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

Paul Stevens publishes my poem "The Dying and the Living," written in Yeatsian ottava rima, in response to Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, in The Flea . It is one of my favorites. The verse sings feelingly, without flinching. Michael Schmidt has selected the following poems for the Carcanet anthology New Poetries V : "Attribution," "A Whole History," "The Rooms I Move In," "Study #5: After Frida Kahlo," "Translations of an Unknown Mexican Poet" and ghazals from "A Lover's Recourse." All but the Kahlo poem were previously published in PN Review . Asked for a genesis statement for these poems, I wrote: Where did these poems begin? They began on a horrible afternoon when my tutor in his room at Wadham College read aloud the sentences I plagiarized from some book on Ben Jonson. They began in the backroom of a bar. They began with quotations—word, form or spirit—of Eavan Boland, Pablo Neruda, Octavio Paz and Roland Barth...