After the PoisonCollin Kelley29 pp., Finishing Line Press$12.00Over the last few days, I have had the pleasure of Collin Kelley's latest collection of poems, After the Poison, echoing through my head. In the next few paragraphs, I am going to try and convince you to go out and buy a copy for yourself if you haven't already. Sit down and prepare yourself for the hard-sell.With these poems, Collin Ke...

When testing the new definitions of free speech according to the Patriot Act, I have always wondered how far is too far. I mean, if you remember the conversation between Tommy DiVito and Billy Batts in the movie, Goodfellas, they were talking about the same thing in their own way. Of course their context was what is or is not breaking some one's balls. Here then is the free speech version of that c...

I suppose the first thing I should get to is my trip to find opal in Northwest Nevada, but I do have a few things to get to first, so please be patient. That, or skip to the parts you are really interested in reading.1.I still have not received my advanced copy of After the Poison by Collin. I'm hoping it's waiting for me in the mail today so I can have a great read later tonight.2.Speaking of mail...

This is what I am going to be trying to find in the next couple of days. Tomorrow morning I am going to be taking the family up to the Virgin Valley to go opal mining. We are going to be digging around and hopefully we will find something which approximates what's in the picture above. The specific variety of opal is Black Fire Opal. There are only two places in the world you can find Black Fire Op...

I have sent off all of the corrections and changes I could find in my chapbook, and now I am nervous because I always, and I mean ALWAYS miss something when I proof my chapbooks. Well, that is to be suspected. This time around I had a lot of changes to make. I had to remove a poem and replace it with two others. That meant changing around the acknowledgement page, the order of poems (which I was go...