Koss Works
Writing | Poetry | Art
I’m honored to have a strange, mystical synesthetic poem, “Hue Sung,” in the latest issue of Red Ogre Review. There’s an eclectic mix of work in this issue, including art, prose poems, and poems. This piece will also be in their fall anthology. The acceptance came fast and the piece was up quickly. I love editors who are so professional and efficient. Looking forward to what Red Ogre does in the future.
Hyacinth, a gorgeous new journal that publishes a range of poetry, photography, and art, published a suite of photographs, August, on August 11, the anniversary of Max’s suicide. Three of these were taken with her by my side a couple of days before she died. Two were shot shortly after. One angel piece also appeared in Harpy Hybrid, who published several poems and photos last year. It was kind and thoughtful of the editors to publish them on this day. They are also publishing a poem about healing from grief in November.
The above photo was taken with Max two days before she suicided. This one was not included in the review. A black and white version previously appeared in Harpy Hybrid Review.
How lucky can I be? Bending Genres included a flash, Sister Story, which I wrote in my twenties called Sister Story in issue 28. This is a difficult piece about how secrets get buried in marriage, stories, and language itself.
I’m very grateful to Meg Tuite, David O’Connor, Robert Vaughan, and the rest of the Bending Genres staff. This issue includes a bunch of writers including:
Andrew Maynard
Lindsey Pharr
Maria Poulatha
Brad Rose
Joe Kapitan
Tina Barry
Keith Powell
Chelsea Stickle
and others. . . .
Happy to have this experimental writing, Sandwich, in Schuylkill Valley Dispatches, an online feature of Schuylkill Valley Magazine. It is not holy, but there is still time to be holy. I’m big on validation along with all the transcendental stuff. I’ve got another piece coming out this month (August 2022) in the Schuylkill Valley print journal. Also see my snake piece, Since Your Are Gone: I Dream You Laughing, also published in Schuylkill Valley Dispatches last year. Schuylkill Valley has a print journal, online Dispatches, and an online journal and their masthead is comprised of Rob Kanuik (Managing Editor of SVJ Online, Max Rabb (Dispatches), Peter Krok (EIC), Jane Edna Mohler (Co-Poetry Editor), Mary Jo LoBello Jerome (Co-Editor), and others (see SVJ’s about page here).
Happy to be included in this release of Anvil Tongue, a website and book publisher run by Daniel Ryan. An Emily Dickinson erasure on hope, a written poem, and some visual word art based on Wuthering Heights are included. The work is in my manuscript about the suicide of a person dear to me. Some of it is erasure, some of it Art Brut. It defies categorization. See the page here and be sure to check out the whole issues. Also see more images/erasures from this series in Up the Staircase Quarterly (also published this year).
I am happy to get two poems in Sinister Wisdom, a lesbian poetry journal that has existed for decades. This issue was mostly dedicated to disabled writers and curated, but two of my poems were picked up by the editor. One is about my great-great-grandmother who died in Eloise, an asylum in Wayne County. Her life was a mystery, and I didn’t have a lot to piece together. I have a photo of her with a four-digit number which I believe is the number on her gravestone. Around 7000 residents were buried there with simple markers (only numbers). Some of the poem is historical, and some of it’s conjecture. I will post the text soon.
The other poem was written in a Statue of Liberty writing workshop held by The Jewish Historical Society in NY and taught by Lynn Melnick. Lynn read a poem Emma Lazarus’s (writer of inscription on the Statue of LIberty), which was clearly a love poem to a woman. I imagined an “outing” with Emma which appears below.
Many more publications coming this summer, so stay tuned.
