Pre-orders are now available for Ghetto Koans: A Personal Archive, my third poetry collection due this June from Black Lawrence Press.
These poems are memories, meditations and monologues. Stories of witness gathered during my time living in West Oakland around 2007 — before and after. Oddities and encounters formed into poems while; standing at bus stops, searching for jobs then feeling stuck at work, standing in bakery windows fiending for muffins, encountering random unhoused folks in various stages of crisis, more.
Before discovering poetry, I spent my high school and early college years considering journalism, so for me this project is a kind of poetic reportage. Here are memories I can’t share with anyone and have no value unless forged into poetry. My hope is that younger readers who’ve never touched a clothesline or never used a rotary phone will still find compelling metaphors and details here about the minutia of human history I hope they learn to respect. That’s the excuse of the word ‘koan’, in the title. What one doesn’t ‘understand’ might lead to enlightenment itself. Susan Murphy Roshi once explained how in the Zen tradition, koans can be tools to help recover and understand ourselves and our world: ““Koan” literally means “public case,” because there’s nothing hidden. But within the words spoken, no special meaning is being conveyed so much as the ground is shifted in response.”
So consider pre-ordering your copy today. Enlightenment sold separately.
The Dirty Rat 
you did it again james!!
your writing peels away the chaos of inexperience meeting reality, like peeling a grapefruit, bitter smells stinging the nose, white pulp dug in under fingernails… to get to the bittersweet flavors of real life as you and some of we, have experienced it. stay eloquent, always elegant bro poet!!
hefty james cagney hugs npaZ
Thank you, Brother! Should have engaged you for a blurb
Is your poem “Virtuoso of the Animals” included in this collection. Heard you read it at Grace Cathedral and loved it. Don’t worry, I’ll get the book yes or no.
That poem is not part of the new collection and I haven’t been lucky enough to get it published yet. I’m hoping to place it in whatever follows Ghetto Koans, if I can get it together.