The horizontal life: poems, stories, essays

Abstract

<p>What you hold in your hands is a forced confluence: portions of three separate manuscripts -- two prose and one poetry -- which I have been working on concurrently during my time at Iowa State. The stories and essays about childhood, drawn from my own experiences growing up in a small town, belong to Grim Tales From Dinky Towns, a largely nonfictional manuscript that explores rurality and a child's yearning to escape. The fiction pieces about musicians are from Playing for the Door, my fictional exploration of seven very real years I spent on the road as a professional rock musician. The poetry that is sprinkled throughout belongs to Everything's a Verb, a completed poetry manuscript. Since I have decided to bring these pieces together under the rubric of The Horizontal Life -- pieces that are so clearly disparate not only in genre, voice and style, but also geographically and thematically -- I feel I must explain my purposes.</p> <p>Table of Contents: Finding the words [poem] -- Playing for the door [short story] -- When the names still fit the faces [poem] -- Through the beaded curtain [essay] -- And who do you belong to? [poem] -- Naming the beast [short story] -- Riding shotgun through Iowa with Quest talking about all things inevitable [poem] -- The horizontal life [essay] -- Motorcade [poem] -- Getting wings [short story] -- Grandfather's hands [poem] -- The moon [short story] -- Doing the twist [poem] -- Talking Ander down [short story] -- The woman on the dance [poem] -- Santiago's dead [short story] -- Shit & the dream of it [poem] -- Intent to return [essay] -- Watching Joann Castle play [poem] -- Tombstone sales [short story] -- Somewhere in a house where you are not [poem].</p>