All Books

  • Edited by RD Armstrong 150 pages; 6X9 sized Trade Paperback ISBN 978-1-929878-86-4 This is the reprised version, new and improved, and ready to take up the banner dropped by the old man so many years ago (we just celebrated Buk's 93rd birthday in Aug. of 2013). If you ever wondered what Bukowski spawned by his example, then you need to read this book, which contains poetry, fiction, essays and artwork all inspired by the old dog!  
  • 132 pages: 6X9 sized Trade Paperback ISBN 978-1-929878-90-1
    By RD Armstrong
    This is the leaner, meaner fighting weight version of E/OR. All the beautiful pieces with none of the fat.
  • 189 pages; 6X9 sized Trade Paperback ISBN 978-1-929878-30-7
    By RD Armstrong
    Near the end of 2008, RD wound up in an L. A. County hospital for 14 days. He nearly lost his right foot to an infection. It was during that time that he was diagnosed with Diabetes. It was a sobering experience (literally!). This collection of poetry and blog entries describes that time period, from the beginning of 2008 (the drunkard's lifestyle) to the end of 2010 (reformed and living right). It includes everything he wrote about that time...the good, the bad and the horribly ugly! A rough-and-tumble look at health-care for the poor and drunken and the questionable coping methods used to get by.
  • 120 pages; 6X9 sized Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-1-929878-98-7
    By RD Armstrong
    The stories in this slim volume, reflect the influence of Charles Bukowski, whom RD has read extensively. But as was noted by one of his fans, this collection of short stories "Out Bukowski's Bukowski!"  These are tales of extraordinary madness. And while they might appear to be autobiographical, they are not, well not really. RD plays pretty fast and loose with the "facts". Better than a cold shower. — Andrea Kowalski
     
  • 116 pages; 6X9 sized Trade Paperback ISBN 978-1-929878-99-4
    By RD Armstrong
    Three poems written about road trips...the lure of the road, the frantic pace of mile upon mile, hour upon hour, the mad rush of the journey between Point A and Point B. Contained in this volume: A Journey Up the Coast; On/Off the Beaten Path; and RoadKill (RD's epic about a 3,000 mile romp undertaken right before Sept. 11, 2001; a 10,000 plus word monster). Ride shotgun with RD as he muses about poets, poetry, friendships forged on hot asphalt and things observed from inside the cockpit of a car hurtling down the interstate at 65 + MPH.  
  • 156 pages; 6X9 size; Trade Paperback ISBN 978-1-929878-97-0
    By RD Armstrong
    Volume two of a two-part set featuring selected poems from 1993 to 2007, including some of RD's 'signature' poems, like "Yardbird Burned", "Sanitized for Your Protection" and "Things I Notice 4". These are poems you might hear him read at one of his many features in the Small Press poetry scene. All the poems in this two volume set were hand picked by RD as his personal favorites.
  • 210 pages; 6X9 size; Trade Paperback ISBN 978-1-929878-96-3
    By RD Armstrong
    Volume one of a two-part set featuring selected poems from 1993 to 2007, including some of RD's 'signature' poems, like "Eyes Like Mingus", "Pueblo de las Putas" and "Corazon". These are poems you might hear him read at one of his many features in the Small Press poetry scene. All the poems in this two volume set were hand picked by RD as his personal favorites.
  • ISBN 978-1-929878-56-7 220 Pages; 6 X 9 Trade Paper
    By Bruce Colbert
    Since the beginning of time, man has been engaged in a struggle between good/right and evil/wrong. Sometimes we are victorious over our passions and other times we succumb to temptation. Regardless of the outcome, these forces rage on in an inextricable struggle in all of us. It is impossible to quarantine, excise, dissect or suppress our base desires from our lofty aspirations. There is no escape, but there is survival. Bruce Colbert’s A TREE ON THE RIFT tells thirteen different stories in thirteen different locations in the world where people are forced to face their passions, their weaknesses and all to often their immoral, self-centered behavior. These thirteen experiences strike something very visceral in our core. One cannot help being drawn into Colbert’s world. While writers all too often become exhibitionists to their voyeuristic readers as seen in the Bible, The Decameron and The Canterbury Tales, Colbert’s stories allows us to peer through our neighbor’s windows, look in their secret drawers and learn what really goes on in their lives. After all, don’t we really want to do is see what others do when no one is watching? Do we do the same thing? — Louis M. Boxer, M.D.
  • ISBN 978-1-929878-57-4 8.25 X 8.25; Perfect Bound
    Poetry Collection
    Edited by Judith Robinson and Michael Wurster
    Pittsburgh 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)
  • 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
  • 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 978-1-929878-77-2 92 PAGES; 6 x 9; Trade Paper
    By Lawrence Welsh and  John Macker
    I have waited a long time to publish these two poets. When I first broached the subject of publishing a collection of poetry by John Macker, I had no idea that it would also include the work of the gifted (and award winning) poet Lawrence Welsh. These two men, one from Santa Fe, New Mexico and one from El Paso, Texas, have been pivotal in creating a school of Southwestern Poetry which was inspired by the likes of Tony Scibella and Tony Moffeit. This is a solid, 50 poem collection. All stand alone poems, yet all linked to each other as if pointing out the intrinsic influence of both the people's and landscape that unites these two poets. New Mexico is aptly named "the land of enchantment" and it has served as a backdrop for this fantastic page turner! You won't be disappointed!  
    "In this collaboration, you'll find two completely different ways to put words on the page. I was Larry's idea to join forces, so to speak, to present differing styles right next to each other, up close and personal, to communicate not just a vision, but an assemblage of visions. We realize that part of our job description is to, as Lorca explained, break open the pomegranite (the English language translation for Lorca's beloved Granada), and discover 'the blood of the wounded earth.' Its passions and mysteries." — from the Introduction by John Macker.
  • ISBN 9781929878079 302 pages 8.5 x 8.5 inches; Perfect Bound
    By Ryan Guth
    When the deaths of her ex-convict father and pedophile grandfather trigger a flood of repressed sex-abuse memories from her childhood, divorcee Cassandra Hart descends into alcoholism and destructive sexual relationships, until repeated DUI convictions finally land her in a court-ordered treatment facility. There she begins – reluctantly at first – the hard work of physical and psychological recovery. As she learns to trust her own spiritual inclinations and her capacity for self-reinvention, she is ultimately able to reclaim her life and achieve a long-delayed moral victory over her abusers. Within this narrative framework of verse, prose, and other hybrid forms, author Ryan Guth has interspersed other lyrics exploring the quintessentially southwestern mix of Hispanic, Anglo and Pueblo lore which informs Cassandra’s personal theology and sense of self.

    Featured Title at the 2015 Southern Festival of Books

  • 252 pages Trade Paper 6 X 9 ISBN 978-1-929878-68-0
    By Joseph Gardner
    This book of poems was written for people who normally wouldn’t read poetry. Through these stories you are taken on a forty year journey that began during the height of the cold war and carries onto the new millennium; from one side of the country to the other. Nothing is hidden in these words, all the veneer is stripped away to show the beautiful vulgarity that is life and humanity. These poems read like the pink slip the foreman just handed you or the three day pay or quit notice tacked to the door of the apartment. It is the beeping of the repo-truck and the sudden surprise of the electricity being turned off. It is the first kiss, the first fight, and the first divorce. — Timothy Spencer Poems like “Paying Rent,” In the Shadow of the Bomb,” and “Bar Fighting with Mullets,” demonstrate both his matter of fact ethic and his combination of humor and pathos. Gardner can use the same 16-line poem to make you laugh and make you pause for a moment. The geography of Gardner’s imagination is the California of Steinbeck, Woody Guthrie, Bukowski and Tom Waits. Family memories are recounted and childhood heroes populate the poems. The vocabulary is everyday life and Gardner’s objective is to show you the world through his eyes. — Mike “The Poet” Sonksen
  • ISBN 9781929878703 Perfect Bound 5.5 X 8.5
    By Tim Peeler
    The ghost town of Henry River is located in the southeast corner of Burke County in the Foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in western North Carolina. Built at the turn of the 20th Century, the village, as it is often called now, has been mostly deserted since the 1970’s when, soon after a change in ownership, the mill burned. The brick company store still stands along with twenty or so haggard rent houses that line State Road 1002 as it meanders uphill toward Interstate 40, a little over a mile away. In 2011, a film company chose Henry River as the location for the protagonist’s childhood home in the first Hunger Games movie. Interest in the site sky rocketed. Individuals and tour groups made the location a destination. What had been a popular spot for photographers and those with an interest in local and regional history now became a part of pop culture. The poems in this volume reflect on the historical Henry River with some reference to the intrusive forces of the film industry. Some are responses to photographs; others are based on stories that Henry River natives have shared with me, while some are sheer flights of fancy. All of them, however, share an empathy and reverence for those who lived and worked in Henry River. (continued below).
     
  • WINNER OF THE SECOND LUMMOX POETRY PRIZE

    ISBN 9781929878666 46 pages, 6 X 9 paperback
    By 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.
  • 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.”
     
  • ISBN 9781929878611 36 pages
    By Joris Soeding
    In Between the Places Where Night Falls unveils the first years of a relationship. These free verse poems journey through rural Michigan and the Pacific Northwest, eventually leading to the urban backdrops of Chicago, Dubuque, London, Sarasota, and Vancouver. Beauty and grit revolve around two people through a unique voice. — Joris Soeding

    Something Like Paris

    the doe teeters from Rosehill Cemetery crossing Ravenswood Avenue seeming lost on Mother’s Day, 8:15 a.m. even fog and rain in the corner this scene from a movie except for the city as backdrop you’re asleep in 14E perhaps we’re above Roswell the sky a bit too blue babies silent since take-off the gentleman in 8F with a mustache, sunglasses atop his head, and blue shirt seems distracted, sore, or both the attendant hilarious flight 1156 to Las Vegas shifts for the first time and you awaken, fearful
  • ISBN 978-1-929878-53-6 162 pages, 6 X 9 inches, Trade Paper
    By Alan Catlin
    “Let’s ride the angels goodbye.” —Jack Micheline
    Just before the bar war to end all bar wars, the girl with an unbreakable heart leaned over the bar, ripped the buttons off her shirt and said, “I don’t need no ink or silicone to prove I’m a 100% Grade A American Babe.” The way she said it seemed more like a statement of fact than an offer or a dare: regardless, no one was inclined to disagree. So the barman was thinking, momentarily distracted before the overhead rail lights were pulled down, long neck Buds hit the back bar bottles and wall to wall chaos ensued: a flash flood of violence taking out everything in its way. If this were an indie movie all these bodies in motion would be slowed to half speed, made into a grotesque ballet, a techno Rave with flickering lights momentarily revealing distorted faces, flexing muscles, a strange, almost beautiful, mise en scene only a 911 call could interrupt, could make complete, with police whistles, drawn truncheons, and Taser light shows; but it wasn’t a movie, only something like real life. Hours after, the blood dries on the hardwood floors, the click of the muted jukebox cycling most played songs, priming the invisible crowds, and an almost suffocating rush of forced wet air as the lifeless night turns into day. The last man standing behind the bar sips his bottomless pint, and cut glass shots, through a short straw, dulled pains slowly ebbing into an alcoholic daze. — Alan Catlin  
  • By Ann Curran
    The poems in Ann Curran’s Knitting the Andy Warhol Bridge flash with a quiet brilliance. An adroit wordsmith, Curran turns clever on its head; her poems can become deadly at the least provocation, not to mention funny, dark, illuminating, and often, heartbreakingly sad. Her poems celebrate life in all its sullied glory. No subject escapes her critical gaze: weddings, sports stadiums, parolees sharing a moment, adoption, racism, war, rumors, love, death. Even the penis is fair game for her wit. These poems sparkle with specifics; they dig deep, nudge the reader toward tolerance. “The New Pastor” “urges the faithful/ to open their hearts to different people: the food co-op kid with rings in his nose,/ lips and eyebrows, the Latino next door,/ college students with raucous beer parties,/ even the half-black U.S. president./ Put down the iPod, the Wi-Fi-fed notebook. / See the live people. …Deal with the real.” This timely, remarkable collection deals with the real in a profound and brand new way. It is a considerable achievement and a terrific read. — Alexis Rhone Fancher, poetry editor of Cultural Weekly, author of State of Grace: The Joshua Elegies, and How I Lost My Virginity to Michael Cohen and other Heart Stab Poems
  • 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.
  • Carousel

    $15.00
    ISBN 9781929878550
    By Judith R. Robinson
    ABOUT THIS BOOK
    While "Carousel," contains new material, it is also the culmination of many years of work and publication. I am grateful to my publisher, Lummox Press, and its editor, RD Armstrong, for an opportunity to share this writing with an expanded audience. For me, reading and writing are the two sides of world-exploration. Poems and stories, at their best, are at once personal and universal, and as necessary to a fully realized life as food and drink---and more, a human pleasure. My hope is that this book will bring some measure of that to readers. — Judith R. Robinson "Judith Robinson is a poet of image and motion. She composes poems like songs with clarity and vision, trimmed with memory. She’ll take you along on the road she’s traveling, and it’s the least dangerous place you’ll ever be—filled with flowers and colors—sometimes sadness—but even that will endear – as she holds her mirror up to the world." — Grace Cavalieri, The Poet and the Poem from the Library of Congress” Read some selections from Carousel.
  • Dowsing

    $15.00
    ISBN 9781929878635
    By Georgia Santa Maria

    CONGRATULATIONS TO GEORGIA SANTA MARIA - RECIPIENT of the 3rd LUMMOX POETRY PRIZE...This book is part of the prize.

    I was introduced to dowsing by a neighbor in the 1970’s in Miami, New Mexico. It is the ancient art of finding water underground by using two sticks, either green twigs or pieces of wire. In the book, I introduce him in the poem “Dowser”. I watched him use both green elm and unbent coat-hangars. He held them out straight in front of him, and when he was over water, the sticks crossed and bent downward. A person with this skill is called a “water-witch”. My friend had “dowsed” most of the wells in our community over his seventy odd years of living there. He taught me to do it as well, and I can’t explain it, but the sticks turned in my hands spontaneously over the same places they did for him, and I could feel the tug. — Georgia Santa Maria
  • 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

Title

Go to Top