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ISBN 978-1929878-39-0 140 pages, 6 X 9, Trade Paperback 5150: A Memoir is no ordinary collection. It is a mixture of poetry and prose that explores her own personal journeys inside and outside of the psych ward. Dealing with issues such as sexuality, self-mutilation, eating disorders, substance abuse, and mental health, her book addresses a lot of issues that are seldom talked about (but need to be). She is currently on her way to recovery, and she hopes that by sharing her story with the world, she can help others in difficult times find the light and confidence within themselves to succeed in this difficult and fast paced world that we live in. The term 5150 refers to the section of the California Penal Code which deals with subjects who are, or may be, a danger to themselves because of mental disturbance. It allows law enforcement to hold a person for 72 hours for observation , to determine if they require a further, longer stay in the hospital (5250). "As a reader, I treasure your work; as a writer, I greatly admire your creativity and skill; as someone who also endures the temptations of addiction, I empathize with your daily challenges but, most of all, I respect the determination with which you have successfully worked to control those demons." — James Greco, fan & writer 5150 Sampler
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ISBN 978-0-9984580-3-8 FORMAT: 5.5 X 8.5 inches; Perfect Bound 36 pgs
By Linda Lerner and Donna Joy Kerness
Between 1692—93 twenty people were accused of being witches and executed in Salem Massachusetts. Nineteen were hanged on Gallows Hill, and one elderly man was pressed to death by heavy stones after he wouldn’t enter a plea. Several others died in jail.
My purpose in this collection is not to retell what happened, which is widely known, or to give an account of Arthur Miller’s powerful, play, The Crucible. Instead, I’ve chosen to use his technique and blend characters together with people we know living among us.
What is going on now in this country makes it especially poignant for me, but to restrict it to that, is also too limiting. I see the situation as something ongoing, barely noticeable, until an accumulation of incidents makes it impossible to ignore, its darkness sweeps down on us, and we have no choice but to rise up and confront it.
400 years is next door, across the street, the place where you live and work; it is the distance between one neighbor and another. The village was called Salem then. Its villagers walk among us; they act like us. We do not recognize them. We prefer not to. — from Linda Lerner's introduction
Watch Linda read from this book here. -
108 pages; 6 X 9 Trade Paper ISBN 978-1-929878-48-2
"Days and nights in Los Angeles, roots tugged out, wrung out, chatrooms, classrooms, malls, toilets, Help Wanted at the 7-Eleven, elusive boys, "urgent hunger," the American 20th century, loneliness and betrayal—these poems have begun to haunt me. Alex Frankel sings in a register almost beyond hearing, the pain is so keen, the writing so fine." — Alicia Ostriker, author of The Book of Seventy
Cover art by Luka Fisher -
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.
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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
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ISBN 978-1-929878-42-0 160 PAGES, 6 X 9, Trade Paperback
"When I was a child I believed in visions. Even as an adult I kept insisting the impossible was acceptable. A tiger was in my grandmother's basement, the one I was fleeing from. In D.R. Wagner's collection, a reader wants to flee into his visions. Find that tiger. It is with the epitome of grace and magic that these poems align themselves with our inner kid, find such realities that only dream worlds can make true. Here darkness can be dazzling! The password is letting it happen. Wagner does this for us." — Ann Menebroker, poet "D.R. Wagner grinds a fine lens that reveals time, in all its bewildering mystery, as an ally, takes the fledged moment into his hands and breathes life into the stillborn. He can melt the barriers between heaven and earth with a turn of his eye, and perhaps, just perhaps, pull a car out of a ditch with a broken comb that he finds behind our left ear." — T. L. Kryss, poet
Breaking and Entering Sampler -
By Mary McGinnis
LUMMOX PRESS IS PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE THE WINNER OF THE 2017 LUMMOX POETRY CONTEST...Mary McGinnis of Santa Fe, New Mexico!! Her winning poem was "No Father".
As part of her prize, Mary received 30 copies of this chapbook. She also is featured in the 6th edition of the Lummox Poetry Anthology and receives a small cash prize. -
190 pages; 6 X 9 sized Trade Paperback ISBN 978-1929878451
“In The Broken Lines, Judith Skillman distills the wisdom gained from her long successful career as a poet into a succinct [number of] pages that are remarkable for their liveliness and enthusiasm as well as for their accessibility. Aspiring poets should find the practical advice she offers not only helpful but inspiring. —Stephen Meats, Poetry Editor, The Midwest Quarterly.” “Another highlight is Judith Skillman’s [chapter] “Revising Your Poetry Manuscript for Theme.” Skillman’s advice and exercises will be helpful to poets wondering how to arrange disparate poems into a coherent manuscript for submission to a first book contest or publisher.” — excerpted from RATTLE Magazine’s review of Women on Poetry The goal of this book is to enable poets at all stages of development to move from their current stage or plateau to the next level in cultivating a unique voice and poetic music. This book encourages the student of poetry to entertain a kind of Zen consciousness, a “Beginner’s Mind”—for that is the only way to continue serenely in the business of writing poems. The work is cognizant of the fact that most often, if you ask a person why they write poetry, the answer will be “Because I have no choice.” This text can be used by a poet on his or her own, or it can become a tool in the classroom. Broken Lines contains chapters on theory and practice. Whether one is a beginning writer, has been writing for years and never taken a class, or has published work in journal and/or book form, Broken Lines includes content to propel the writing life forward. — Judith Skillman, author of Broken Lines
Broken Lines Sampler -
ISBN 9781929878550
By Judith R. Robinson
ABOUT THIS BOOKWhile "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.
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ISBN 9780999778401 52 pgs. Perfect Bound
By Gil Hagen Hill
The past haunts these highly allusive poems, rich with thoughtful, precise images that convey “numinous ambiguities,” as in the title poem. A Circle of Bones is a welcome addition to 21st-century American poetry. — Clifton Snider
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By B. J. Buckley
ISBN 978-1-929878-74-1 100 pages; 6 X 9 inches; Trade Paperback Even a quick glance at YouTube will provide a number of videos demonstrating crows’ ability to solve problems, as well as crows’ ability to play. My favorite shows a crow sliding down a snowy roof, flying to the top again, and repeating the slide. The crow is clearly having a great time, clearly playing. There is no other purpose apparent in the activity. It is simply play. Recently wildlife biologists have begun to understand the inter-species cooperation that seems to exist between wolves and ravens. Ravens, it seems, will find a carcass and then lead wolves to it. The birds know that they cannot get through the tough skin of an elk, but that once the wolves have gotten through the skin, and eaten their fill, they will leave enough meat for the ravens. Biologists have seen ravens fly down into the middle of a litter of wolf pups playing outside their den. The raven will begin to play with the pups, throwing sticks for them or letting the pups chase him. This interaction demonstrates an intelligence and curiosity that extends well beyond instinctive, rote behavior for finding food and shelter. Beyond these specific examples, the Corvids, whether crows, ravens, or magpies, have all played significant roles in world folklore and myth. They are, by turns, bringers of wisdom, harbingers of both good and bad news, or tricksters who can aid a hero or unmask a villain. The rhyme at the beginning of this introduction is an Old English chant recited when seeing a flock of crows. The Norse god Odin had a raven as his companion, and the Haida of the American Pacific Northwest used ravens on their totem poles and created elaborate raven masks. B. J. Buckley’s poems in Corvidae allude to all these attributes and mythologies and more. These poems pay tribute to many of the ways the Corvids have interacted with humans. She uses chants, rhymes, poetic forms, and free verse to create mythology that is both old and familiar and, at the same time, stunningly original. Her poems speak to a reverence for not only the birds themselves but that which is numinous in human experience. Reading these poems changes how we see these beautiful birds, and changes how we see the mystical and spiritual in our lives. These poems should be savored. They should be read aloud to appreciate Buckley’s use of sound, and they could easily be part of personal spiritual practice, read by candlelight or read outdoors where our Corvid relatives may hear them, too, and both laugh in their mocking way and participate in the mystical as they fly across an open sky. An excerpt from the introduction by Jane Elkington Wohl, PhD. Look at a sample copy of Corvidae here -
By Linda Lerner
ISBN 978-1-929878-51-2 32 PAGES; TRADE PAPER Linda Lerner, a small press veteran of numerous years, has
put together a volume of "nursery rhymes" with a distinctly modern interpretation. Along with the drawings of her friend and artist, Donna Kerness, Lerner takes on such classics as London Bridge is Falling Down, Ring Around the Rosy, Jack Sprat, Rip Van Winkle and Humpty Dumpty.
"Poet Linda Lerner pens modern day nursery rhymes, playful but with well-placed poetic barbs, thrown at our everyday insular lives, and the injustices that are ignored by us or experienced by us. Lerner gives us rhyme for our time."
Doug Holder/ Lecturer in Creative Writing/Endicott College/Beverly, MA
CONTENTS
We
What Just happened
Catch Me If You can
The Sound of London Bridges Falling in NYC
Ring Around the Rosy: A Danse Macabre
The Mother Who Gives Birth to a Poem
Remember, remember the Fifth of November
Stumbling on Jack’s Road
An Old Wives Tale or a Rip Van Winkle Story
When Every Color Became Red
Humpty Dumpty
Linda Lerner's Takes Guts & Years Sometimes was published by NYQ Books, June, 2011; she’s previously published thirteen collections of poetry and been nominated twice for a pushcart prize. Her poems have recently been in New Verse News, Gutter Eloquence, The Brooklyn Voice, Danse Macabre, Two Bridges, Presa, Fall, 2011 (featured poet) Lummox, Home Planet News, Big Hammer, and The Mom Egg; her essay "Land Grab: Putting Down Stakes" appeared in The Brooklyn Voice, March, 2013. Her next collection, Yes, the Ducks Were Real, will be published by NYQ Books.
Donna Kerness has been producing Art of various mediums over the years. Her inspirations have emerged from her past... She was a Dancer at the Henry Street Playhouse with Alwin Nikolais, and Murray Louis, a casual fellow poet and friend of Linda Lerner, and an Underground Cinema Super Star, in the movies of the Kuchar Brothers, during the Sixties in New York.
After relocating to San Antonio and raising a family, now is working with Sketching, Drawing, Painting and Multimedia Art which has been exhibited at the Highwire Gallery, in San Antonio, Texas.
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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
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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
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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. -
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. -
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).
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ISBN 978-1-929878-40-6 128 pages, 6 X 9, Trade Paperback
"I wrote her to honor her (the pronoun, the ‘used to’ parts in me), to try and de-toggle something in me, to uphold a previous (yet very necessary) identity while making space in me for new pronouns, new identities. The future tense of the present houses the past in a sweet casing. I want to honor the her in me: the her in her stilettos and pencil skirts, the her who begins to become the land of the Australian outback (with dreadlocks and bare feet), the her that is less her and more something else with that shaved head and those boxers, pants sagging into a plethora of pronouns. All of these deserve honor because all of them are true: all of these are me." — j/j hastain "One of poetry's most bedeviling challenges is to render the ineffable into language.The bolder poets face the difficulty of not only writing about the complex subjects but of writing about those liminal spaces in topics where language does not yet exist. j/j hastain has succeeded here as few yet have in being able to give voice to the unfolding/enfolding complexities of gender and identity." — Eloise Klein Healy, poet & first Poet Laureate of Los Angeles, CA
her Sampler -
ISBN 978-1-929878-42-0 100 pages, 6 X 9, Trade Paperback
In musically charged lyrics, Christine DeSimone takes on the big questions: “Where is the life you want?” and “So how do you do it? Where do you go to begin again?” Her poems travel the globe looking for answers, from a diner in Chatsworth to a Lisbon night that “drops like an exiled heart,” from an “office with no windows,” to the Cliffs of Dover, from Billie Holiday’s deathbed to the “fluorescent gloom” of the Tenderloin. At each stop, DeSimone listens with “dog-whistled acumen / to find what the world is really saying,” rendering all she hears in stark, unflinching detail.— Cheryl Dumesnil, author of In Praise of Falling and Love Song for Baby X
In this, her first full-length collection, Christine DeSimone strikes gold! How Long The Night Is Sampler -
ISBN 978-1-929878-80-2 128 pages, 6 X 9, Trade Paperback Normal
I first became aware of the poet normal through Lee Crabtree, then the Fug's keyboard man, in 1963 or '64, at the Peace Eye Bookstore on the Lower East Side. Thirty-five years later I became re-acquainted with his poems. I liked his honesty. I like the "jolt" of reality in these works, and the intensity of images such as the "devil hair of barbed wire',' and "diamonds of light beg forgiveness',' or "a parade of wrinkles." Go forth. normal.— Ed Sanders, poet, musician & activist "...normal is the voice of the homeless, the victimized, the disaffected and the disturbed. These are poems born of the street, of the vagabond heart, the true restless American spirit that Whitman spoke of when he heard America singing. Too often, now, we hear of singing like the dolphins in an Eliot poem, who do not sing for us. normal sings for us, that is, to the poet in us all and we should listen." — Alan Catlin
Hunger's Children Sampler -
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 -
By Rob Plath and Janne Karlsson
Text by Rob Plath and illustrations by Swedish artist, Janne Karlsson, seems like the work of two cadavers who refused to be dead and so they kicked their way out of their morgue drawers, beat the shit out of the grim reaper, danced on his bones, and then proceeded to scrawl poems and drawings on the cold, silent walls before escaping into the night. Don’t miss this chilling and humorous book filled with the mad graffiti of these two mortal bastards.
For samples go here. Read a review here or this other review
