Pski's Porch Publishing

John Doyle: A Stirring at Dusk

42 pages, $5.59 / €5
ISBN: 0998847623
ISBN-13: 978-0998847627

John Doyle quit writing poetry for a while, then returned, and we at the Porch are glad he did. These are funny, smart, affecting poems from County Kildare.

“An obvious love of language and music was a defining quality running through the first articles by John Doyle that we published at TMO magazine. If there was one common theme, though, among the various pieces he sent us, it was an almost unfashionable respect for craftsmanship and artistry. Whether writing about Neil Young, European club football, or Cornish language poets, he highlighted skill and intent. His poetry comes from the same place, where each word is weighed and valued, and I find that dynamic in abundance in his poetry.”

Andy Lawless, Three Monkeys Online

Resurrection of a Sunflower

546 pages, $23
ISBN: 0998847607
ISBN-13: 978-0998847603

A whopping 546 pages of glorious poetry and prose from all over the Earth, gathered by Catfish McDaris and Pski’s Porch. This anthology celebrates Vincent van Gogh’s life, art, and posthumous fame in a range of poetic styles befitting the global relevance of their subject. Featuring the work of Ryan Quinn Flanagan – Catfish McDaris – Mendes Biondo – Charles Joseph – Daniel Snethen – Bryn Fortey – Alan Britt – Rona Fitzgerald – Dr. Sudeep Adhikari – Kevin Peery – Clint Margrave – Brenton Booth – Ali Znaidi – Wayne F. Burke – George Wallace – Kerry Trautman – David Cravens – Adrian Manning – Eve Brackenbury – Richard Wink – Guinotte Wise – Chigger Matthews – Bob Holman – Dr. Robert Lee Kendrick – Neil Ellman – Victor Clevenger – Lisa Stice – James Benger – Lylanne Musselman – Ndaba Sibanda – Yoby Henthorn – Tim Staley – Debi Swim – Sheika A. – Subhadip Majumdar – Carol Alexander – Jonny Huerta – Lisa Wiley – Professor Bob Kunzinger – Mary Ellen Talley – Jay Passer – Judith Berke – Hillary Leftwich – Claus Ankersen – Dan Sicoli – Dr. Marianne Szlyk – Perry S. Nicholas – kerry rawlinson – Huang Xiang – David S. Pointer – Ally Malinenko – Su Zi – John Grochalski – Norman J. Olson – Doug Mathewson – Donald Armfield – Marc Pietrzykowski – Heller Levinson – Nina Bennett – Floyd Salas – Maja Trochimczyk, PhD. – Karen Greenbaum-Maya – Connie Ramsay Bott – William Rock  – Dan Nielsen

Sunflower Dance

Death of the sunflower iris sky,

thirty-seven sunflowers shrivel

and die under the deluge of

impasto thick upon Vincent’s

canvas, as he lay in agony wat-

ching purple black crows float

above, you are in my heart van

Gogh, I shall nourish the earth

with my blood, as it has us, the

women will weep and sing in

Portuguese in the house of old

boots and broken hour glasses.

27 Hammerheads Circling Ever Closer, by Catfish McDaris

315 pages, $13
ISBN: 0997870680
ISBN-13: 978-0-9978706-8-8

The latest collection from Catfish McDaris mashes all the buttons, here there and everywhere, page after page of Catfishy goodness.

Catfish McDaris, the Milwaukee based American writer who for some intriguing reason has become extremely popular in Dublin (my hometown) this surge in McDaris’ visibility began about three years just a few months after his name was being mentioned around the hip parties in London. Who can say why that is? But perhaps that quirky artistic sensibility of the British and their approach to modern music and literature has something to do with the way that McDaris’ over-the-top mode of writing has struck such a note – that resonates like Big Ben through the grey day atmosphere of the British Isles. The Geographical place that spawned Punk and Grunge and the likes of Sex Pistols et al has no trouble with McDaris’ tongue in cheek surrealistic images in a style that is only a touch reminiscent of Bukowski, one of his antecedents, but McDaris is his own man and takes it to another level, takes it to the limit of sensibility; normality is twisted out of shape like a comic book plays with and bends everyday visual reality. The Theatre of the Absurd is the stage that he inhabits and moves upon, perhaps as a method of coping with the absurdity and unreality of everyday experience in an insane world where truth has been disappeared, compassion has been murdered, love has been hijacked by the pornographers, justice is buried in some deep anonymous dungeon, where the ‘war on drugs’ produces 50,000 disappearances and deaths in Mexico each year, the average people (the salt) are enslaved by warlords and gangsters masquerading as The Government, and the Puppet Masters of big business (legal and illegal) control governments and public institutions. McDaris though not British has that great traditional British characteristic of – ‘taking -the-piss’. He takes the piss out of the pretentiousness and absurd sense of self – importance displayed in the public arena in a world gone well and truly mad and blindly going down the gurgler. If the ship is going down one can either scream and piss their pants or else sing a wild native song and laugh at death; and there is nothing more certain than when Death stands before us we have at least two choices, we can try and be manly and accept our end with an ironic smile or we can squeal and scream like a child denied something and who pisses their pants uncontrollably. McDaris’ songs have absolutely nothing to do with everyday sensibilities or appearances, his writing is an authentic wild bizarre laughter in the face of life gone bonkers.

Hugh Gallagher

Boulder Nirvana
Faceless parade of endless prodigy genre leaping grasshopper pseudo mystic inexplicable hippie purgatory

Gut shot frozen mustang screams hair raising whinnies from red mountains enticing hill woman exploration

Relentless spelunking skullduggery perverse nostalgia perpetual rock formation zen yen bodhisattva karmic carnage.

Scattered Cranes: Poems By Guinotte Wise

The book (132 pages) explores themes of country life, working construction, and in a poetic voice. Guinotte makes these interesting to read about.

In the poem THEY SHOOT SANDHILL CRANES he describes chasing a hunter down in his truck to find who is shooting at Cranes. And how he learned to respect animals, as he used to be a hunter of quail. A farmer tells him

“Not here,I like to watch them, gives me pleasure what they do”

He finds out that it is legal to shoot sand hill cranes. He cannot believe it.

Poems like this stuck with me through out the book, the kind of back woods poetry I would expect would not care about animals. This showed a deeper character to the author, and his voice. Some true care.

The syntax and composition  of each poem has a quick, and flowing pace, a voice I could speak with, and understand, everything was left out but the grit. In this way the language, somewhat slanted, and composed in fragments of thought, come together into a final suggestive image. Each poem sees through the bullshit, and finds a poem in the nature of reality most would dodge, and in this way the collection is an accomplishment, creating a poetry a working people could find inspiration from.

Zachary Scott Hamilton

MANNEQUIN HAUS 

Some excellent words about John Reinhart’s words here.

“It grabbed me immediately, licking off the page like the flames he described in one piece.” –Shawna Ayoub Ainslie

Get ye a copy of invert the helix!

invert the helix, by John Reinhart $20

In invert the helix, Reinhart’s brilliant approach takes poetry beyond the line and into the labyrinth. His words are shape and color, layer and repetition. You don’t read these poems; you experience them. Reaching the a-ha moment each one of them holds is a kinetic experience-his poems will move you in directions you don’t expect, but are glad to discover.

-Dianne Borsenik, publisher/editor at NightBallet Press

John Reinhart-part American rebel, part sci fi geek-has produced a stunning collection that captures the fairy tales, legends, and fevered fantasies of American life. He works his poems with a deft touch, ranging from shocking word art to well-punctuated musical notes that drill into the reader’s psyche.

-Frank Watson, Editor of Poetry Nook

Reinhart’s poetry dances across the page like paint across a canvas. His work combines the facts of daily life (chores, tasks, child-rearing) with the scientific musings of a mind steeped in imaginative possibilities. As the first poem in his book suggests, poetry is a found object that emerges from the accidental combinations of the beauty and trash our lives produce. The poetry in invert the helix is “patterning, repositioning, exploring, [and] exploding” off the pages of Reinhart’s second book.

-Andrea Rexilius, author of To Be Human Is To Be A Conversation (Rescue Press, 2011) and New Organism: Essais (Letter Machine Editions, 2014)

Scattered Cranes, by Guinotte Wise. $10.99

ISBN-10: 0997870672
ISBN-13: 978-0997870671

Scattered Cranes is a bit of an elegy to time spent rodeoing, roughnecking and construction work on bridges across bodies of water large and small in those areas of America that the coastal bound fly over, barely registering the beauty of the farmland patterns and jungles below. Then clouds form a protective layer. There is no protective layer in Scattered Cranes. Some of it is down and dirty, while other passages are dreamlike and aspirational, with a thread of humor. And where there is humor, there is optimism. As the foreword says, it’s like rodeo, you’re out there with your try. Scattered Cranes is a bustling, dusty arena for Wise’s try. Enjoy it.

“…a compelling and essential collection of bare-knuckle poetry.”
Ben Banyard, Editor/Publisher Clear Poetry, UK

“Expect Wise’s world to stay inside you after you’ve read it, and roll to the surface for attention like a memory or a dream.”
Chelsea Laine Wells, Writer, Fiction Editor Hypertext, Hypernova, (b)Oink

“Wise’s collection is both hauntingly nostalgic and piercingly urgent…”
Jen Knox, Author of After the Gazebo and The Glass City

SUBMISSIONS FOR THE VAN GOGH ANTHOLOGY ARE CLOSED.

Thanks to everyone who contributed, we have some fantastic work for this anthology. 

CALL FOR WORK: Catfish McDaris is soliciting work  for an anthology of devoted to Vincent van Gogh to be published in 2017. Pski’s Porch will publish the book, and the van Gogh Library in Nuenen, The Netherlands, will feature copies for sale.

DEADLINE: Soon! The collection will be 300 pages, 200 have already been accepted.

PAYMENT: Each selected author or artist will receive a contributor’s copy.

HOW TO SUBMIT: Send up to 10 pages of written material (poetry, flash fiction, creative nonfiction) and/or art to Catfish McDaris at Mcdar3 at aol dot com with “van Gogh” in the subject line. Include your contact information with the submission.

Please Allow Me to Introduce Myself, by Mikel K.

100 pages — $10

ISBN-13: 978-0-9978706-5-7
ISBN-10: 0997870656

Fresh from the oven, a full-length book from Atlanta spoken-word royalty, Mikel K:

It is not lightly that I compare my friend, Mikel K Poet to a Bukowski,
John Fante, or Hunter S. Thompson. He is twisted. He is misunderstood. He is Arturio Bandini running amok through this crazy life! Mostly, he is genius in it’s purest, insanest form (and I say that in a good way). Not all will “get” him, but that’s ok because he doesn’t “get” most of us mere mortals either. His observations, stories and poetry are intriguing, thought-provoking and sometimes downright disturbing…gotta love it!

—Valerie King, Co-Founder/Editor Rock Revolt Magazine

I might not have it in me
The email says
that my package
will arrive by
8pm tomorrow.
I will then have
a new razor
the type that the barber
used on me.
It cost me fifty bucks
but it’s worth it,
though I really
don’t like to shave.

Monarchs of the Undertow, Marc Pietrzykowski.

140 pages — $10

ISBN-13: 978-0-9978706-4-0
ISBN-10: 0997870648

Small town fabula, secrets and lies, petty thieves in the mall and shotguns balanced in the lap. The sun is a beast. Everyone knows everyone. No one knows why, they try to leave, but something keeps drawing them back. Short stories for the culturally oblique.

After I nailed a board over the window, I sat on the couch and stared at it. I know I should have stopped them, the little bastards, or at least tried. I should have stopped Cheryl dressing those poor dogs up like beauty pageant bimbos, too, but I didn’t. I should’ve told my Dad “no” when he got my draft card knocked down to II-C, but I didn’t. I should have stopped after two beers and skipped the Canadian Club, too, but I didn’t, and so what, we all get to where we’re going by different roads, nothing better or worse in mine. That’s the funny thing about karma, when idiots say “what goes around comes around,” they think they’ll see justice here, in this world, but karma is longer than time, we never see it. We pay it back all the time, it’s always coming around, sure, just no point in trying to figure out where it came from. I figure every life I lived was just like this one, never been a worm or a god or anything, just a sad, tired old man the moment I got born ‘til the moment I die, over and over, the same kind of life, every time. Let the kid figure it out himself. I can always get more windows. (“A Walk with the Minister’s Son”)