Black Scat Books is proud to serve up the master absurdist’s inaugural collection,  containing his hand-picked favorites from the pages of Le Chat Noir, the bohemian journal that amused and scandalized Paris. Here you’ll find Allais in the first flush of his comic genius, spinning out elegant and hilarious gems of black humor on suicide, […]

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I’ve written fables in verse for many years, mostly so that I can work within a set of specific formal constraints. My fables are invariably made of seven couplets, in strict iambic tetrameter, with no feminine rhymes, inversions, or sprung rhythms. These constraints, mind you, are not arbitrary, but chosen for their poetic effect. At […]

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The sixteenth (count them) issue of Black Scat Review is out! This one is devoted to “Obsession,” and fittingly includes my translation of Alphonse Allais’s story “Little Pigs.” You can find this fine journal here, and the book from which the story was taken, Double Over, will be out soon.

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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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