Koss Blog

Rogue Agent has released issue 72, which includes poetry by:

Jen Yáñez-Alaniz
Cassandra Griffing
Katie Darby Mullins
Melissa Fite Johnson
Alix Perry
INTERVIEW: Jessica Abughattas
Paula Ethans
Justin Vicari
Koss
Sara Luisa Kirk
Andrew Kozma

What a great list of contributors. My somatic poem, “Shoulder Story” is a song to my deformed shoulder. I know I’m supposed to be writing erotic landscape poems as a queer, but I prefer to bitch about things. In a universe where most thoughts have been had, I am pleased to be the only human to have called a psoas muscle, “rubber labile bitch band snapper.” On a more serious note, if Western medicine knew more about the psoas, there’d be fewer back problems and surgeries. It’s a very emotional muscle.

We are quite slammed with snow today, but I thought I should take a minute and update this page as I’ve been enjoying a publishing windfall and thought I should share it with you. I received my contributor’s copy to Five Points recently. I have extra copies of the issue if you want to trade me (yes, I know it’s weird to share this on a blog, but make me a trade offer for something cool). The poem was a list-type poem about Max who completed suicide in 2018.

Today is William Burroughs’ birthday, so I added a sound file to my listen page of a recently published poem (in Outlook Springs). I wrote this to a boss when I was a sexetary in a really hostile hospital years ago.

Last week, I also had a bad lesbian dating poem I wrote in my youth published in The Racket, a very cool zine out of San Francisco. Noah Sanders, the editor, is unbelievably kind.

Three poems went up today at Anti-Heroin Chic, all about suicide, mental illness, and the aftermath of suicide. Suicide Suit, I believe, is one the strongest poems in One for Sorrow, my book due out this year. Suicide poems have been a very tough sell, but I persevered and many have been published. Once the book is released, I hope to write more explicitly about suicide, grief, and what culture does with it, which is, generally speaking, really fucked up.

Update, Tuesday 2/9/2021: And just when you think it’s over, one of my favorite journals, Bending Genres publishes a suicide/grief piece, “Not On the Railroad Tracks,” unexpectedly this morning. This is a fabulous issue and has a range of edgy writers including Lannie Stabile and Tongo Eisen Martin, both really unique voices you need to check out, if you haven’t already.

Also out on the 15th of February from Up the Staircase Quarterly is a piece called You, Earth, also from my book, One for Sorrow. There are between 30 and 35 published poems in my forthcoming book, but the good thing is there are many unpublished poems, photographs, art brut and, well, visual/word things in the book. Plus, most of the poems have been transformed since the original publication. I’m kind of geeked about reincarnated poems, actually.

As of today, the book is a bit over 200 pages, so that’s plenty to binge on over a weekend. Think of it as a literary replacement to whatever that TV series is . . . I’m hoping to have pre-orders on the site in a week or two. Thanks for reading this and I promise I’ll have more to say that’s not me in the near future. Once the book is off to the press, I’m taking a break to read, think, and do non-poetry writing.

Surprised with a Spoon River Poetry Review update today. The issues have arrived and can be ordered on their website for only ten dollars. I have a dark poem, “Giving Thanks” in here, which I wrote years ago to honor my Cherokee ancestors. This was the only poem to date that won a contest (a college contest), although I don’t enter many because my work is too experimental and, therefore, not contest material.

It’s a simply written poem that addresses imperialism, destruction, and gluttony. I’ve wondered my whole life about the holiday as a mixed white/indigenous person. How can we not ask, “whose abundance” or even “whose America.” I will update this with a photo of the poem when I have the issue in my hands, and yes, I did intend for this photo to look like blood and meat and red, white, and blue. And if it also conjures Tommy Hilfiger, that is probably OK. This, I believe, is it for February. Lots more coming in March, however.

Happy New Year! I hope you are experiencing some hope in the bizarre new one. I was quite happy to boot 2020 out the door. Despite the violence and threats in the US, I am harboring a small, inexplicable bit of hope. It seems to come by situating myself in a place of surrender to what I can’t control, while continuing to be a snarky small counter voice in the void. Small things make my small self happy. A coffee. When the sun comes out. The excitement of meeting a new human. I hope you are happying also, with small and large things as they come your way.

I started out this year with some acceptances from some great journals. One is Outlook Springs, in which I have two poems. I can’t share the text yet (contract issue), but I am allowed to share sound files, so I uploaded one for my snarky “Core Values/Interview” poem, which is at the bottom of my “Listen” page. I’ll be adding “When William Burroughs Was Your Secretary” later in the week. And if you want to buy the issue, which is full of really fabulous writing (that isn’t mine), go to Outlook Springs.

I was also fortunate to have my dark poem, “All the Dead People on Social Media Haunt You” poem included in a bright new journal edited by Jessica Kim, The Lumiere Review. She did a great job of assembling some loosely thematic pieces in this issue, and I encourage you to check the zine and the issue out.

Coming up next is a Kissing Dynamite issue and feature next week, which I will include in my next update. Also, in the new year, I hope to add some paintings for sale.

I’m in the process of finalizing my book, One for Sorrow, but after that is done, I will be writing some mini marketing articles for journals and authors/poets (I do this for money, but am sharing with you just because you are kind enough to check out my site).

Stay safe and thanks for checking in.