When in Breda (perhaps Brenda)

On a train from Antwerp to Amsterdam I hear my dead uncles voice. The words I can’t  understand. I don’t know Dutch. But it belongs to him.

We are on our second bottle of wine. We drink it from clear cups we took from a Starbucks in the train station. The sun has already set.

I start to scan over the tops of the seats for him. After the third or fourth row of passengers, I stop myself. I don’t really want to find him.

Between sips and silly jokes with Juliet, I listen for him. Smile to myself when I can hear him over the sounds of strangers whispering, tracks scratching miles, and red wine pouring. I hope, maybe a few times I even pray, that whoever he is sitting with is memorizing his voice.

Unburied

I drive around with my mother’s ashes when I’m lonely

palming the box

tapping my fingers on the sides as Patsy Cline sings love songs I will always cry along to

asking my mother in a voice just above a whisper at stop signs

or red lights

if I’ll be okay

Nasty! Reading 6/9 NYC

Nasty

Nasty! is a charity anthology benefiting Planned Parenthood, showcasing stories that range from body positivity to sexual empowerment to overcoming adversity and beyond. This live event will feature readings from the following contributors:

Tara Dublin
Jacqueline-Elizabeth Cottrell
Julie Rea
Boodawe
Kim Vodicka
Diana Kirk
Jennifer Robin
Jacqueline Kirkpatrick

Come listen to empowering stories from fierce women at Bluestockings Bookstore, Café, & Activist Center on June 9th, 2018 at 7 pm. Event is free to attend, although donations to Bluestockings Bookstore are welcomed. See you there!

Go Order This Book!

http://www.kingshotpress.com/product/nasty

Nasty! is a collection of radical non-fiction essays that provide crucial commentary on what it’s like to be a woman today. Bold stories from fierce women who are not ashamed of who they are and what they do.

100% of proceeds will be donated to Planned Parenthood.

All killer, no filler. The anthology features the following table of contents:
Missy Suicide- “Monster”
Sabrina Dropkick- “Fucking Fat”
Rocket- “Buddy”
MP Johnson- “How To Accept You’re Trans in 11 Easy Steps”
Cervante Pope- “a black type of feminism”
Julie Rea- “A Year in the Life of a Sad American Liberal”
Diana Kirk- “Tampon Trigger”
Rhonda Jackson Joseph- “I’m That Chick Who Starts the Conversation”
Kim Vodicka- “Maximum Insecurity Dick Prison”
Boodawe- “You’re So Nasty!”
Jessie Lynn McMains- “They Say She’s a Slut”
Kathryn Louise- “The United States of Rape Culture”
Eleanor Rose- “I Didn’t Ask For This”
Amber Fallon- “Sleazeball Games or How I Got Banned From Match.com”
Tara Dublin- “Here’s To You, Mrs. Robinson”
Jennifer Robin- “Raphael and the French Ghost and the Moon”
Jacqueline-Elizabeth Cottrell- “Come Here Often?”
Jacqueline Kirkpatrick- “The New Unnatural”
Devora Gray- “I’ll Meet You in the Middle”

Edited by Tiffany Scandal
Cover by Matthew Revert

Out Winter 2017

NOTE ABOUT THE OPTIONS: “Pre-order” will get you the book with the legendary KSP gift wrapping once it is out. The “Honorable mention + Pre-Order” gets your name listed in the acknowledgements for helping this book get made, PLUS, it’ll get you a free eBook version of the anthology as well (and, of course, the legendary KSP gift wrapping, duh)

Sunrise for Jack Kerouac

Sunrise for Jack Kerouac

(*as published in Drunk in a Midnight Choir on 4/29/15)

I gave Jake the last inhale

Watching  a willow tree in a cow pasture turn to gold in the

Acidic sunrise of a July we tried for years to forget.

The long streams of branch swaying in a breeze that bumped my gooses

From collar bone to sternum

Raised buttons of oooooh, of ahhhhh,

Of push them, push them – – we will never get out of here

if we don’t move faster

 

Before I fall apart

Jake falls asleep against the wind

Shielded dreaming of a riddle on a Popsicle stick

His tiny fingers clutching it

Jamming it into his mother’s wringing hands

Asking her to just tell him what it means

that he can longer read French (as I flip the tent stake

Mallet around and around, leav

ing bruises in the ground, wondering if it is God  or my child I should apologize to-)

 

I write tiny poems on the backs of his dirty toes

Odes to my dead father and Jerry Garcia

Jerry, someone once told me, drove a Beamer

As he beep beeped out of my drive

Way into the horizon like an Icarus in a silver bullet

Chariot master

Pieces of himself burning alive to be Matisse’d for as many years as there are

Hearts

A demon boxed inside blue exploding all over the page

Onto

me & on

toyou