Doubleplusgood from the Porch: 2 New Books

2 new books from Pski’s Porch this week, a book of poetry and a novel, both by Marc Pietrzykowski, (who calls himself Potassium Cockburn when he writes Science Fiction):

sanctum. By Marc Pietrzykowski.

$10 US. 89 pgs.
ISBN-13: 978-1-948920-05-6
ISBN-10: 1948920050

What the world needs now is more poetry, and more people finding poems under their doorstops, in their grocery bags, strewn across their coffee table. Pski’s Porch is doing its part to help flood the world with poetry again, this time with Marc Pietrzykowski’s 1oth collection, sanctum.

A blend of zuihitsu-style essays and a variety of poetic forms, sanctum is a holy place in time for the author, and with any luck, for the reader. Pietrzykowski does not flinch from difficult subjects, since beauty lives there, too:

Beach Glass

Harbor master, give notice to mariners
of an embargo dryly reckoned: fondness
leads to love, and love to loss, in this
the world betrays us all. Tell all the ships
sitting heavy in the water, laden
with bolts of silk and kegs of ichor
that they must turn and sail instead up the coast,
we have nothing here but some fishing skiffs
and an ancient tug none admit to owning
though we all take a turn running her
out to the buoy and back twice a week,
just to be sure she can still make the trip.
We can hear love’s feral children howling
in the hills behind us, nights with no moon,
and we still leave them bread and oranges,
but their bent shadows darting through the trees
are all the betrayal we need. Go now,
give notice, give us what we deserve
while we wait for the tide to take us down.

Burnout! By Potassium Cockburn

$10 US. 283 pgs.
ISBN-13: 978-1-948920-08-7
ISBN-10: 1948920085

Axel’s problems may have started when his Mama named him after Axel Rose and “Axel F,” being unable to decide which one she liked better, but now things have gone off the rails. He’s been abducted by something that feels suspiciously like a spaceship, and now his brain would, really, really like to spill out and bounce around on the floor like a bucket of marbles, but his guts won’t let it happen, and that might be a floor and it might not, and his pinkie toes, well: they’re on his feet. Maybe the other perverts on the ship can help him find his footing, as long as there isn’t a race coming up–then all bets are off.

The second novel from Potassium Cockburn, author of At the End of All Our Labors, and not someone with name issues of his own.