LatinosUSA

“DOING CARTWHEELS ON DOOMSDAY AFTERNOON” came out a million years ago…in 2010.  I had already been publishing for 40 years (my first book came out in 1970, which officially makes me older than snot). I bounced around the small presses, never staying for long with any publisher, mostly because of the nature of the small press, where publishers come and go almost overnight. Well, this was my first book with the incredible Epic Rites Press, and the beginning of a run that would last nearly ten years and ten books…but Covid hit and that changed everything. The press and all ten of those books went out of print. Gone.

Fast forward to the present, several months ago. I got this email from an actress (Yves Gore) who told me she was planning a stage show with connections to the book, and asked if I would mind her doing that. She said she was doing the show in Hungary later this year. My current publisher, the incredible Anxiety Press, wanted to bring the book back into print, to make the poems available once again. I thought about it (for about a minute) and decided it wasn’t a bad idea, even though some of the poems (like their author) haven’t aged well. But there are a lot of what I think are really good poems in there, too. Some that eventually made it into my SELECTED POEMS. 

Then, when we were putting the book back together (all the print files were lost and I had to start from scratch, typing the poems up. I even asked Yves Gore if she’d be able to write an introduction to the book, describing what the poems and the book meant to her. She ended up writing a really cool, long, and interesting introduction. And I even got into the act, writing a brief preface, talking about what happened and why the new edition was now suddenly back in print.

So, there you have it. And I think that given the current state of the world we live in, “DOING CARTWHEELS ON DOOMSDAY AFTERNOON” isn’t very far off the mark.

Sample Poems

she loved the literary types…

men who
used
and understood
the language of words.

this made it
all the more
disconcerting
when the latest
object of her desires
rejected
her,

saying:
“i’m not your type.

really.

you’re
looking for
a straight declarative,

and all i’ve got
to offer
is a

dangling participle.”

~~

the miracle

is
not always

what it
appears
to be.

the
miracle
sometimes

is
only
smoke

and
mirrors

and
some poor slob’s
picture

of
his
slightly
broken dreams.

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