These fourteen stories, ranging from a few lines to several pages, play around a mongrel/domesticated-dog dichotomy employed by an author who’s ultimately dealing with lost characters in search of a place where to be the destructive self they demand to be.
In the opening story, the aftermath of an earthquake twists the narrator’s innards until a taboo confession slips between his teeth. Generation after generation, the men of a family find themselves outplayed by fate. A drifter stumbles upon a cult dedicated to the Fall of the Berlin Wall. A teacher has the chance to reconnect with an old friend after being teleported to a movie studio. A girl recounts her past lovers. Depression meets TV in a hybrid graph. The narrator’s parents’ remains join in wedlock. A bellhop facilitates an affair between two hotel guests. An intoxicated mascot rambles away. Up in the Carpathian Mountains, even cows refuse to speak. A shut-in woman makes the disconcerting discovery that she has a pornstar lookalike. From micro to macro, various declinations of the deity inform a man’s, a family’s, a country’s history. A schmuck attends a magic show. And, finally, three sisters play a dangerous game by acting as fence-sitters in wartime.
PRAISE FOR KENNEL-BORN
Absurd. Beautiful. I loved it.
—Arielle Tipa, author of ‘daughter-seed’
What emerges here is a Willem Myra in search of his identity not as a writer but as someone who experiences themselves through others. Reading these fourteen stories is like using kaleidoscopic binoculars. Myra’s prose is fragmented, chameleonic, packed with symbolism. He seems to inhabit an instant hinged between real and surreal— and it’s no surprise if he’s less interested in providing answers than he is in posing questions.
—formercactus magazine
Goodreads // Cover by Greg Leonard
surreal, black humor, experimental, prose poetry, flash fiction
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liquid writing
2019
- research notes regarding kennel-born, necessary fiction (July 5)
2018
- if my book, monkeybicycle (December 18)
- what dreams may inhale, formercactus (December 1)
- american chimaera (2016), the offing (October 24)
- jean-jacques rousseau had madame de warens, formercactus (July 20)
– [poetry chapbook about would-be mistresses] - in praise of creative words, formercactus (cover) (July 15)
- on mongrels, doppelgangers, and alien mandatory reads: an interview, formercactus (june 15)
- tale of a persnickety english fellow, tall tale tv (may 21)
- masters of self-worth, kferrin.com (march 21)
- holding onto, buckshot magazine (february 28)
- brain damage, memoir mixtapes (february 27)
- poem about an old lifer who can’t keep up with the biotech today’s youth use and abuse and engineered stream of consciousness, tenderness lit (february 14)
- 9 things the mainstream media got wrong about the ansaj incident, diabolical plots (february 2)
- naughty you dot com plus micro interview, bird’s thumb (february 1)
- at the intersection of a venn diagram where you’re least sober, not one of us (january 18)
- editorial note (an erasure poem), formercactus (january 15)
2017
- dictator in carne, foliate oak literary magazine (december 12)
- unfiltered love story, geometry pag. 72 (december 5)
- drained, the airgonaut (december 1)
- grooming, faded out (november 15)
- ooh, whatcha listening to? plus mock-review, three minute plastic (october 17)
- forevercacti, formercactus (october 15)
- the treasure by the hopscotch, scarlet leaf review (august 31)
- emotional osmosis, likely red (june 30)
- her, a character study in fifteen lines, litro (february 17)
- the orphan mayor, antipodeansf (january 2)
2016
- chroni saturnia, allegory [archived] (november 1)
- cacozelia, quail bell magazine (september 15)
- lethargy, 101 words (september 12)
- aftermath, microfiction monday magazine (september 5)
- proust, in a treehouse, with a deadly kiss, southern pacific review (july 12)
- of black dogs & basilisks, corner bar magazine [pdf] (june 21)
- tsunami, mon amour, the wild hunt (may 25)
- kinetosis, 50-word stories (february 8)
