Author: Jim Kourlas
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November 2025
Snow has come early, mean air, mean slush. What do you want me to do, dance? It takes a stronger man than me to dance in this grim. It’s a bad day, so this is all I have. I don’t want to rebuild myself. Odd shapes, stickers, tape. We must be magnanimous in our writing,…
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October 2025 Mix
Aster season is over. These native asters have bushed out in the back yard, and in hot September bloom with bee movement, a wavering, psychedelic landscape. I do not like large, showy flowers. I prefer multitudes, coin-small, a wealth of pennies. Summers are itchy, puffy times for me. I’m not stricken by allergies but am…
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September 2025 Mix
I’ve written four book-length fiction manuscripts over the course of my life. The first two are embarrassing but the last two are wonderful—wonderful dead babies hanging from my belt that only I can see and smell rotting away from indifference. I don’t understand the culture. I never have and never will. I’m too dumb and…
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August 2025 Mix
I’ve exiled myself to the penal colony of jangly Australian pop bands again, thanks to my degenerate music tastes and the Algorhythm. Right now, it’s The Belair Lip Bombs. Summer is totaled, the evening light exquisite, but so, so melancholy. We know what’s ahead. Bars close early these days, at least here in Omaha. Kids…
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July 2025 Mix
Vinyl terrazzo, a tear at the seam. In my thirties, I saw a therapist who encouraged me to apply to grad school. I fired the therapist on the heels of a dozen rejection letters. They were very sorry, I was quite angry. I was high on magical thinking, that if I sought metaphors, signs in…
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June 2025 Mix
This must be the placery. Just a lil mix this month. I’ve been struggling to find rhythm in new music. Drums are too rigid to be real: electronic fenceposts or buried by the weeds. The beat is an LMM. In the future (the future is now), rhythm and writing are bespoke. Spent a week in…
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May 2025 Mix
I spent a few days in a tent in Wisconsin receding from life and words, at least my own words. Did a little reading, brought my dumbbells for a couple workouts in the woods, napped, laughed with some friends I hadn’t seen in a minute. Ate prime rib at a supper club, enjoyed a $5.75…
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April 2025 Mix
An ultrasound snapshot, curled slick plastic paper, in the gutter on a sunny Saturday afternoon, dropped or discarded, who knows. Seeds fall in sidewalk cracks and root their meager, eager inch, not knowing how awful a landing they managed to stick. Some seeds carry the next generation. Maybe my greatest feat will be fatherhood. But…
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March 2025 Mix
A strange month, March was, stranded in Oaxaca and then Mexico City for five days by an unforgiving airline (American), missing a second Omaha blizzard. There are worse places to be stranded, especially in March, but we’re little different than our luggage to the airlines, and that’s a bit too dehumanizing to bear after three…
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February 2025 Mix
Every winter, when the Arctic belches a cruel blast over our land, the storm windows in our bathroom frost over. Crazy crystals grow in waving, looping patterns, blocking the view outside. In summer, salesmen come door-to-door offering window replacement, but I’ve seen enough fancy, modern windows with broken seals to know they’re no better at…
Jim Kourlas 