Stand-Alone Works

The following is an alphabetical list of poems that stand on their own as fully independent of a collection context. Please bear in mind that some of these “Stand-Alone” works, though independent in stature, are yet part of a collection anyway.

• ANTHRACITE
  “Anthracite” is a Ghost Elegy with a strong Working Class tone. Written in 2025, it was initially developed to be a narrative for the “A Shattered Cup of Doom” novella, but its strong sense of period and place at the surface level rendered the work seemingly incongruent with the other elements. Though the avid reader … Read more
• FOR ALL TIME
  Written in 2026, “For All Time” is, in its beauty and wonder, perhaps the most unsettling poem in the dark and dreary realm of the “A Shattered Cup of Doom” novella. It is the linchpin that holds past, present, and future together as one and it is the burst of dawn following a deeply foreboding … Read more
• GEE AND HAW
  “Gee and Haw” is an anthropomorphic piece, at once nostalgically pastoral, romantically idyllic, traditionally Americana, and socially working class. Inspired by the legendary Twenty-One Mule Teams of the borax mines in Death Valley, the poem draws deeper into the story, back east to where the mules were bred, and how sweet was the life and … Read more
• JUKE
  The ambitious six-part narrative “Juke” is a poetic take on the legendary folk tales of the Mississippi Delta Bluesmen. Here, the universal tale of a meeting with the Devil at the crossroads is bungled ironically enough by the sin and vice of an aspiring musician. “JUKE” i. i left the delta on a trainfor chicago … Read more