Balancing words like an unusually eloquent sledgehammer, Jonathan Hayes tears up your preconceived notions, not to mention your securities, with dark tales of the weakness and the cruelty of human beings. He writes of fate, universal questions, and the mighty weight of sadness and boredom, with viciously clear symbols and images that will leave you feeling disconcerted and weak.
After several wet salmon seasons in Alaska while working in a cannery, and hoboing along the Columbia River of Washington, until joining fruit tramps and migrant workers in the red delicious apple orchard, and then driving a John Deere tractor before sunrise on slippery-dewed grass of agrarian reform, the factotum ceased. Now a barnacle-covered hermit crab scurrying from class to sea lettuce in the tide pool of San Francisco State University, by the not-always peaceful Pacific littoral.
Jonathan Hayes is the author of Echoes from the Sarcophagus (3300 Press, 1997) and St. Paul Hotel (Ex Nihilo Press, 2000). Recently published by Remark, The Silt Reader and Zaum; he edits the literary / art magazine Over the Transom.
More poetry by Jonathan Hayes may be read at the Authors / E-Books page at www.exnihilopress.com. You can write to him at jsh619@earthlink.net, or check out his books at the Unlikely Stories Bookstore.
Jonathan's works here at Unlikely Stories are:
| 2002: | Crack | Acoustic Sunrise 104.5 FM |
| Natural Selection | St. Paul Hotel |
| The Bottom Line | On Telegraph Avenue |
| Crippled Boy |