Equinox Poetry

Celebrate the equinox by reading three new poems of mine freshly published in the March 2013 edition of PANK online. One is about crocodiles and two are about chocolate. You can hear me read each of them, too. If you want to comment, come back here and let me know what you think.

POEM in Journal of Compressed Creative Arts

JCCA looks for poems that say much with few words. I am honored to have my poem "When Soul Mates Meet" published online by them. If you click DECOMPRESS below the bio, you'll get a short essay I wrote about the process of writing it.

NOISE in Best Fiction Magazine Online

Shin-en akemashita omedeto! A short story I wrote that was published in print years ago has just come online in Best Fiction. This is an old-fashioned story about vengeance and guilt that could only happen in modern Japan. Despite the cold winters, Japanese apartments are not built with insulated walls. There is little personal privacy in Japan, which non-Japanese often forget. I hope you read it. Come back here to tell me what you think.

New poems of my are now live on A-Minor Magazine as of June 25. Check it out and leave a comment!

Hobo Camp Review: California Issue

Once again, 13 has proven to be my lucky literary number. My new poems are up and live at Hobo Camp Review for their California issue . . . which turned out to be Issue #13. I don't try to get writing published in Issue 13s, but maybe I should.

Featured Poet in Conclave

Happy Leap Day! Mine is happy because I am a featured poet in the revived journal Conclave: A Journal of Character. Five of my poems profiling people both real (James I, Ivan VI, Van Gogh) and imaginary (The Swimming Woman) are published in their new Spring issue along with interviews of Peter Beagle and Karen Essex and poems by Jane Yolen and fiction and poetry of many other fine writers. It's available on Kindle right now, and will be in print soon. Just click on the title of this post and you'll be there!

New Year tanka

Tanka is a Japanese poetic form consisting of five lines and many other things. A tanka I wrote is online at Inner Art Journal today, the first day of 2012. Last night, though I hoped to dream about eggplant, eagles, or Mt. Fuji--the three New Year's Eve's dreams considered to be very lucky--I did dream about looking up at a big tree full of nests of baby Toucans. I'm going to take that as a good sign. Happy new year!

The Failure of Geometry

That's the title of my poem that has just gone online at the fantastic The Pedestal Magazine. You can hear me read it aloud.

To the Teahouse

Here's a new poem I wrote about Japan online at a magazine named Sleet.

Bad Toys and Perishable on Labor Day

Two new poems of mine went online today at The Brooklyner. What's new? Audio recordings of me reading them. Here's a link for Bad Toys and one for Perishable. Let me know what you think.

New Poem Published: Inmates

Click on this blog post title to find The Montucky Review and my poem "Inmates" which I wrote while facilitating a reading group in the Concord State Men's Prison.

A New Story Online: The Green Balloon

Here's an unusual style of story for me: a futuristic fable about a ritualized initiation into adulthood. (Click on the title for the link.) I wrote "The Green Balloon" in a workshop led by Ursula Le Guin who challenged us to write compelling stories without the traditional reliance on conflict (man vs. nature, man vs. man, man vs. himself). If you like it--or any of the stories in The Lorelei Signal--be sure to click the Facebook like button at the end. If you REALLY like it, click the donation button and give $1 (or more) to provide royalties for the authors and keep sites like The Lorelei Signal in business offering fantasy and sf fiction with interesting female characters.

By the way, I chose 20 as the age of initiation because Japan's legal age for adults is 20.

Gringo Tango

Here is another short story of mine, this one set on the coast of Costa Rica where I lived in 1979-1980. (Click on the title to link to The Pedestal Magazine where it was published for the April 2011 issue.) I had written a longer draft of this years ago, sent it around, and didn't get any takers. Teaching my short story class this semester, I became intrigued by man/woman dialogue stories such as Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants" and Lessing's "Wine". I dialed back the point of view, cut it down to 1500 words, and used both past and present tense to tell a running backstory simultaneously with the current story. Let me know what you think!

Norton Island Residency

I am so honored--and lucky--to have been awarded a Norton Island Residency this coming July! Norton Island is a 150-acre wilderness preserve north of Bar Harbor, Maine. What a beautiful place and opportunity to focus only on my novel in progress.