JAY SIZEMORE

poet and author

Canon fodder’s publication draws near

My new poetry collection, Canon Fodder: Poems Inspired by Classic Literature, is now available for pre-order on Kindle. It will be live along with the paperback and hardcover versions on January 1, 2021. I am very excited for this book to be in the world, and I hope those who enjoy reading poetry and literary fiction, will give the book a chance.

In the meantime, several more of the pieces from this book have found homes in publications.

Two pieces were published with Outcast Press!

Three poems were published with A Thin Slice of Anxiety!

One poem found its home with The Dead Mule of Southern Literature!

Two pieces were published with Misery Tourism!

And finally, two pieces were posted with ExPat Press!

There are also two more poems coinciding release with Slipstream Press in January that I do not have the link for as of yet. I extend my humble thanks to the editors of these journals for giving them a place to exist outside of my own imagination.

I also published my favorite piece from the collection, and my favorite poem I have ever written, on Medium. I could not get anyone to take it for publication, probably because it is ten pages long.

The early reviews and responses I have received from the beta readers of this collection have been extremely positive, as have been responses to the work I have put out at the various publications. I hope that this means the collection will be as positively received by everyone else who happens to check it out.

If you want more information about the book, please click the link at the top of this post and read the description to see if it might be of interest to you.

 

Thanks as always for allowing my voice to live in your head for these briefest of moments.

New publications

Very happy to announce a couple new publications.

Punk Noir Magazine published a set of five of my recent poems.

My poem, “A Writer Dreams of America,” appeared in The Dead Mule of Southern Literature this month. This poem was based upon a reading of On The Road by Jack Kerouac. It will most likely be the opening poem of my new manuscript.

The new manuscript has really started taking shape. It’s now titled Canon Fodder : poems inspired by classic literature, and it will most likely be released early next year. For my info on the project, I published this piece on Medium talking about how it started and how it developed.

I’m hoping to get some more of the pieces published, but I am having some difficulty finding homes for them. If you are interested in the poems, feel free to contact me.

For Champ

For Champ

When you love a dog,
you want it to live forever
because you know
just how close
tomorrow is.

You bring that puppy
into your life,
home from the pound
and its harsh chemical smell,
its harsh reverberant chatter
of barks echoing
through tile, concrete, chainlink.

He sleeps like a warm pillow,
nose whistling,
head at rest on your thigh.
Look how big his paws are!
Look how his lip gets stuck
under his bottom tooth, so cute!

When he’s bounding up the steps,
when he’s chasing his tail,
sitting with his head cocked
watching you eat pizza,
tearing a tennis ball to shreds
and leaving bits of bright green
fuzz caught in the carpet,
you love him.

You love him while you tell him no
a thousand times,
while you wipe his puke up
for the thousandth time,
while you bag his poop
hot in your hand
under the thin pink plastic
just so the neighbors won’t complain,

when even the cloying scent
of dog becomes a comfort
in the cushions of your couch,
your bedsheets, your mattress.
You even love the sight of his shedding,
stray fibers everywhere,
on your car seats,
on every shirt you pull from the drawer.

You don’t care.
You love that dog,
he’s your family,
he’s the son that can never disappoint you,
that can never default on his loan,
can never call from a payphone
asking for bail money.

He will never stop loving you
because you had to say no,
and he will never stop
being happy
just to see you
walk through the door.

There’s not an ounce of hate in a dog,
not one single ounce
of vindictiveness or spite.
But there is loyalty.
There is joy.
And yes, there is humanity,

which is why it hurts
just so fucking much
to let go
when tomorrow comes,

because no matter the number
of days you get
walking the sun lit trails
of the in-between,
it always will seem
like time fell just short
of being enough.

three New publications

April is starting off well. I have had three new poems appear in issue ten of ImpSpired Magazine, based out of the UK. Thanks to the editor Steve Cawte.

I participated in a special promotion for National Poetry Month sponsored by the Film Shooter’s Collective, where a poem is paired with the work of a photographer for each day of the month. My poem appeared on day three, and here it is.

And this morning, another new poem appears at The Rusty Truck. Thanks to the editor Scot D. Young.

All these pieces of part of my ongoing project, responding to classic works of literature. I hope they will all eventually make it into a full length manuscript.

Thanks for checking them out. Let me know what you think.

Some new publications

I have recently had two poems published with reputable journals, and I have some more on the way. I have been slowly making progress on a new manuscript of poems, in which I’ve been reading through classic works of literature that I never took time to engage with in the past, and I write poems that respond to and communicate with those novels. It’s a fun project for me, and I am learning a lot, while also reading some of the best novels ever written.

At any rate, one of the poems from that project is here, published with As It Ought To Be Magazine. It’s a poem that was written in response to the Ernest Hemingway novel The Sun Also Rises.

The other published piece, was with a UK based journal called The Lake. They’ve published me before. They graciously reprinted a poem from my collection Corona, titled Fathoms of Mourning.

Thanks to the editors of both of these journals. And keep checking back for future updates, as I continue to get more of these poems out into the world.

My new endeavor

I have been writing steadily for Medium for over a year now, and have found this to be a rewarding experience. Much of my poetry can be found there now, along with various essays on politics and writing.

Since I have started doing this I have received far more engagement with my work on this platform than I ever had anywhere else. And Medium pays its writers.

If this interests you at all, there is a link to my profile either in the sidebar of my website, or I can spare you the effort of looking by posting a link right here.

As always, thank you for your support, and I hope you will follow me and my future writings at my new home. Stay safe and be well.

a woman ablaze

~for the rape victim of Unnao

She walked a kilometer
burning alive,
somehow lucid
through the pain,
a voice in the flame
just begging
to be heard.

And even now,
forty hours gone,
the limits
to the cruelty of men
prove themselves
a dream of light
lost inside
this event horizon.

Somehow, her cries
still carry
like echoes traced in smoke,
her hands curled
into hot irons branding
the flesh of her rapists,
damning scars,
damning injustice.

Out on bail,
they beat her,
stabbed her,
poured gasoline
and lit her clothes,
but no man ever knows
that every woman
is a phoenix
that rose
from the ashes
of her suffering.

So, India, are you listening
now? And men,
will you ever learn,
that these fires you set
to silence the conscience
of your crimes,
are merely catalysts
priming the world
to burn.

Turn turn turn

I found my opinion
leering at naked women
and chastised it
for its brazen disregard
of ocular transgressions,
micro and macro.

My opinion stumbled
from the red rectangle
of the bar entrance
to the driver side door
and blinked away
blurry vision
all the way home.

My opinion is a crybaby,
a bully,
an often misguided missile,
striking a target
with no concern
for the collateral damage.

He walks down dark alleys
dragging a crowbar
caked with rust
and dried liquid
that flakes off black
in his hands
very similar to rust.

I toss him out of my house
like a paper plane,
a drum with a hole in it,
a bowling ball
tied to some fishing line
with two hooks,
one imbedded in each
of my bloodshot eyes.

I wrestle him down
like an older brother
or a father I never had
asking me to say uncle
with no idea
what happens next
after the name has been uttered.

My opinion gets lonely,
it needs to fuck,
to be touched,
admired for its form,
the shock rock smoothness
of cold steel and flesh,
it has needs, it has feelings,
but most of all
it has fists.

For my mother

To my mother on her 60th birthday

You’re still trying to teach me
the most important of life’s lessons,
the necessity for laughter
in moments beyond our control,

a lesson I’m resisting
like a stubborn child
trying to climb a motorcycle
before he’s learned to ride his bike,

and maybe that’s what motherhood
teaches women before men,
makes them wiser, more mature,
accepting of circumstances

beyond the bending of our will,
that knowledge of autonomy
in the birthing of breath,
watching the chrysalis called home

break to unsheathe frail new wings,
that each babe eventually grows teeth
and a desire to eat new things,
to put new poisons into its body,

to envelope itself in a new cocoon
called privacy and individual experience,
you watch your children
run past the boundaries of the yard,

remove the training wheels
before they’re fully aware
that their brakes will eventually fail,
that every crested hill

reveals a new chance for danger,
but there’s nothing stopping you
from wanting to see the valley
so you best be laughing on your way down.

But the dead do not remember and nothingness is not a curse.

Cormac mccarthy, suttree