Vampire Planet: Poems

The poem is Negative Space, originally published in the collection entitled Sex World.

Reading my fan mail...

Listen to my wife Bianca and me talk about what it's like to live in the iconic Laurie Strode House, from the original Halloween movie. We start around the 7:15 mark. https://www.theringer.com/2018/10/22/18008372/haddonfield-has-a-posse

I have a new book out -- YELLOW MOVING VAN -- part of the Pitt Poetry Series. "In the funhouse world of Ron Koertge, Mary’s halo is as big as an inner tube, Mrs. Death fills in for her dreaded husband, and it takes a whole day and a half to build Rome. These new poems will entertain you so well, you might not even notice how the poet is issuing everywhere little appeals to your heart." -- Billy Collins

Just in time for Halloween, this new anthology of poems inspired by horror. Proud to be included.

I’m now officially the Poet Laureate of South Pasasena, California!  https://southpasadenan.com/ron-koertge-appointed-the-first-poet-laureate-of-south-pasadena-by-city-council/

Imagine a heaven populated by familiar Greek gods. Sexy Aphrodite, gorgeous Adonis, Ares the warmonger, Artemis the huntress, wise Athena, bitter Demeter, and the like. But imagine also each of these denizens of Olympus stepping forward and revealing qualities that any reader can recognize: Hades, ruler of the underworld, lovesick for Persephone. Baffled Hephaestus, god of fire, husband of Aphrodite who can’t keep her clothes on. Add a defiant Sisyphus and a cadre of grumpy water nymphs and those are only some of the inhabitants of Olympusville―a fantastic and, in the hands of poet Ron Koertge and illustrator Alicia Kleman, endlessly intriguing world.

Ron: I pretty much love the snake/belt, too. The animators did a terrific job of pacing and building to the climax: “All that wasted space.” I wrote a lot of the pieces in Sex World in three months, getting up early to go to work and writing one per day.  Some are solid, journeyman pieces but others — and “Negative Space" is one of those  — were gifts from the writing gods. I’d finish and say to myself, “Wow, where did that come from?”

http://cinema.arte.tv/fr/article/negative-space-de-ru-kuwahata-et-max-porter

My poem “Two Weeks with Pay” was a finalist for the 2017 Rattle Poetry Prize. Congratulations to Rayon Lennon, whose poem “Heard” is the winner.

Through a class roster of persona poems by poets Doug Anderson, Martha Collins, Alfred Corn, Annie Finch, Helen Frost, Margaret Gibson, Jeanine Hathaway, Andrew Hudgins, Mark Jarman, Peter Johnson, Meg Kearney, Ron Koertge, David Mason, Leslie Monsour, Dinty W. Moore, Marilyn Nelson, LeslEa Newman, Michael Palma, Michael Waters, and Katherine Williams, this anthology presents Mrs. Nelson and her class, imagining how she and her students may have experienced their unique situation.

(Originally published here)

No one would take her when Ruth passed. As the survivors assessed some antiques, I kept hearing, "She's old. Somebody should put her down." I picked her up instead. Every night I tell her about the fish who died for her, the ones in the cheerful aluminum cans. She lies on my chest to sleep, rising and falling, rising and falling like a rowboat fastened to a battered dock by a string.

Reading this Saturday in Venice, CA, with Kim Dower.

On September 17 I’ll be reading at Poets House in NYC along with Billy Collins and Brynn Saito.