Editions team for the nomination and for awarding the book in the 2023 chapbook contest. Note it was published in October of 2024 and you can get a signed copy on my site, or purchase directly from Diode.

Also, I’m very grateful to the Lambda staff for this and their ongoing support to queer writers, and of course to the judges who generously donated their time.

This came at a good time, a heartbreaking time for this country, and at a very strange time for me. As much as I’ve always liked being an underdog, the last year and a half or so have been challenging on most fronts, so this designation feels like a giant nod from the universe that there’s someone out there to receive these words, these queer words, these grief words. And I’m happy to connect with other queers, here, now, and later; a little bit of me will continue to resonate even when the universe ushers me into the next stage… (not to be morbid), and jeez, previous finalists and winners have been people/lesbians like Minnie Bruce Patt, Audre Lorde, Eileen Myles, and Adrienne Rich!!! It’s such an honor!

I’m very grateful to everyone who generously supported this book in all the myriad ways. Big love to you, my wonderful little community.

Front and back covers of Dancing Backwards Towards Pluperfect with aerial view, earthtones, and black birds on telephone wire on right arranged vertically
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