Mineral Lit Mag did a prompt issue asking poets to write a poem inspired by, and using five words from, a Hozier song. My poem, Dear Heavenly Mother, is included.
Inspired by the song Take Me To Church, and the video made for it, Dear Heavenly mother is a missive and a prayer that examines growing up queer in a fundamentalist, evangelical household and community.
To read Dear Heavenly Mother, click here.
I am glad you wore yellow today
When the sky and the clouds
Are a nebulous grey
I do not know you so I do not say
I am glad you wore yellow today
I am glad you wore yellow today
Just for yourself
While we’re hidden away
Yellow is sunshine and yellow is play
So I’m glad you wore yellow today
I took a class called The Psychology of Happiness. It was a fantastic course, but focused on neurotypical brains. For my final project, I created some of the tools we talked about, including colouring sheets, via a neurodiverse lens. I’m sharing them so families with kids who may not be looking for Elsa or Hot Wheels can use them while working and teaching from home. Enjoy!
To access the full sized image, click on the thumbnail!
What does one do during a laid-off lock-down? Write about love and Pride. My micro-fic, Toronto Pride, 1995, is now up at Lunate. Go, enjoy this very short shot of love set in a time of social closeness, before social media.
Pandemic Prose is an in-the-moment reflection on us, now. Created by WIRED’s Lydia Horne, it’s an organic archive of a global event. My poem, Shipped, is a part of it.
Poet and professor Orchid Tierney has organized a virtual reading series called Distāntia. She calls it “an experimentation with intimate social distancing through remote access poetry.”
My poem is about the value that people who are often forgotten bring to a crisis. The wisdom of survival doesn’t always wear a three piece suit. Sometimes it wears a Chewbacca onesie and hides out in its blanket fort, thank you very much.
If you’d like to read an interview I did about my short story, The Tyndarids, featured in The Twofer Compendium anthology, you can find it here.
I’m not so much an actor, but I will always pretend to be one for D.J. Sylvis . Everything they write makes my heart sing, so when they offered me a chance to revisit a character I voiced in season one of Moonbase Theta, Out, I hopped in. This bonus episode was a joy to record. I won’t give any spoilers, but oh – my heart-parts.
We are a weird species. I know this because one of the prettiest poems I’ve written is about peeing and it’s in a litmag called Taco Bell Quarterly. To read the poem, click here.
Called The Taco Bell Bathroom at Bathurst Street, the poem is about homelessness, what a body needs, the small ways we show kindness – and burritos.
Enjoy.
(edited image – original by Michael McCullough)
This poem was written to celebrate Augur Magazine reaching their 200th backer on their Kickstarter. Yay! If you’d like to back them, click here. Even if you can’t, please share the Kickstarter wherever you can. And no matter what, enjoy this promised poem about space cake.
Happy Birthday to Me
by H. E. Casson
Dear mom,
From here in space
I think of you
While eating cake
Another thought
It made me stop
Is that I’ll never lick the blades
You know –
From when you beat the eggs
And sugar
Flour, butter, cream
And then you’d scream
“Turn that thing off
And get this treat!”
(There always was a thing –
A TV
Game
Computer screen)
Off it’d go
And you would show me
How to lick
Between the blades
Until we’d made
A mess of us
I’ll tell you
Cake in outer space
Is soft and moist
To keep its shape
It floats and clings
The crew all sings
From pouches
Happy birthday squeezed
And I am seized
By memories of you
And how I’ll never lick the blades
Created by a cake you’ve made
I traded cake for
Outer space
And outer space is bigger than
The memories we make
Than the smell of chocolate cake
