Two Poems and a Story

The one poem that's free to read:

     Is actually seasonal, too!

     Though technically, you can't read it. You can only listen to me read it.

     It's called "Hallowe'en Weather," and it's up now as part of the 2024 SFPA Halloween Poetry Reading. It's a little more than halfway down the page and has the picture you see here beside it. I put the image together from a couple public domain drawings I found on the internet.

     The poem that you have to pay to read is in issue #128 of the magazine Dreams & Nightmares. The ordering instructions, as near as I can tell, don't say how much it is for a single print copy of an issue, but it's $1 for a PDF. I haven't actually seen the issue yet, but a look at the table of contents makes me think the editor may have left my middle initial out of my byline. The poem's called "A Ballade of Intestinal Flora," and it's also kinda appropriate for the season, now that I think about it.

     The story, then, "It Takes a Village," started life as a piece of My Little Pony fanfiction, but I rewrote it to replace all the Pony references with stuff I made up myself. It's in vol.3 no.2 of Journ-E: The Journal of Imaginative Literature. The actual printed magazine is a trifle expensive what with it being more than 220 pages long, but folks can get a PDF copy for $5 by following the ordering instructions at the bottom of this page here.

     This is the third story I've had published in Journ-E. The others're in vol.2 no.2 and vol.3 no.1 in case anyone would like to order those as well. I reckon I'll keep sending the editor stuff till he goes out of business: that's the fate of most magazines these days, alas...

                                                  Mike

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