Poems To Celebrate the Poetry Book!

Also, ask me questions about poetry!

As I have mentioned a time or two, my first poetry collection, Not Akhmatova, is out on Tuesday. Consider preordering!

Anyway, to celebrate the imminent release, I thought I’d share a few poems I wrote about finally attaining my 30some-year dream of having a poetry book published with my name on it. Poems are below. And! Comments are open for everyone, so ask me about poetry or publishing or what have you, if you’re so moved.

Powerful Words

There it was
the best book in the world.

Flowers sprang from it, then died for shame
that they could not compete with its beauty.

Zen masters were struck zenless by its aura.
James Bond was rendered impotent and wept.

Harold Bloom rose from the dead to cheer it on
as it tore out Shakespeare’s book throat with its book teeth.

The blood of Bard and Basho sprays about
in a pattern of ineffably natural constructs

like metaphors, but with more MacArthur geniuses
cast into the void of knowing they are not geniuses like me.

—

book release party
poems unread still unread
but deliberately 

—

Publication Day

Herded by river gods, and the experience
of lunch, the book
gently smooshed into the world
spraying some substance not to be
unduly itemized.
Dish soap, perhaps. Or jelly.

The apricots sing, but only
wrinkled and without
an author event. And in this limited
time effluvia, the barstool of
true genius swept through hiccups

of tar and ratiocination. It is the triumph
over triumph, where the squawking dreams
of omnipresence lie in the water
because they have a headache,
and the moment passes. The only trace
the ghost of a lugworm 
quietly farting till the library clears out.

So there you go! Those poems aren’t really a whole lot like the poems in my book, but you know. Hope you enjoyed them, and again you can order my book here.