Poetry

Yes, I’m also a poet.

Poetry is my first love, my first genre.

My poems have been anthologized in Best American Poetry and Third Rail: The Poetry of Rock and Roll.

I like reading my poems in front of people as well. This photo taken by Joey Sweeney is of me reading poems at Ortlieb’s Lounge as part of Moonlight Magazine, September 28, 2023, Philadelphia, PA.

I have a new poetry book out! It’s called Harsh Realm: My 1990s, and it’s published by Brooklyn-based Indolent Books. I describe Harsh Realm as a memoir-in-poems that centers on the decade of fax machines and grunge through the lens of someone coming to terms with young adulthood and trying to make their way as a writer, much of it in New York City. Fun!

Poems from Harsh Realm have appeared in literary journals like Electric Literature‘s The Commuter, Tribes Online, American Poetry Review, Word For/Word, Bennington Review, The Hopkins Review, and Court Green.

My poems have also appeared in The History of My World Tonight, my first book of poems; and God Save My Queen: A Tribute and God Save My Queen II: The Show Must Go One, my first two books, which are hybrid poetry and prose that collections centered around my fandom of the rock band Queen.

Individual Poems Published Online

“to the heckler at my first poetry reading, 1994,” failbetter.

“Lower Broadway Wednesdays, 1997-1999”; “Künstlerroman, 1996,” Tribes, A Gathering of the Tribes.

“Future Days”; “Minutes Overheard from The Vagueness Society Holiday Party,” Matter Monthly.

“Poem Beginning with 1.5 Lines from Stupid Idiot Person Joe Rogan,” Diode Poetry.

“The death of college rock: September 5, 1995”; “On Realizing Poison’s ‘Every Rose Has Its Thorn’ Has the Same Chords as the Replacements’ ‘Here Comes a Regular’,” Electric Literature’s The Commuter.

“Week One Introductions, 1997,” Rejection Letters.

“Poem Written at Pete’s Candy Store Ending with a Line from Madonna”; “Nostalgia Ain’t What It Used to Be”; and “Pompous Symmetry,” American Poetry Review.

“Nineties Catchphrease Cento Sonnet,” Unlost.

Selections from Aphorismemes project, Word For/Word.

“Gethsemane,” The Good Men Project.

“Lines composed after being told by a poet I should ‘go out in nature more often and look at chipmunks'”; “Placed into The Abyss: After Pavement’s ‘Cut Your Hair,'” The Daily Drunk.

“A List of Famous People I Saw in New York City, c. 1994-2001,” The Daily Drunk (“Lists” feature).

“The Failed Saratoga Colonic Fable,” Bennington Review.

“Eliot’s Religion and a New Way to Screw”; “Fable Written While Trying to Listen to Alternative Country Rock and Just Not Feeling It”; “It’s Raining Spiders in Brazil,” Mutiny!

“[I can’t even say punk was important, even as it happened,]”; “Hello, Dolly”; “On the Meeting of Frank O’Hara and David Lee Roth”; “Debate Outside Four-Faced Liar, 2003”; “This Is Not a List Poem,” Court Green.

“Looks That Kill,” The Hopkins Review.

“The Art of Prose (With Digressions),” Unbroken.

“Rig Rundown”; “That Twat with Jazz Hands Won’t Stop Dancing”; “Sentences on The Poem and Other Sentences”; “The Plan Shifted with a Ferocious Snap VI,” Word For/Word.

“Road House Monologue,” FreezeRay Poetry.

“Eavesfalls,” prose poem, Right Hand Pointing.

“The Street Giveth and The Street Taketh Away,” The Harpoon Review.

“The Plan Shifted with a Ferocious Snap”; “Five States of the Resistance”; “Manifesto with Cheap Sight Gag from One Crazy Summer”; “To the Protest Song Industry in Crisis,” What Rough Best, Indolent Books.

“Gimli’s Lament,” Love’s Executive Order.

“Rescuing Bobby Brady from a Disaster Movie,” “Jack Lemmon Rewinds His Misanthropic Dialogue from a Disaster Movie,” and “Gleaning Dean Martin’s Chivalric Role in a Disaster Movie,” Barrelhouse online.