This is throwback Saturday, I guess. This poem was previously published in Spillway 27.
Poem | A Modern Highway Death | Spillway
Koss Blog
Poem | Millais’ Ophelia
CW SUICIDE | Once a sonnet, once a not-sonnet, longer and in Entropy in a haibun, now reduced to this. Included is a photo of Millais’ Ophelia, which in its original form was too festively colored to convey the tragedy, imho. I started writing this in my head and with my camera in 2017 . . . With Max’s help. I hate it when artists romanticize suicide, and this wasn’t my intention in writing this. It’s more a poetic recording of an event and conversation. A distancing container.
Diode Chapbook Contest Finalists and Winners 2021
Honored to be a finalist for my manuscript, Through the Body’s Bramble. Diode is one of my favorite publishers. Maybe a future book with them . . . Also had my 100th acceptance this week for a poem about my grandmother.
Kissing Dynamite 32 | Ensnared | Discarded Poem
Update: Kissing Dynamite closed the doors in ’24 without a word to the community, leaving a bunch of writers hanging and emails unanswered. I may be looking for another home for this piece, but right now, I’m too disillusioned to put forth the energy.
Honored to be in Kissing Dynamite’s 32nd “Burn” Issue. If you want to know what inclusivity in literature looks like, check them out. Also, check out my “Featured Poet” section from last year. Kissing Dynamite publishes internationally, with poets from as far away as Nigeria. Their issues are in PDF, so you can download them and carry them with you, which you’ll surely want to do . . .
Wergle Flomp Humor Award 2021 | My Therapist Sez by Koss
Utterly thrilled to win first place in the Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry contest this year. The poem, My Therapist Sez, was published in Diode Poetry last year and is the only poem with papaya salad, kundalini awakenings, multiple therapy sessions, and trick or treating in it. Adam Cohen and Jendi Reiter have been absolutely wonderful to work with, and they even engaged me to illustrate the poem. Check it out along with the other amazing winning poems on their site.
Here’s the main contest page with a list and links to the other winners (some great writing) and runner-ups (plus commentary by the judge, Jendi Reiter). And find the press release here.
Bending Genres | Poem by Koss
Bending Genres just released their 22nd issue online with an eclectic mix of work. Happy to have a poem titled, “The Unbearable Inertia of Clothes” published. It includes divination, cane toads, the Tazmanian Devil, and musty clothes. Below is an excerpt, but read the entire thing (plus other interesting work) on their site.
