New From the Porch: 3 Books

by Marc Pietrzykowski

Just Keep On Doing What You’re Doing: Poems

89pps, $15 US

ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1948920255
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1948920254

Maybe I’ll Get it Right This Time: Poems 

91pps, $15 US

ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1948920263
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1948920261

The House Across The Way: A Novel

375pps, $15

ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 194892031X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1948920315

Clearly Marc Pietrzykowski is a bit of a hog, publishing 3 books at once for no good reason, other than he can, and the pandemic plugged up his creative schedule a bit, and because he’s working on more so time to get these out. He also writes about himself in the third person, which is also hoggish, he’s not Rickey Henderson, after all.

Just Keep On Doing What You’re Doing is a collection of generally shorter, more straightforward poems, such as:

The Caterer

In my rear view mirror, while the smoke came apart,
the pistoleros dropped their guns to sing: ¡Ay! Sandunga,
Sandunga mamá por Dios… but my Spanish is poor
and their mouths far away. When I returned in the evening
to gather warmers and plates and cutlery, a new scene
was already rolling, a full moon over the desert
and some burnished, waxy lips mashing together
with an intensity they hope sells well in China.

I remember the sound of their lips coming apart
as I bend to put my own lips to my daughter’s head,
and I wish for her a brief puberty and an easeful
menopause, since I haven’t much help to offer
with the all the nonsense in between.

Maybe I’ll Get it Right This Time features longer, often narrative poems, and other more experimental pieces:

from Sonnets for the Sunken World

≈

Where do I stand? Here? Ah, I see, right here,
the chalk outlines of feet on the bare floor.
This is me, then, and from my post I can see

therianthropes dancing under a stone sky,
the Wolf Star pawing along the Milky Way,
behatted cats, coyotes in white tie and tails.

Well! All that on the inside of my eye.
All that, on the walls of the cave of my skull.
A camera obscura that believes it’s a viewer
apart and above, a subject, a witness.

It’s the chalk lines what do it. The rest is gloss:
horny, winged gods, seraphim and cherubim,
every jabbering superhero flick–
here is where I stand, see? The rest is dross.

The House Across The Way is a novel about two houses that stand across from each other, and the families that live in each:

…Kyle went down the driveway and crossed over the road toward the woods beside number 24. His fort was there, everyone knew it was there but they let him pretend it was secret. He hopped over the guard rail and stopped to watch the movers unloading the last of the moving truck. The woman wobbling on blue wedge heel boots spied him out of the corner of her eye and made a mental note: potential delinquent. Donna Lamberton had a vast, carefully curated collection of mental notes, indexed by color and size. The note about Kyle was small, but red. She had many red notes, because the world was rapacious and threatening and the devil was everywhere, even though she had to concentrate to really believe in the devil. Believing in God took a lot less effort, but without the threat posed by the devil, it just wasn’t very satisfying. So, she took mental notes and talked to her Pastor until he pretended he had to be somewhere else, and she made sure her children did their bible study, and her husband—well, her husband was a problem she had not solved yet, but with God’s help, she would.

So please enjoy, if you would like all three books for $35, just send us an email at pskisporch (at) gmail.com and we would happy to accommodate you.