Check out my latest short story, “Three Acts for Kids,” published by the literary magazine Bridge Eight!
Category Archives: Books
Birds and Bees—A Poem
10 Things About Boys and Violence I Learned from Blood Meridian
I returned recently to a copy of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian (or The Evening Redness in the West), because it had a lot to teach me, in a literary way, about masculinity and violence.
I was brought to those words when I thought of the pattern of violence in schools, and how not only the tools of these massacres a pattern, but also the boys and men carrying them out. Here are ten gleanings, drawn mostly from the words of the antagonist, Judge Holden: Continue reading
Week People—a poem
[The following poem was originally published in Versewrights.]
WEEK PEOPLE
Monday morning hates his job
a case of himself
saying hi to Bob in the hall
who says hey back to him in the hall.
The coffee percolates, drips
a long day inaugurates a long week
and it all goes downhill from there.
Meet the sisters of the arch:
Fat Tuesday, Hump Wednesday, Thirsty Thursday
drinking martinis round a table every afternoon
and sleep heavy that evening
after they hang up the phone
full of the day’s daily review.
Friday announces herself
steals the show
is twenty-three years old and
addicted to coke.
Saturday morning wakes up late
does not remember Friday or
what he did to her.
He sits in the house all day in his socks
when he’s not running marathons
or out of town.
Sunday afternoon is an old Brit sleeping
in a musty armchair
a wooden cross hung limply on the wall behind him
a glass of brandy forming condensation by his side
as he snores
the game blaring on the telly.
My Poem, “Impostor,” Published in Streetlight!
My latest poem, “Impostor,” has been published in Streetlight.
Check it out here!
And while you’re at it, they’ve got some other good stuff in this issue.
Butler’s Parable of the Sower: Your Walls Won’t Keep You Safe
When I read Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower in preparation for John Green’s latest season of Crash Course: Literature, I was first drawn by the Biblical parallel in the title. In what way was this going to be like the parable of the sower? Continue reading
The Year’s Hit Posts in 2017
A look back on the previous year, and here are some of the top hit posts:
Why the Civil War Happened
an in-depth analysis
Will the Religious Right Wake Up on the Right Side of the Bed?
an op-ed in the Warblr Continue reading
NEW POEM—The Boy Who Never Laughed
THE BOY WHO NEVER LAUGHED
Was once a little boy
A boy who never laughed
Never did escape no single smirk from him Continue reading
New Poem Published in The Paragon
Hey readers!
Check out my latest poem, Recipe for an Appetizer, and other good reads,
in the latest issue of The Paragon,
a literary journal available online.
(I’m on p.51)
American Gods and America’s gods
To peek into the world of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods is to peel back the curtain of America’s culture and see, through one artist’s creative lens, the temple of what the culture truly worships. It is a perverse world that feels too ancient, and yet uncomfortably familiar. In one way it feels like a post-colonial protest. In another it feels like an anthropological experiment. This is an untold story not just of the religious practices America does not admit are religious, but also of the religious practices that have carried over from immigrants across the world. Continue reading
CALEB COY 