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Edited by RD Armstrong 178 pages; 6X9 sized Trade Paperback ISBN 978-1-929878-93-2
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By Kyle Laws
ISBN 978-1-929878-73-4 106 pages; Perfect Bound; 6 X 9 inchesThese poems inhabit place—beginning on the Jersey shore; moving to southern Colorado, northern New Mexico, and the wild spaces between; returning to the fringes of seaside resorts by way of New Orleans—telling all the details; using words like paint; layering sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and finally touch; uniting ideas with lyricism to yield connections between past and present, ocean and desert, mountain and river, men and women; unafraid of the trouble and tangle to grow and thrive. “I too have memories of "the shore," so Wildwood brings a rush—like looking into someone else's old photo album— of vivid images, scents, and O, the sounds of voices. Watching the grownups, hearing the histories, and almost too quickly making one's own life story, Kyle Laws' poems move from the shore to other storied places: New Orleans, Taos, Pueblo, St. Augustine, and return full circle to the Cape May milieu she knows so well. They are a guided tour, not only of one family's personal struggle, but the universal quest for understanding how we grow and survive, with the grace to be alive to the world.” — Ruth Moon Kempher, Kings Estate Press
View a sampler of poems on ISSUU.COM Read an Interview with Kyle here. -
112 pages; 6 X 9 Perfect Bound, Softcover ISBN 978-1-929878-50-5
By Rick Smith
Rick Smith's third book with Lummox Press represents a significant departure from his previous two titles, Hard Landing and The Wren Notebook. In those two books, Smith utilized the diminutive Wren as an archetypal character that represented both bird and human behavior. It was almost a spiritual journey at times...a wonder-filled travelogue with Wren. But things have taken a decidedly darker turn in this collection of poems...instead the wispy wren, fluttering around and having some feathery adventures, has been replaced by a mangy mutt prowling around the back alleys of a bad part of town looking to score some meth or chew on a leg...whichever comes first or seems the most interesting. While Whispering in a Mad Dog's Ear will surprise Smith fans with it's variety of subject matter; his mastery of the poem is still as strong and as true as it has ever been, in fact, in some cases his work is even stronger and more startling in its imagery and language. The only problem with this book is how he will top it in his next collection! Cover art by Llyn Foulkes, entitled Pop, 1985-1990 Layout design by Chris Yeseta -
WINNER OF THE SECOND LUMMOX POETRY PRIZE
ISBN 9781929878666 46 pages, 6 X 9 paperbackBy H. Marie Aragon
H. Marie Aragon of Santa Fe, New Mexico has won the 2015 Lummox Poetry Prize with her poem The Dark and Light Side of the Moon. The prize consists of a cash award of $250 and forty copies of a chapbook created by Lummox Press for the author. When Desert Willows Speak is the chapbook. It's 46 pages long and can be ordered from Lummox Press (see the ordering information below). Read a sample from the chapbook here. We hope you will enjoy it. -
160 pages; 6 X 9 Perfect bound, Softcover ISBN 978-1-929878-49-9 For over 35 years Taylor Graham has been a volunteer search-and-rescue (SAR) dog handler. She and her husband have trained their German Shepherds to find missing people - in Alaska, rural Virginia, and California. She's a veteran of the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, the Berkeley-Oakland Hills firestorm, and other disasters, as well as hundreds of searches for lost hunters and hikers, elderly walkaways, victims of drowning, avalanche and homicide. For ten years she edited the National Association for Search and Rescue's SAR Dog ALERT newsletter. With her search dog, she spent two summers as a Forest Service volunteer ranger in the Mokelumne Wilderness. No longer on SAR callout, she still trains her dogs at least weekly; German Shepherds don't understand retirement.
For my husband, Hatch, who’s had dogs all his life; and for all the dogs who’ve shared our lives and taught us so much — Taylor Graham "If they don't allow dogs in heaven, then I don't want to go!" — Grandpa Armstrong
Look through a sampling of poems from this book. -
ISBN 978-1-929878-46-8 34 pages; 5.5 X 8.5; chapbook For over 35 years, Taylor Graham has been working with Search & Rescue (SAR) dogs. She has traveled far and wide searching for lost hikers in the wilderness, victims of earthquakes and sadly, dead bodies. Walking the Puppy contains poems written for/about her current dog, Loki. Even though Taylor has retired from active duty, Loki has not...as Taylor puts it, SAR dogs never retire, so they must be continuously trained and exercised. This chapbook was a precursor to a larger collection remembering all of Taylor's dogs and their adventures over the years, entitled What The Wind Says. If you love dogs, you're going to love these books. Walking The Puppy Sample
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ISBN 9781929878710 48 pages; 5.5 X 8.5 inches, Perfect Bound
Poetry Collection
In late September, 2013, Mike Adams died, a victim of Cancer. He was too young, only in his early sixties. I'd known him for four years, though he claimed we'd met back in '06 in Las Vegas, NM. I don't remember that, but I do remember hearing him on the Jane Crown Show in '09. I liked what I heard...it's not often that you can judge a man by his words alone, and the sound of his voice; these days especially. Mike struck me as being someone i could trust. Sadly, there haven't been too many people in the past twenty years that I could say that about. Unchainable Spirit is a tribute chapbook about Mike, filled with poems by some of his poetic best friends, all of whom are master poets themselves and all paying homage to their fallen friend. Their poems reflect the respect that Mike deserved; they don't stray into emotive, confessional poetry but speak to the heart of the matter including the devastation left in the wake of his passing. Here's who was involved in this project: RD Armstrong, Jared Smith, Phil Woods, Jerry Smaldone, Deborah Kelly, Padma Thornlyre, Judyth Hill, Linn G. Baker, Roseanna Frechette, John Macker, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Art Goodtimes, Claire Mearns, Stewart Warren, G. Murray Thomas, Lawrence Gladeview, Jim Bernath, James Taylor III and Mike Adams, whose presence in our lives, inspired this. Mike Adams was many things to many people. He was a skilled writer and poet, mountain climber, wonderful husband, Fire-Giggler, environmentalist, practicing Buddhist, teacher and most importantly, he was one helluva friend! This one's for you, Mike...RD Armstrong, Editor & Publisher Preview this chapbook on issuu.com -
ISBN 978-1-929878-60-4 150 pages, 6 X 9 inches, Trade Paper
By James Deahl
Here is the definitive book of prose-poems, destined to be a classic of the genre on every reference shelf. A new adventure in the evolving presentation of Canadian poetry, a welcome innovation of compact vision, allowing many threads of existence to wind together on a brief, powerful page. The lyricism, the heart-tug of common human experience, is strongly present, just as the emotional highs we have come to expect of great poetry. James Deahl’s prose-poem form allows the freedom of disparate experiences to be gathered with meaningful connection into the paragraphs poetically linked. The form is not limited to a single insight, but has the sweeping vibrancy to allow geography, time, season, and circumstance to flow together, like a stony riverbed, ever changing, ever the same, as we imprint personal events onto the backdrop. A story unfolds and surprises inside each prose-poem here, enhanced by natural setting, a history straddling the tides of our memories and experiences in cities and towns that have watchfully witnessed our arrivals and departures. Unbroken Lines heralds a welcome new experience in poetic expression, leaves you hungry for more. The introductory poem, “Damp Stones,” encapsulates the hammer power of compact lines, shadowing myth, beauty, fear, desire, old yearnings caught in knots of the woods in all our subconscious minds. Deahl’s poem “The Meadow” expresses these revelations searingly: “only the realm of indestructible forms remains, a realm outside the tarnished world of matter, like a meadow of endless spring living in the imagination of a child.”
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ISBN 9781929878789 40 pages
By RD Armstrong
Thomas K. Armstrong, my father, died in early January 2015, in his sleep of a heart attack. He had suffered, over the past six years, from Vascular Dementia (the lesser-known half of senility, Alzheimer's being the more widely known form). A month before, in Dec. of 2014, I had been to see him. This chapbook contains poems and blogs about that visit and his subsequent death. People deal with the death of a parent in many ways: denial, anger, guilt, bargaining, transference...it goes on and on. Grief has no timetable either so it may take years for that loss to resolve itself (or it may never happen). In my case, I turned to a projection of my dad as a black rabbit. Some might call this transference or an animal fetish; I dunno. -
ISBN 978-1929878642 152 pages
By James Deahl
I generally do not believe that books, especially poetry books, require an introduction. I make an exception here because there is a genuine break between the poetry I wrote from 1964 until 2007 and the poetry contained in this volume. My wife, Gilda Mekler, died on February 7, 2007. Four months later (on June 5th of that year) I wrote the firs poem collected here. When Gilda died very shortly after her fifty-third birthday, I thought I would also die. Readers will note that this feeling informs several of the poems that follow. A few months later, my grief entered its second phase. When it appeared that I was not going to die, I passionately wanted to die, I longed for my days of sorrow to end. Eventually, this led to a third and quite shocking phase of what might be called the death experience: the realization that I had, in fact, died with Gilda on February 7th. Our lives ended together. The Creator, however, had other plans for me, and the James Deahl who has written poetry and prose since that date, is a very different writer from the James Deahl who had written and published poetry for over four decades. I retain all the memories of that other poet, and I live in his body. And like him, I also labour in God’s vineyard, as Czesław Miłosz put it so well. Using the same name, I continue the work our Creator set out for us when that other writer was born following the close of World War II. But I truly have been born anew. So this collection opens with twenty-three poems written between June 5 and November 14, 2007. These were published as a limited edition chapbook by my friend and fellow poet, Allan Briesmaster, through his Aeolus House in 2008. This chapbook was my first writing since my death and rebirth. — From the Introduction by James Deahl, Sarnia, Ont. Canada, 2016
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ISBN 978-0-9984580-5-2 6 X 9; 120 pages; Trade Paper
By Bill Gainer
Bill Gainer’s world is not a safe place, not for the old men, not for him. It’s a place of mysterious things, happenings, people, and times. It’s a place where the mysteries of old men are told, not with guilt, but as they happened. The Mysterious Book of Old Man Poems tells of a time mostly past, not forgotten, but hidden away in the hearts of old men, its magic intact.
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ISBN 9780998458007 30 Pages
By Ron Lucas
"I have been writing all my life. As a child in rural KY, I wrote long, highly derivative, doubtlessly horrible novels and intuitively mailed them to the only address I knew: my hillbilly transplant grandparents in Indiana. As an adult, I've been publishing poetry in the small presses for decades. I also suffer from anxiety and depression... when the "Great Recession" hit, I lost my car, my job, my place, and... my mind. I became so deeply depressed I even stopped writing for the first time ever. Several years later, when I started again, I found myself writing about my childhood; a topic I'd virtually never covered. And I found it very cathartic. This book grew, rather organically, out of that. I chose the title and cover because that old architectural oddity of a market is such a powerfully evocative symbol of that time and place for me." — Ron Lucas -
ISBN 978-1-929878-72-7 154 pages; Perfect Bound; 6 X 9 inches
Poetry Collection
The quiet confiding voice of radio sees us through our commutes, educates, and amuses us. We feel that we know the hosts on such shows as All Things Considered, RadioLab, This American Life, Prairie Home Companion, Snap Judgment, and that they could be friends, sharing our interests and sensibilities. For its part, Public television becomes a trusted sanctuary from crass commercials, laugh tracks, unfunny comedies rising in volume as they grow more empty in content. We start with shows like Sesame Street, Electric Company, Mr. Rogers, Reading Rainbow and continue on to Frontline, The Nightly News, and the many guilty pleasures of adult Anglophiles, such as Masterpiece Theater and Mystery. It shouldn’t surprise us then to see that so many have responded in kind, speaking back to the speakers, inspired by what they hear and see. What may be more surprising is that no one seems to have had the idea of gathering these works together into an anthology, though they have appeared here and there, in poetry collections and journals. For me, the greatest delight in receiving these pieces has been to recognize the stories I have heard on the radio, with the added dimension of another’s perception added in. This brings home the truth that each of us could start with the same raw material and yet produce finished products that resemble one another only in incidental ways. Our national tragedies and triumphs, the odd idiosyncratic stories of individuals, the stuff of our daily lives and explorations all appear here, care of the diligent reporters of our national media. It is wonderful to realize that in some sense we are all one, listening or watching alone in the dark, but part of a larger tribe. This may be the closest thing we can experience to unanimity and belonging in this fractured land. — Robbi Nester, editor (from the introduction)
This collection of poems by poets from all over the U.S. and from across the ocean was published by a new sub-division of the Lummox Press, Nine Toes Press, in April (National Poetry Month, btw). Featuring Poets: Martha O. Adams, RD Armstrong, Anne Baber, Sally Ball, Kris Bigalk, Lavina Blossom, Allen Braden, Kirstin Bratt, Julie Bruck, Mary Bullington, Sheryl Clough, Michael Colonnaise, Barbara Crooker, Donna Decker, Barbara Duffey, Blas Falconer, Jennifer Flescher, Rupert Fike, Deborah Gang,Howie Good, Rick Hamwi, Kenneth Hart, Juleigh Howard-Hobson, M.E. Hope, Kate Hutchinson, Luisa Igloria, Tim Kahl, Marie Kane, Deda Kavanagh, Elizabeth Kelikowske, Kathryn Kopple, Judy Kronenfeld, Jane Rosenberg LaForge, Ron Lavalette, Christina Lovin, Amy MacLennen, Joan Mazza, Kelly Nelson,Robbi Nester, Barbra Nightingale, Hal O’Leary, Susan Blackwell Ramsey, Penelope Schott, Brittney Scott, Patricia Scruggs, Martha Silano, M.E. Silverman, Susan Snowden, Nina Soifer, Onna Solomon, Robin Stratton, Lisa Stonestreet, Meryl Stratford, Marly Youmans, Kit Zak. View a sampler of poems on ISSUU.COM -
ISBN: 978-1-929878-33-8 Pages:120 Publishing Date: Mar. 2012 Leonard J. Cirino passed away on March 10, 2012 He is greatly missed. Leonard J. Cirino (1943 - 2012) was the author of nineteen chapbooks and seventeen full-length collections of poetry since 1987 from numerous small presses. He lived in Springfield, Oregon, where he retired and worked full-time as a poet. His full-length collection, Chinese Masters, is from March Street Press, 2009. His 100 page collection, Omphalos: Poems 2007 was published in 2010 from Pygmy Forest Press. A 64 page selection, Tenebrion: Poems 2008 is from Cedar Hill Publications, in 2010. His 60 page collection, Triple Header is due from Cervena Barva Press, E. Somerville, MA in 2012. His collection, Homeland, Exile, Longing & Freedom was published by AA Press in 2011.
About the book: In the late 80’s some friends of mine traveled to Europe and left me with several anthology translations from the southern and eastern Europeans and my interest in poetry was restored. I had become very despondent with the quality of US poets since the deaths of Lowell, Berryman, Sexton, Theodore Roethke, and James Wright. Very few US poets spoke to me then and they still do not now. I think this is when I began to find my own voice mixed among the voices of many poets I could relate to – men and women who had been through either the Spanish Civil War or World War 2 – either under Nazi or Communist occupation. I still devote most of my reading, except for magazines, to poets in translation. I’d say that 75-80% of the poetry I read is in translation because I find people from around the world have far more to say than the poets in the US who are either self-described “outlaws” or belong to the privileged or academic classes and I don’t relate to either of them. As one of my poems says, “He was hard at work being unemployed,” and only in the last five years of working did I live above the poverty level. I always had food and shelter and enough street smarts to trade for used books and I didn’t want for much more than that. As far as where my writing is going I just keep on keeping on. I have received no awards or grants, won no contests, yet I am among the most devoted, well read, and hardest working poets in the US or anywhere. I don’t have many illusions about success—especially in today’s literary market—so I will go on in my suburban hermit mode and do the real work. Most likely I will keep on reading translations from all over the world and use the poets I read to “inspire” my own work. As this title says, I have become “The Instrument of Others.” — Leonard J. Cirino "Poets like Cirino, who trust in metaphor as a path to poetic and perhaps spiritual enlightenment, who follow European symbolist models in the attempt to de-familiarize the ordinary and expose its full dimensions, and who approach the world with a generosity of perception rather than an intellectual full-court press are not currently in fashion. The publishing world is only occasionally friendly to them." — William Doreski (from the preface)
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ISBN 978-1-929878-75-8 60 pgs; 5.5 X 8.5 inches
By John Sweet
John Sweet of Endicott, New York is the winner of the first Lummox Poetry Prize - 2014. His poem, Hoarfrost Soliloquy, caught the eye of Judge RD Armstrong (while sifting through entries for LUMMOX 3 - A Poetry Anthology. Lummox Press congratulates John and the second and third place winners, William Taylor, Jr and Cristina Foskey, for their excellent writing skills. John received 50 copies of this chapbook as part of the prize. He also received a cash award of $200. For a closer look at The Century of Dreaming Monsters go to ISSUU -
ISBN 978-1-929878-57-4 8.25 X 8.25; Perfect Bound
Poetry Collection
Edited by Judith Robinson and Michael WursterPittsburgh Poetry Exchange was founded in 1974 by five of us—Dieter Weslowski, Lloyd Johnson, Vic Coccimiglio, J. W. Jansen, and myself—as a voluntary association of local poets. Its purpose was to provide services to local poets, especially those outside the “university loop.” We offered workshops, produced readings and events,and created a network for information. The core component of PPE has probably always been the open poetry workshop held the first Monday of each month. Initially, it was conducted at Lion Walk Performing Arts Center. Over the years, as circumstances changed, we occupied a number of venues, including The Famous Rider Cultural Center, a conference room in the Joyce Building, and City Books. Since 2011, we have been comfortably ensconced at the Brentwood Public Library. Despite the fact that workshop members represent varying degrees of poetic expertise, we operate as equals. It’s a great place for poets from novice to master to get helpful comments and feedback on their work. In the last 40 years, dozens (hundreds?) of poets have passed through the workshop. Among those who became nationally known would be Joan E. Bauer, Mike James, Joseph Karasek, Joy Katz, and Arlene Weiner. An open workshop necessarily produces poems ranging from great to awful, but there has developed an agreement that the general level of poems has never been higher than now. This was acknowledged by Gene Hirsch a few months ago when he suggested we should publish an anthology. This, dear reader, is what you hold in your hands. Pittsburgh Poetry Exchange Brentwood is not a historical anthology, but a collection of poems from the workshop now, its current members. We hope you enjoy it as much as Judy Robinson and I enjoyed putting it together. —Michael Wurster (from the forward)
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ISBN 9780998458083 CHAPBOOK - 58 pages
By Jeannine M. Pitas
These poems are my grateful response to those who dream. To my own ancestors and family members, without whom I would not be alive to write these words. To the many women who, despite terrible circumstances, have refused to be silenced. To all those people who acknowledge the truth that political borders are nothing but imaginary lines drawn on a map. To those who feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, and comfort the afflicted. Thank you so much. Now, more than ever, this world is needful of your compassion and hope. — Jeannine Pitas
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SBN: 978-1-929878-83-3 Pages:138 Publishing Date: Jan. 2012 Brigit Truex has lived in the four quarters of the States since beginning her writing career. In each locale she has also established workshops to help others hone their prose and poetry as well, but her primary focus is on poetry. Her mixed ethnic background (French Canadian-Abenak/Cree and Irish) has been a theme she continues to explore in her work, approaching it from various angles. The historic Wakamatsu Tea and Silk Colony was based in the nearby community of Gold Hill, a scant 10 miles from where she currently lives in the Sierra Nevada foothills of northern California. Its universal story of "stranger in a strange land" resonated with her as the tale evolved and grew from an initial single poem into this detailed book, the result of extensive research and truthful imaginings. The author has been published here and abroad in various literary journals and anthologies including Atlanta Review, Tule Review, Native Literatures, Yellow Medicine Review and others. She is a board member of Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers and Native Writers Circle of the Americas.
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ISBN 978-1-929878-17-8 106 pages, Trade Paperback
I first heard Mike Adams reading selections from Steel Valley on the Jane Crown Show (pod cast) in 2009. I was so enthralled with what I heard that I called in and offered to publish the manuscript! Thus Steel Valley was born. — RD Armstrong John Macker, a respected poet, reviewer and small press publisher (the Desert Shovel Review) wrote this about Steel Valley: "I love poetry that illuminates the soul’s travelogue. You can feel with all senses the steel wheels of Mike Adams’ Pennsylvania steel mill and railroad boyhood pulse in every word; his clear, generous breaths open the heart to the wide expanses of the poet writing down his life. These tough, tender-eyed poems and prose pieces are at once blue collar and bohemian, homages to the drinking and the working life juxtaposed against a long poem about cooking green chili. There are disappearing riprap trails and epic family narratives that haunt and exhilarate. It is hard to find a geography worth its weight in memory that doesn't resonate with the blood and spirit of its inhabitants. Mike, like Ed Abbey before him, left behind the Wobbly Joe bars, mills, hills and scarred valleys of Pennsylvania for the boisterous outback of the comparatively wide, wild open West. Steel Valley is fine writing, epic and intimate." – John macker
Sadly, on Sept. 28, 2013 we lost Mike to Cancer. He was a great man, both as poet and a human being, gentle & wise. He is sorely missed. Read a sample of Steel Valley here. -
ISBN 9780999778432
Poetry Collection
Speak the Language of the Land is the first of what will be an annual showcase of talented poets, presented by the Lummox Press in conjunction with The LUMMOX Poetry Anthology and the Angela Consolo Mankiewicz Poetry Prize (courtesy of the estate of Angela C. Mankiewicz and her husband, Richard Mankiewicz). The winners of this year's contest are: Jeffrey Alfier (Torrance, CA), 1st place; Mike Mahoney (Wallingford, PA), 2nd place; and Vachine (Los Angeles, CA), 3rd place. New to the contest are these Honorable Mentions: Donna Snyder (El Paso, TX); William Taylor, Jr. (San Francisco, CA); James Deahl (Canada); and April Bulmer (Canada). -
ISBN 978-1-929878-41-3 120 pages, 6 X 9, Trade Paperback
Songs of the Glue Machines is a collection of poetry detailing the working class within California’s San Joaquin Valley in the late Eighties and early Nineties. Nicholas Belardes’ raw lyricism offers a glimpse into the struggles of everyday blue-collar workers in a forgotten part of America. "Songs of the Glue Machines is part meditation, part lamentation, part gut-wrenching cry for a lost segment of humanity. Packing words drenched in sweat and blasted with furnace fury, Belardes' poems transform once invisible lives into true blood & bone beauty. Hard-worn and hopeless factory workers are elevated to saintly status." — RICH FERGUSON, author of 8th & Agony: Poems
Songs of the Glue Machines Sampler QUESTIONS? -
ISBN 9781929878543 180 pgs.
By Scott Wannberg
Edited by RD Armstrong Scott Wannberg was born in Santa Monica in February of 1953. A big man with an even bigger presence, he attended Venice High School and then went on to receive his master’s degree in creative writing from San Francisco State University. He was a poet’s poet and a human’s human who spent his life working as a sales clerk and book buyer for independent bookstores, most notably Dutton’s Books in Brentwood, where he held court and worked the stacks for almost 25 years. His book Nomads of Oblivion (Lummox Press) made the Los Angeles Times' bestseller list in 2000, and in the late 90s, Los Angeles Magazine named him one of the “Top 100 Coolest People” in L.A. In 2008, he relocated to Florence, Oregon, where he died too soon at the age of 58 in August of 2011.Special thanks to S.A. Griffin for Scott's bio (above) and other permissions and info.
This book concern's itself with Scott's involvement with an obscure outpost located in the far reaches of his sphere of influence...namely the Lummox Press. It chronicles Scott's involvement with all things Lummox: the Lummox Journal, including his interview; the two Little Red Books of his poetry (Equal Opportunity Sledgehammer and Nomads of Oblivion), and his contributions to Eyes Like Mingus (Little Red Book #9), Last Call (Anthology of poets influenced by Bukowski), and The Colorado River Song sequence (about Scott's mother's passing). Scott was named "Lummox of the Year" in 1999 and a drawing was commissioned to artist and long-time Lummox friend Michael Paul. This same drawing appears on the cover of the book. He was actively a part of Lummox for 10 years. Also included are remembrances by several of his friends...Doug Knott, Lynn Bronstein, Steve Goldman, Dona Mary Dirlam, Hank Beukema and Victor Infante. Scott was the kind of guy who made a good impression on those receptive to that sort of thing. He delighted in playing with language, linking metaphors together that quite often seemed unlikely and impossible but, in the end, worked out as if by magic! For a sampling of Scott's work, go here. Or listen to Scott read a poem here. To see other Scott related Merchandise, go here. A poem from the book as read by its author, Hank Beukema. -
ISBN 9781929878581 132 Pages, 7.5 X 9.25 inches, Trade Paper
By Ariana D. Den Bleyker
Bipolar Disorder is a homegrown tornado, a swarm of insects buzzing in your ear, a picture of an eye that winks back at you. Discover it in a way you never have before. Discover prosthesis. Discover in prosthesis mental illness, the human mind, human hope and fear, love and hate, dream and defeat. It is a place of struggle, planning and realization, willing and creating. Walk a journey unlike any other, meeting fellow travelers, obstacles and unexpected turns, a labyrinth of recovery that seems to suspend time and invite you to embody the experience of mental illness in completely new way. "Throughout prosthesis, the wisdom within this small community is remarkable and generously given. Den Bleyker has a beautiful way with words and the book is made strong through the use of metaphor….This is a book that people with bipolar disorder, and those who love them, can both learn from and take solace in. No one, not even a person in a place of darkest suffering, is utterly alone." —Leslie McGrath, author of By The Windpipe and Out From the Pleiadas Ariana D. Den Bleyker is a Pittsburgh native currently residing in Upstate New York, a wife and mother of two. When she’s not writing, she’s spending time with her family and every once in a while sleeps. She is the author of several poetry chapbooks and collections and the novelette Finger : Knuckle : Palm (LucidPlay Publishing, 2014). Ariana is the founder of ELJ Publications, a small press featuring a number of serials, series and contests, including Emerge Literary Journal and scissors & spackle. Ariana believes in words, what they have to say to the world, to the reader, to you. She hopes her words touch you and thanks you for your interest in prosthesis. Read from a sample of Prosthesis
