...(the what if)¹⁰⁰⁰ / No
No I said, not brazen, not bold, not pride-just No speaking the bar stool’s steel through spine.
The stranger in shock at my answer as I asked my own question,
What if...
What if getting too close to those like you is a liability?
(Excerpt from Close Is...)
From the Tête-bêche Hybrid Collection
Close Is... & Hopscotch Between the Living and the Dead (Diode Editions, 2024)
To get your copy, send a message or click here.
Our best moment was the prank call to the PBS phone-a-thon. We thought it would
be cool to watch their reaction as we made a phone call to tell them that we were
witnessing a house on fire across the street.
There was a fire, but the wrong house.
There was a fire. However, it’s the kind no one can put out.
(Excerpt from Hopscotch Between the Living and the Dead )
In this double feature of a hybrid work of poetry and creative non-fiction prose, readers experience a relentless contemplation through a woven tapestry of human connections, estrangements, and the complex, often painful
dynamics that bind us.
Close Is...
What is the exchange rate for human closeness? Within one part of the collection, Close Is... holds a direct and unflinching mirror to humanity, forcing the question: Is human connection worth the emotional, psychical, and spiritual exchange rate? Who and what should be considered our own if our own, the human species, causes inevitable beauty and pain within our attempts to create, breach, sever, and explore the range of human relationships. And does the answer lie in expanding our horizon beyond what we consider as...human.
Hopscotch Between the Living and the Dead
Hopscotch Between the Living and the Dead descends into the depths of a family narrative through vivid imagery and scenes that encapsulate us within linguistic hopscotch as it unzips. A childhood game that instructs players to move forwards and backward within a chalk-drawn board on concrete, Hopscotch takes readers through a labyrinthian path of family secrets, the living and the dead, and a reckoning with surfacing the unseen of memory through vivid fragments across time.