Dec 17
Pella Felton reviews Super Cherry Extra by Misti Rainwater-Lites. Rainwater-Lites, Misti (2025) Super Cherry Extra (Poetry Collection). Swooncake Press. 80p. In her delightfully bitter poem “Most Likely To Recede,” Texas poet and future camp icon Misti Rainwater-Lites expertly and correctly identifies the moral failings of MFA poets as a species. Having been herself rejected from MFA programs earlier in her career, …
Dec 16
There’s This Syndrome Going Around, But It Only Affects Imposters My wife says I’ve been leaning too heavily into the wore down working man persona, lately. Not in my written work, mind you. She doesn’t bother to read that shit. Just in how I comport myself during the natural course of my everyday life, hobbling …
Dec 15
The Last Thing tonight here I am again sitting under the ground getting drunk on sweet tea and bourbon while listening to a Van Halen record one of the earlier ones with lead singer David Lee and the music still sounds good after all of these years and I’m sitting here trying not to think …
Dec 14
Peace-Sign Sweatshirt Upstairs from a Presbyterian church, a third-floor Montessori school opened its doors to children with disabilities, poor kids, delinquents, and misfits like me. We were given complete freedom, while teachers sat in classroom corners, smoking endless cigarettes. Miss Terry puffed on Eves. Her lipstick-smeared cylinders featured rows of dainty flowers, dancing as they …
Dec 13
Just maybe I like the casino because It’s not like other places It’s not like the grocery store It’s not like the offices or mailrooms I worked It’s not like the gas stations Or the strip malls And the fast food places And just maybe it’s the bigness of the place The bright lights and …
Dec 12
The People Are Like Wolves to Me by William Taylor Jr. William Taylor Jr.’s The People Are Like Wolves to Me (Roadside Press) is a book steeped in the wreckage and radiance of contemporary life—an unvarnished, booze-stained hymn to the broken, the searching, and the almost-resigned. The collection reads like a long walk through San …
Dec 11
Advice from the Boss Upon His Retirement Bosses are not your friend. Nope. If we want your opinion, we don’t want your opinion. If we pat you on the back, examine for stab wounds in the bathroom stall. If the Boss enters the bathroom, vamoose. You might hear something you can’t unhear. Your Boss’s heart …
Dec 10
Pella Felton reviews Neon Pastoral by Valerie Perreault Perreault, Valerie (2025) Neon Pastoral (Poetry Collection). The Ashland Poetry Press. 97p. $17.95 (Paperback) Winner – 2024 Richard Snyder Memorial Prize Early in Neon Pastoral, Valerie Perreault addresses the mysterious subject of her Richard Snyder Memorial Prize-winning collection with a bold promise: “You are almost ready to be born, baby”. Perreault means this in …
Dec 09
If I Should Die Before My Shift Ends Ever since the great erectile dysfunction hysteria of the last week of August, 2013, I’ve written very little about my health in any public forum. I always figured my next medical update would involve a double foot amputation because I can’t leave those fucking gummi bears …
Dec 01
McDannold, Michele (2025). Collected Poems 2005-2025 (Poetry Collection) Roadside Press 279p. $20.00 (Paperback) Michele McDannold’s Collected Poems 2005–2025 is a bruising, beautiful chronicle of two decades lived on the raw nerve of experience. The voice here is equal parts survivor, witness, and outlaw philosopher—one who has been scorched by the world’s indifference yet still refuses …
