The current issue features "Your Dragon Needs Slaying" in its Desire section -- there were actually two themes for this issue: Desire and Road Kill. This poem is obviously part the collection Tamed Dracaenae & Some Orphans still unpublished but being currently considered by several publishers, one of whom seems interested, but no trumpet yet, I'll wait before claiming it is accepted.
There might be more excerpts from this collection published in the future weeks or months but how can one say? I guess the "standaloneness" of these poems was not so obvious. I usually work on a theme and build the poems around this theme, always in the perspective of creating a collection. Whether it was Mayotte's experience in Maore, the colour red in Carmine Carnival, inconstancy in Crossing Puddles, the loss in the eponymous collection, or echoes of the last two in Twelve Times Thirteen. This just to name the latest books published, but from the start (1994) there has always been a theme around which I wrote, that guided me.
This time, the theme was double: dragons in their Greek mythological and etymological acceptance, and Tori Amos' songs. It was quite an exercise to choose lines from the lyrics of her different songs to use them as titles for the poems, and to channel my writing around these lines. I had the frame, I had to make the stream fit in it. This may explain that the poems were less easily accepted by reviews and journals, unlike the others. Another explanation could be that I tried different publications, new ones, to expand my readership. Besides, I tend to drop what Duotrope calls fledgling markets, new markets that unfortunately don't make it long in time, hardly reply to submissions, and disappear before they even publish their first issue. I really avoid them when I have the feeling they won't make it.
You can view sample of this issue here
Or better order it from the Lummox Press website here
