Open Spirit is the new chapbook from Travis Catsull. Check out Joyce Metzger's detailed review:

Travis Catsull was born in Texas in 1975. At the time of the publication of Open Spirit, he published the literary 'zine, "Haggard and Halloo" and was the assistant editor of "The Temple."

Travis dedicates word images to troubadours of family. The titles for Travis Catsull's poems and prose are thought provoking images: Ode to Gray-Blue Jewish Lady; The Last Poem About My Purple Eye; Lennird's Lawn Service Gone Global; The Lock Pick Kit; Wanted: Stuffed Coyote. One quick glance at these titles whets curiosity, sharpens the mind, entices a reader forward.

--The Blue Universe--

In the blue universe/The older the body gets
the nastier it seems./I'm sick of mine at 24
Who's to say we don't roam the desert
With cakes of sun sliding down the blades
of a windmill
over/corn town,/play ground
ocean drowned blue
crawling through the Blue Universe grey
and freakish.

I thought I was the only magician in town
When she disappeared inside me
But a moth in love with a fire fly
Will always be a tracer behind
A shadow rippling across the floor
Like the tombstone of a stillborn child
Small and powerful,
Cold in the spine of whispers.

This is powerful imagery from a quicksilvered polychromatic power house who can generate electrified influences as words wield even more inspiration. Lagging imagination soars and the doors of mind swing open to unthoughtof before images. Some of these words are so unique they should be carved upon mahogany mastheads.

--The Wind Is Ending--

With a sharp hour hand I stabbed a hole through the
day just to watch it sink, scream-mist
like a broken battleship
laying on it's side like a dead cow
in a meadow
(of tall white wheat)
where ghost boys
fly ghost kites
on the extra gusts of wind,
they circle
the cow, the boat

I like it! These words work overtime!

--Lennird's Lawn Service Gone Global--

I have dreams of helicopters made of cigarettes
and liquid latex (wa-(wa)(wa, igniting the candles 'round
firewalking/cavemen...
blades on the ceiling listen upside down
and the furthest word i've begun
is green

Order this book from Tsunami Inc. Charles Potts will wing it to you quickly. You can spend a day, a week-end, or a month devouring these images. Bravo to the uniqueness of the photo on the rear cover also, entitled: A Princess of Mine. And she is indeed!