Author Jay Sturner

A big thank you to all the great coffee mugs in my life. The ones that helped me to imagine all those stories and poems, that kept me reasonably sane during editing, rejections, and unexpected success. The ones that stayed warm and delicious in the earliest of mornings and the latest of nights, that supported me through private fits of anger, depression, and jubilation. Mugs, without you I'd still be staring at a blank screen with cobwebs over my brain. You complete me. So here's to you, coffee-and-sometimes-tea-and-occasionally-whisky mugs. I raise you to you and take a sip. May your rims never chip. Love, Jay

Stephen Lyn Bales, author, speaker, and Senior Naturalist at Ijams Nature Center in Knoxville, was kind enough to post a recording of my bird poem "Dawn Chorus" on his website, Nature Calling . The blog is a great resource for all things nature, especially the plants and animals of East Tennessee. Click here for the post.

Two reviews of Space and Time Magazine #120 (Spring 2014), in which my story "The Tramp Clown's Secret" appears. SFRevu The R'lyeh Tribune

In the rolling fog of the purple sea Where slugs infest the ridge And breeze-bent heather Tethers ghosts of the drowned Beyond the threshold of the mind Where sea hags howl at the moon And shapes unseen Sneak away human babes Lies the maritime trail I was warned not walk Urged by patrons of the old pub To return to America, and be gone at next breath: “For too tempting is the tourist from afar!” But I split my sides at their heathen pleas Doused their cares with whiskey and ale Till after a spell, I was cheered out of town Pushed along streets of leaping whispers So onward to accursed shores I went Bold with humor and the prod of drink Where fish-lipped merrows in cohuleen druiths Leered from frothy kelp isles And the mutterings in belch-bogs grew ever near . . . And the perverted, creeping shadows . . . I will never forget their dream-drenched faces As they sang and danced and picked over my end Goblets high in the salty spra...

I have the quixotic urge to steal thunder from the rain; to take the pain from our tears.   To secure and sculpt it; to create an elation all my own, so that in a god’s honor I can set the thing free.   Because I’ve come to know that everything sad or lost is not really sad or lost when the day comes; when the truth comes.        And all the cold stars      are a million degrees.

He is making amends to his victims in a swarm of their ghosts, enduring the blades, beatings, wringing hands— each angry shade tearing at his soul as their own deaths rebloom and blacken. For thirty years, few women walked that city alone. In dreams they shrank beneath his police sketch, took to prayer in the gore of his wake. The law’s eyes went bloodshot seeking answers. When at last he died in old age, a pack of shades broke from limbo, scurried like bats to the gates of hell. There they howled and wept and dragged him away. He is making amends to his victims. (From the book  The Hunchback's Captive and Others )

" Faerystruck Down " has been nominated for the annual Rhysling Award in the category of "Best Short Poem of 2013."

She goes about pressing plants beneath her step eyes to the sky pondering her faith in flowers a cornerstone of heaven which for her, nowadays must be outdoors or nowhere at all There is a hand and heart silent like embers across the old sea threaded through twilight and alight till morning, a glorious time when dreams are mirthful and nectarine-light kicks away city shadows Once, he could touch the long hills of her restless body and see a soul shimmering beneath his fingertips (From the book Wilderness & Love )

Can you accept, my love, regression to older ways, more passionate days?   To fall into a swoon of love and lose the world through the haze?   To a time when romance was a pink hue, searching for souls on earth's winds?   To a place where heroes forgot time and distance to reach their maiden?   Let us go there, my love: Please, take my hand, it longs to bring you, and follow my heart, it longs to show you.

One of my old love poems, "The Existence of You," has been chosen as Poem of the Month at Long Story Short .