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A fantasy poem from my new collection

Quite an Impression

The body of some unknown god
Plummeted from the sky,
impaled itself on the stoplight
In the center of town,
Head crushing the drugstore
(Woulda killed Mr. Snyder
if the store had been open),
Right knee clipping the front of the
Pure station,
And, I guess,
Smashing the storage tank
Under the pump,
Cos now the whole town smells of gas.
Not much left of the 7-11 either,
But the five and dime next door was no big loss;
It closed years ago,
Only thing is, can’t get through the intersection at all,
And now we have to detour 40 miles
To get to the Walmart
Across the county line.
Meanwhile,
This thing shows no sign of decaying,
And we've got no equipment
That could move it,
So its name is Mud
Far as I'm concerned,
And it's just too bad
That I don't even know
If this is my god,
And He's dead,
Like Nietzsche said,
Or if this is some other dude,
Who didn't create my universe,
And I still have to go to church on Sunday,
Even though now the drive
Is 20-some miles longer,
Which is costing me a lot of gas money,
And what kind of God
Could allow this to happen,
If He isn't dead?

Some Disassembly Required, David C. Kopaska-Merkel's 19th speculative poetry collection, contains nearly 100 pages of poetry. The ebook (epub, mobi, pdf, lit, lrf formats) is available for $3. Pay via PayPal to jopnquog@gmail.com, or by check to the author at 10055 Goodwood Blvd., Baton Rouge LA 70815. The print book is $10 postpaid from the author; signed at no charge. The book also is available from Amazon for $10 + shipping

*****

Praise for Some Disassembly Required:


Some Disassembly Required had me at “Bah Bah Black Goat”….Providing both tongue-in-fungoid-cheek and real scares, Kopaska-Merkel’s poetry just about covers it with his use of free verse and formalist verse (Great Old One haibun, uh-huh), funny and scary verse, Sfnal and fantastical verse.

When you read some of these poems, you’ll recognize places you’ve been...even if only in your dreams and nightmares. Kinda nice to have some validation for those night gaunt sightings, eh?

Only reality is scarier than some of these poems.

--Denise Dumars, author of Paranormal Romance: Poems Romancing the Paranormal.

*****

David Kopaska-Merkel... uses precise language and twisted speculation to forge a...nuanced world-view….His works here, from poems about post-apocalyptic mutations to pieces dealing with shapeshifters and space travelers, are filled with creatures who are not so much extremes, or bigger than life, but are instead totally accessible because of the ordinariness of their cruelties, the normality of their mistakes and desires, and the pettiness of their wide-spread destruction. These are the small beings who do huge damage, the powerful divinities who act out of their small-mindedness, greed, and ignorance.

Then, mixed in among the fantastic and the alien, almost to the point where the reader can no longer tell one type of being from another, are humans. If we created gods and demons in our own image, to be worshiped, feared and reviled, David Kopaska-Merkel's sf-nal creations have likewise used humans in the same way.

This book...is a dark, gritty, almost horrifically strange one. But, with some disassembly, the reader can start to see bright patches, sympathetic and approachable. Of course, those only serve to make...the horrors more relatable.

--Marcie Lynn Tentchoff, Editor, Spaceports & Spidersilk, author of Midnight Comes Early.



Please contact me if you are interested in reviewing the book.