WITHOUT A PADDLE

A powerful and moving collection of poems by renowned Alaskan author Don Rearden.

WISDOM’S BRIEF

Wisdom’s Brief is a unique combination of purpose-driven poetry and passion-driven prose, giving voice to a generation of people of color cleaning up the shit that’s been flying off the fan. At times biting, painful, and funny, this collection by a performance duo is deeply honest exploring life, work, love, dreams, and faith.

ANVIL RISING

Quarrymen dig, so I opened my bloodline and did just that. And I exhumed all the words I could not say. Or face.

The epiphany to excavate myself came one morning around 4 a.m., when I typically have my most honest moments. It was not a bolt of lightning but rather a spark. In the receding silky darkness, I laid in dynamite, struck a match, and blasted my comfortable and confining crypt to hell, a trail of teeth, shards, and shrapnel, my result. And I kept digging, frantically.

I was living a subterranean life—the faces, the voices, the eyes, and their heavy breathing jangled angry, a mountain of pennies in my lungs.

Breathing was labor.The practice of burying me was methodical, mechanical. The only exchanges I was having were with myself. I was a cluttered labyrinth with no distinguishable door nor window, a seamless box, nested in countless boxes, fashioned by my careful hands, padlocked, and plunged into a hole, paved shut.

Like a hoarders’ heaven (haven), I collected and stacked and cataloged exchanges, unwritten letters, tender tidings, retorts, tirades, confessions, and gory screeds. A lifetime’s worth, or so it seemed.

And now I rise, each page of this book a slug of new air.

Fresh, above ground.

THE HUMOR COLLECTION

Over the past few years, we have been living in challenging times. What with Covid-19, Climate change, and visits from uninvited Mothers-in-Law.. We human beings have an innate resilience to overcome such adversities. Humour is one of our most effective tools, even the Germans have been known to use it. In this collection, Owain Glyn pokes fun at Parents, Siblings, In-Laws, Politicians, and dangerously, even Royalty. He will take you into the realm of a dysfunctional family doing all they can to hamper the attempts of their eldest daughter, Marie, to find love. It might be wise to enjoy this collection in private as people tend to look at you strangely if you burst out laughing in public.