The official website of writer and poet Jay Sturner: January 2012

ALL POEMS

This is a complete list of all my published poems. Most can be read by clicking the title. Some are only available in print. For a detailed publication history, see the "Ongoing Poetry Appearances" tab above.

2015: Butterfly
2015: Gold 'n' Blue Sunrise
2015: A Climbing Rose in a Ruin
2015: White Heart (reworked older poem)
2015: Ghoul of the Enamel
2015: Winter from Below
2015: We Call Them the Gods
2014: Post-Funeral Mission (to Mars)
2014: Intimate Universes (nominated for a 2015 Rhysling Award)
2014: Neutral Ground (prose poem/vignette)
2014: Misery of He Who is Older than All Men
2014: Sketch by Sketch (prose poem/vignette)
2014: Phoenixes (an old poem reworked for publication)
2014: Dawn Chorus (featured on a UK-based radio program)
2013: Faerystruck Down (nominated for a 2014 Rhysling Award)
2013: Making Amends
2013: Leaving the Old Us
2013: "Winter at dawn..."
2013: A poem written in Washington
2013: "I walk past laughing lovers..."
2013: Shimmer

2012: Belch

2012: Out of the Ad Space (voted best poem of Aoife's Kiss #42)
2012: Time to Grow Up Where There's No Time at All
2012: The Politician's New Heart
2012: A Bit of the Mystery Come

2012: Illusion for the Web of Roads

2012: New Pattern

2012: The American and the Armenian

2012: The Goblins Came

Older Poems

Many of these poems were first published in one or more of the following books: A Walk Through the Arboretum, Kairos, Selected Poems 2004-2007, 10 Love Poems, Collected Poems, and The Interzone Poets 1-5.

*******7 New Stars

14 April 2005

A Glimpse of Where I'm Going

A Holiday for the Heart

A Lament for Sylvia

A Moment is Riding Time

A Night on the Beach (in print version of Kairos)

A Poem to My Dead Love
"A toad trilling..."
A Tree

A Year of Perfect Days
About Love

"All the right words..."
Alone

"...and there was a connection to the earth..."
Arachnophobia Cured!

Beer Can Hands

Before the Storm Wet the Earth (1st place poetry, 5th Annual Skyway Writers Festival)
Below Zero

Beneath the Waves

Broken Hearts in Paris

By Way of Your Misleadings

Can You Dig It, Girl?

Comfort Zone

Could You Stay the Night, Forever?

Crestfallen

Damsel Fly!

Demon Hands Upon Her Skin

Denied

Dryad Weeping on a Fallen Tree

Each Second That Passes

Eidolon

Emma's Favorite Thing to Look At (vignette/flash fiction)
Falling Apart
Fish-tailing (in print version of Kairos)

Fresh Morning

"From my point of view..."
Glass Hope

Good Night

Heart-shaped Cocoon

Her Day

Holding Hands (a simple pleasure)

Home

Hubristic

I Love You (Best of the Web - Love Life Poems)

(I sometimes watch)

I.D.H. and F.H.L. (in print version of Kairos)

Identity

"I'm slipping from my skin..."
Imagining a Change in Form to Establish Roots in Meaning

Imperfection

In Pursuit of a Better Day (in print version of Kairos)

In Spite of Candlelight

In This Fragile Time Between Heartbeats

"It isn't her fault…"

It's All Good (after the rain falls)

Ivory, Bills, and Woodpeckers (in print version of Kairos)

Kaleidoscope

Kicking Sand in the Face of Indolence

Killing a Man on a Bridge for Pleasure
Kiss Me Hello

Last Words

Little Fawn

Little Girl

Little Me in My Big Badass World

Look at a Photograph

Love and Words

Love Will Glue These Br-oken Pi-ece-s

Man at the Window

Matricide
Me?

Meteor Showers (I'm not crazy) (in print version of Kairos)

Moonshadow

Morning Rain

Mostly
My Clearest Day
My Love, My Dream

My Morning Sickness

My Unread Poetry

Never Let It In
Not So Bad (in print version of Kairos)

One Sand Grain of 6.5 Billion

Only A Dream?
Outside, the Silent Garden
Poet (nominated for Best of the Net 2014)

Poetaster

Promise of an Eagle, to a Friend

Shadows Falling from the Heart

Sharing the Moon

Since You Went Away

Sleepover

Somewhere (honorable mention, 4th Annual Skyway Writers Festival)

"Song Sparrow sings and sings..."
Spring

"Spring migration..."
Stopwatch

Subliminal Antihero Hero

Submission (in print version of Kairos)

subtlety
Swimming Towards the Surface

Ted

The Bleak Hour

The Catbird
The Empty Thrush

The Key to a Woman's Heart is Within the Man

The Life Granted

The Pace of Waiting

The Props at My Funeral (nominated for Best of the Net 2011)

The Symptoms of My Envy (are clear)

These Things

This is Your New Life (w/PIN #)

Though Unseen, Her Soul Is Lucid

To You

Trapped in the Inside World

Trees Outstanding
Trout Swimming Upstream for Nickels and Dimes (winner, Wilda Morris's Poetry Challenge, Dec. 2009)

Twelve and 12

"Vivid orange light…"

Waking

Walking Into Yesterday, Tonight
What We Are

When I am Loved by You

Where She Sleeps

Winter Vacation

You've Entered My Heart

SPECULATIVE SHORT STORIES

This is a list of all my published science fiction, fantasy, and horror stories. Most can be read by clicking the title. Unless otherwise noted, the publication listed after each title is where the story first appeared. For a detailed publication history, see the "Ongoing Story Appearances" tab above.

ss = short story
ff = flash fiction

2015: The Blackout Killer (Tales to Terrify, audio podcast) - ss
2015: Potawatomi Island (Electric Spec) - ss
2014: Soulsucker (Schlock! Webzine; collaboration story) - ss
2014: The Hunchback's Captive (The Horror Zine; Editor's Pick Writer, October 2014) - ss
2014: Not for Mortal Eyes (Disturbed Digest) - ss
2014: Girl with the Crooked Spine (Electric Spec) - ss
2014: The Tramp Clown's Secret (Space and Time Magazine) - ss
2013: Spiral of Flies (Morpheus Tales) - ss
2013: Emily's Meadow (Schlock! Webzine) - ss
2012: Charon Falls into the Styx (Bards and Sages Quarterly) - ff
2012: Strings (NewMyths.com) - ff
2012: Deal Down at the Hospital (MicroHorror) - ff
2012: Bright Moon Stray (Flashshot) - ff
2011: Red Icicles (Flashes in the Dark) - ff
2011: The Unfortunate Heartbreak of Faritook the Earwig (State of Imagination) - ff
2011: Penumbra (Black Petals; also a 2012 Editors' Choice at Bewildering Stories) - ff
1998: The Dead Man Who Appears (Spire Magazine; also a 1999 Pushcart Prize nominee) - ss

Miscellanea

This is a list of my unpublished stories, poems, essays, observations, and scraps from old notebooks and computer files. Includes juvenilia and a few non-extant writings. Does not include rough drafts, abandoned or otherwise.

FICTION
An Interview with Creepyboy Jack (flash fiction; juvenilia)
"An old woman sat in her flower garden..." (micro-fiction; non-extant)
Johnny No One (flash fiction; juvenilia)
Shouldn't Have Locked You in the Closet (micro-fiction)
The Cocky Fisherman (micro-fiction)
The Heart that Sizzled in the Devil's Palm (short story)
The Prairie (short story)

ESSAYS & ARTICLES
Cri du Chat Syndrome
Environmental Ethics: Development
Promoting the Concept of Perception as a Recreation
Suburbia and Suburban Wildlife

POETRY
2014: Binary Star (reworked older poem; non-extant)
2014: Paper (non-extant)
2013: Bullhorn (non-extant)
2013: Day & Night
2012: There's a Mouse in My Nose

Older Poems:
A Good Time
Afterword
All Because of You
Beauty Effect
Beyond the Horizon (non-extant)
Boarding Up an Empty Heart
Commercial for the Wide-eyed and Lonely
Dark Bars and 1 Drink Too Many
Dreams of a Garden
"Forced to look at the illusion of myself..."
Free to Go
From Red to Green
Frozen at the Leaving
"How can I dream of you..." (fragment)
I Forgive Your Cautious Heart
I Know a Girl
I Will Rise and Look Upon Her
I. Bottle. Situation.
"I shook with longing..." (fragment)
Jasaiku (a series of haiku-ish poems; a few were published)
Labyrinth Mouth
Lust in Cyberspace (non-extant)
Metamorphosis
Obnoxious to LS (a series of intentionally bad poems written for a particular occasion)
Quieting the Agnostic
Roman Today (non-extant)
Searching for Shibboleth (non-extant)
She Could've Been (My Constellation Prize)
Since Nothing of Us Remains
Stuck With It
The Bane of a Closed Man
The Bite of Egomania
The Heart Longs to Love
The Kiss of Two Cities (non-extant)
The Room that Isn't There
The White Goddess (non-extant)
The Yeti
"They say the crow flying..." (fragment)
This One Heart
Tiger
Tired
Unborn (non-extant)
Usurpers Evil
"We were defining what it was..." (fragment)
When We Would Touch
You are the Sunset, I am the Sun
"You found me..." (fragment)

POETRY FROM OLD NOTEBOOK (juvenilia)
A Man Lays Down
A Real Cut-Up
"A rose, by candlelight..."
"Acid rain drips off the unspoken tongue..."
Another Reason I Love You
"Anticipation has made this..." (fragment)
"Autumn turns me your favorite colors..."
"Bird of Paradise..."
"Counting stars..." (fragment)
"Crumbling ships press on..."
...Early to Rise
"I am a flake off the scalp of insanity..." (fragment)
"I fumbled over my waking..."
"I have no gestures for my story..." (fragment)
"I should go explore the cosmos..." (fragment)
I Stand, Waiting
"I'd have been a beggar..." (fragment)
"I will pull you into view..."
"If there is anything impossible..." (fragment)
"If you're ever free to wander..." (fragment)
"I open my arms to an avalanche..." (fragment)
Is Love...
"I've wondered about Time..."
"Lately/In the forest..."
"Let's say you actually dig your way to China..."
Let Us Go There

More
"My love emeritus..." (fragment)
No Words Will Lift Her
Not to Know
Oliver, Then Me
"Once, I cursed God..."
"Outside I hear life going on..."
Painting
"Pen writes the word..."
People
Plenty of Curious Hummingbirds
"Pulling me behind her..." (fragment)
"She is Love..."
"She's so adorable when..." (fragment)
Silence Numbs the Bell (fragment)
Something So Beautiful (fragment)
Thanksgiving is Upon Us, Which Means...
"The eye in the keyhole..." (fragment)
The Last Broken Day
The Red-petaled Pathway
"The tail-tip of night..." (fragment)
"The tear that once cried itself dry..." (fragment)
"Today is another holiday..."
To Deserve You
Under the Horizontal Glare
"We have to pull the gap..."
"Where is the ferryman..."
"Where were your thoughts..."
Will You Love Me Then?

THOUGHTS & OBSERVATIONS

A Hermit Thrush (non-extant)
"A light is brightest..."
A Moment in the Forest
"All these mindless wires..."
Best Solo Lunch of the Winter... So Far
Foothills Parkway
"I highly recommend..."
"In falling asleep on mossy ground..."
Journal entries from old notebook (non-extant)
Journal entries from Morton Arboretum nature writing class 2004
Journal entries from Wildbranch Writing Workshop 2004 (non-extant)
Never Judge a Book by Its Cover (Original title: Subjective Beauty)
Observations in March
"Once, at a Waffle House..." (Original title: Subjective Beauty)
Ranty Thing: The Internet (non-extant)
Soul in the South
Storytellers
Thought of the Day
"Why would I put my faith..."
"You wake up one morning..."

HUMOR & OTHER ODDITIES
"87% of hotdog..."
"Everyone calls regular mail..."
Cats Rule!
"I figured it out..."
"I figured out a new thing..."
"I raise my glass..."
"I shouldn't have put..."
"I want to be pagan but..."
"If a person turns into a zombie..."
"I'm going to form a rock band..."
"In America..."
"Mr. and Mrs. Mold..."
"Nearly every bug..."
"One out of every..."
"My cat is..."
Thank You

SPECULATIVE POETRY

This is a list of my published science fiction, fantasy, and horror poems. Most can be read by clicking the title. Unless otherwise noted, the publication listed after each title is where the poem first appeared (excluding my poetry books). For a detailed publication history, see the "Ongoing Poetry Appearances" tab above.

2015: Ghoul of the Enamel (Spectral Realms)
2015: We Call Them the Gods (Tales of the Talisman)
2014: Post-Funeral Mission (to Mars) (Tales of the Talisman)
2014: Intimate Universes (Tales of the Talisman; nominated for a 2015 Rhysling Award)
2014: Neutral Ground (prose poem/vignette; The Linnet's Wings)
2014: Misery of He Who is Older than All Men (Tales of the Talisman)
2014: Sketch by Sketch (prose poem/vignette; Rose Red Review)
2013: Faerystruck Down (Tales of the Talisman; nominated for a 2014 Rhysling Award)
2013: Making Amends (Star*Line)
2012: Belch (Space and Time Magazine)
2012: Out of the Ad Space (Aoife's Kiss; voted best poem of that issue)
2012: Time to Grow Up Where There's No Time at All (Mythic Delirium)
2012: The Politician's New Heart (The Speculative Edge)
2012: Illusion for the Web of Roads (Sein und Werden)

2012: New Pattern (The Speculative Edge)

2012: The Goblins Came (The World of Myth Magazine)
2008: The Props at My Funeral (2009: Poetry Super Highway; 2011 Best of the Net nominee)
2006: Arachnophobia Cured! (2009: Spaceports and Spidersilk)

2004: Dryad Weeping on a Fallen Tree (2011: Space and Time Magazine)

2004: The Impatient (2011: Thirteen Myna Birds; Best of 2012: SNM Horror Magazine)

2004: Never Let It In (2013: Death Throes Webzine)
2004: Glass Hope (2012: Death Head Grin Anthology, Vol. 1)

2004: Killing a Man on a Bridge for Pleasure (2011: Death Head Grin)

1999: Ted (2011: Catfish Gringo River)

1999: Each Second That Passes (Penny Dreadful)
1999: White Truth (Songs of Innocence)
1999: Somewhere (4th Annual Skyway Writers Festival: honorable mention)

NATURE POEMS

This is a list of my published nature poems. Most can be read by clicking the title. For a detailed publication history, see the "Ongoing Poetry Appearances" tab above.

2015: Butterfly
2015: Gold 'n' Blue Sunrise
2015: Winter from Below
2014: Intimate Universes (nominated for a 2015 Rhysling Award)
2014: Neutral Ground (prose poem/vignette)
2014: Sketch by Sketch (prose poem/vignette)
2014: Dawn Chorus
2013: A poem written in Washington
2013: "Winter at dawn..."
2012: The Politician's New Heart

2012: A Bit of the Mystery Come

Older Poems
"A toad trilling..."
A Tree

A Year of Perfect Days

Alone

"...and there was a connection to the earth..."

Arachnophobia Cured!
Before the Storm Wet the Earth

Dryad Weeping on a Fallen Tree
Emma's Favorite Thing to Look At (vignette/flash fiction)
Good Night
Her Day

Hubristic

Imagining a Change in Form to Establish Roots in Meaning

Kiss Me Hello

Little Fawn

Pulse