FEATHERS LIKE LEATHER

(2009, HEARTWORM).
Upon realizing I write about one thing and one thing only regardless of mask donned, I passed through a series of stages before I could get myself back into it. First was denial, wherein I made the puerilely forced decision to scatter my subject matter at extremes only to find the same weird vagaries sneaking in regardless (the Battle at Sassoferrato, justifying house music, ramifications of the degree of Celt in one’s blood, the benefits of being light not just like the bird but also like the feather, to name a few); then came depression…,…; then confused and angry lamentation, wherein >> I quit << only to find my excess ying spitting out legal briefs better suited for the pulpit than the court, drafting mortgage contracts in rhyme, and a delicate attention paid to the tending to parking summons disputes that not only got me off but got me off!; then came acceptance, wherein I slept in, cooked things I had to marinate first, and never left my protracted dinners until I was burping up cocksure haikus and quippy little truths without even the thought of a pen nearby; finally, I decided to try celebrating it with, and as, a uniform hodgepodge. Feathers Like Leather is a collection of poems, short stories, etymologies and occasional musings that blur, bridge, and play between the aforementioned forms while never straying from this one thing. (Uh-duh, and ever consistent with this “one thing only” theme, I first began compiling the components of Feathers to serve as a distraction from the completion of We Pulse in Pink when Pink began to feel like one quixotic endeavor, only to then find Feathers assuming the same obsessive weight Pink once had when Pink got edged out of the immediate frame due to my focus growing ever more acute on Feathers. My one thing goes something like that.)

*Feathers Like Leather is the only book of pure writing featured in the D.A.P. spring
2009 catalog.