OUR NEXT BOOK

PHOTO TAKEN OUTSIDE OF LOS ALOMOS IN 2024 by JENNIFER CARTRIGHT

The year has started with a lot of activity for auxarczen. Last month, we launched "Western Swing," a novel by Matt McGowan, and we are quickly approaching the release of our upcoming book, "Alchemy of Headwinds," a poetry collection by John Macker.

Both of these projects have been an absolute joy. The reason being; the creative fluidity that takes place between artists trying to move something closer to perfection is something that cannot be bottled, recreated in a PR lab, or monetized, yet.

Everyone on the same page, how often does that happen in modern day digitized planners? Bad example.

I have read every book, broadside, magazine and letter that John Macker has produced. This is, without exception, his finest collection. There is fragility, beauty, humor, stark desert realities, and truth behind this group of poems. For example:

CERRADO

Listening to Mingus’ Gunslinger Bird

in the living room when I heard a loud thump

coming from her studio. She was on the floor

holding her bent Quasimodo wrist. As ugly a

break as I’d ever been to. She had slipped and

landed on her hip and hand. She went briefly

into shock and stared at the ceiling.

She didn’t recognize me as her husband

thought I was playing live music from somewhere

in the Five Points of her imagination. After she

came around she swore the darkness tried to

close in around her. I took her to urgent care

on a hot smoky night, the drowse of August.

They determined she’d need surgery. They

determined older people slip and fall, right

before we begin to fade away.

We are too old to be gunslingers. Bird died at 34.

The nights closed in on him like carnivorous angels.

She now holds her bandaged wrist above her heart

and walks with a cane. Life doesn’t feel precious, it

resembles an open wound we spend a lot of our time closing.

Wildfire smoke fills the air, the sun has turned orange.

Another man of color shot in the back.

Who doesn’t want to close the book on this grievous year?

Who hasn’t gone into shock, eyes filled with ash?

Today, I played music so loud it emptied the neighborhood

of life as we know it. But it gradually returned.

The silent ambulance mercifully left the cul-de-sac

without the sick lady across the street.     Victor brought

in his recycling bin. I read: some words die in cages.

I thought about what breaks us, what mends us, the border,

separations. What closes our hearts for good.

I thought about hair trigger America,

smoke is the summer language of ghosts.

and the hits keep coming, one after another, in Alchemy of Headwinds. It is an unstoppable force, in our opinion. With a few more tweeks, color corrections, and a little more love, this collection will assist in setting our minds somewhere closer to lyrical perfection.