Le Scat Noir #217 is out, free and accessible in its handy PDF format. Among many other things, you can read the full text of my stirring historical play, The Presidents’ Tragedy, and gaze at more of my musical instrument drawings. Look here! And be sure to download it for greater legibility.

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In this toxic election cycle, it’s appropriate to ponder the history of the presidency. I offer my stirring pageant, The Presidents’ Tragedy. It’s in five brief acts (with a prologue and epilogue spoken by David Rice Atchison, who was president for one day, sort of), in blank verse, and depicts all of our presidents trying […]

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Due to the unusually wacko presidential campaign we are now weathering stateside, Le Scat Noir has released a special Infection issue ahead of schedule. Along with other contributions, some topical, you will find my translations of Erik Satie and Alphonse Allais, as well as another page of my musical instrument designs. It is, as always, […]

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Ever eager for literary constraints, I wrote this tale in heroic couplets, alternating masculine and feminine rhymes, with each stanza an acrostic of the title. Heroic couplets seemed appropriate, since it concerns adultery at a cosplay convention. Here’s the first stanza (of eight): The Chromatologist was colorblind: He had to check the colors in his […]

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Black Scat Books has published a trade paperback collecting the three issues of Oulipo Pornobongo, a curious little publication devoted to smut written under formal constraints, edited by Norman Conquest. I contributed six pieces (a song, an acrostic, an alphabet, a univocalism, a comic strip on a scenario by Derek Pell, and a homophonic transliteration). […]

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Here’s another excerpt from Sleepytime Cemetery (available, remember, from Black Scat Books). An attempted suicide turns to slapstick, all in ABAB quatrains. This is how it begins… THE RAZOR I laid a razor at my wrist, So I would be no more. I closed my eyes, and sneezed, and missed, And dropped it on the […]

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This little tale concerning the perils of cultural appropriation can be found in my collection Sleepytime Cemetery, available from Black Scat Books. Here’s how it starts; for more, buy the book! THE YODELING DUTCHMAN Rembrandt van Rijn stepped out of his picturesque cottage and into the crisp October air. I should make it clear at […]

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The fifteenth issue of The Black Scat Review is out! This one is subtitled “More Utter Nonsense,” and includes my poem “Pan and Kettle,” as well as my translations of two monologues by Charles Cros, “The Man with His Feet Turned Around” and “The Man Who Made a Discovery.” The other contributors are Edward Ahern, […]

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Sleepytime Cemetery is now available! In the words of Black Scat Books, “In this new collection of short stories by the author of The Doug Skinner Dossier, you’ll discover a world of ostensibly human specimens behaving in peculiar and unpredictable ways. However, they are often recognizable in a manner we dare not admit. Skinner’s dark […]

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Black Scat Books has posted “A Funny Story,” from my upcoming collection of short stories, Sleepytime Cemetery. It can be found here.

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