Song of a Reformed Headhunter

My poem "We will not pass this way again, my love" appears in The Raintown Review Volume #11 Issue #2, March 2014. Thanks, Anna Evans, for accepting the poem. The issue also includes a roundtable discussion of the legacy of Paul Christian Stevens, the beloved editor of The Shit Creek Review , The Chimaera , and The Flea . Paul was very supportive of my work, publishing several of my poems in his three journals, and a feature on my erotic poetry edited by Rose Kelleher. I miss his postings on Facebook, where he stood out for his humaneness. Today's haiku does not refer to Paul, but to another friend. Its mood is, however, in remembrance of him too. waking up with hair falling out on easter morning

After Rose Kelleher's "Kink" The dead painter is looking for a place to paint: a tree, some water.

Rose Kelleher's debut, the winner of the 2007 Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize, is full of familiar pleasures. The precise observation of "Rays at Cape Hatteras." The witty image of "Mortimer." The sharp social satire in "Hybrid." The reformulation of myth in "The First Uprising." The formal inventiveness of the exploded sestina "Random Sextet." The musical punch-line in "Neanderthal Bone Flute." The carefully served-up poignancy of "The Rectangle." The risks taken in this book are ones of content, and not of perspective nor of style. There are poems about famous sadomasochists, underaged weed smoking, an Adam's apple fetish, and a killer whom the speaker knew when they were young, all carefully labelled "Perversity," kept away from other sections named "God," "Science," "People," and "Love." It would have been far more provocative to assign the weed to "Scie...

Edited by Rose Kelleher, Issue 12 of the Shit Creek Review is kinky in the best way. It makes us think about the relationship between poetry and perversion. One might say poetry is a perversion of everyday language. Saying so not only sexualizes poetry, but also politicizes it. For who gets to say what is normal and what is perversion? Under whose regime are we still living, no matter how hard we try to liberate ourselves? What does it mean for me to publish my poems about a father's belting, anal sex, underaged sex,  SM and fisting under the rubric of "perversions"? The line in the sand is always shifting: is anal sex still considered perverted or is it on its way to normalization? Normalized under what regime? There must always be lines, as there must always be regimes of control. The Latin root of "pervert" means "to overturn" or "to subvert." The meanings overlap but they are not the same. Subversion is the diligent, secret work of s...