GAS Featured Poet: Jacob R. Moses

Jacob R. Moses is a poet, educator, and spoken word artist from NYC. Publications featuring his work span five continents. He is the author of Grimoire (iiPublishing, 2021)  WTF: Writing Through Fascism (Bainbridge Island Press, 2024) and Mutable Air (Seattle Sound Publishing). In 2024, he was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by New Generation Beat Publications for his poem, “Lottery.” In 2025, he was nominated for Best of the Net by Bainbridge Island Press for his poem, “Reflecting Clarity.” 

Currently, he is an English professor at Wagner College.

Professors Moses’s book(s) are on Amazon. 
or
PoetryofJacobMoses.com/09/11/grimoire-on-amazon/

Called to Return

Too many verse slingers

Have met their makers

Whether they preach justice

Whether they preach mercy

Whether they preach truth

Whether they preach grace

Poets are being called to return

To the afterlife where souls

Are rebirthed in the hopes

That poetry stays alive

In the future of a growing

And fruitful generation

To Nikki - I thank you for

Your poise in your role

As a revolutionary

To Andrea - I thank you for

Your quiet and empathetic

Spin on tolerance and rebellion

To the local poets who succumbed

To their internal gaping wounds

You won’t be forgotten and

For certain you’ll be remembered

Whether as grand masters

Whether as poet laureates

Whether as open mic’ers

Whether as curators

Whether as rebels

Whether as bards

A generation is rapidly dying

Baby boomers now retired

Soon to be expired like

Year old coupons

There’s no discounting

Our experiences and

We must live to tell

Our stories for the

Allotted time we are

Given on this land

We are the soothsayers

Never forgetting our

Ancestry and the

Bloodlines our

Words fuse

Carotid

Cannot find an analogy

To dignify the carnage

Though I will never cheer

At the sight of a carotid

Artery busting open

I will also never forget

Lofty expectations from

Authoritarian flunkies

Expecting me to care

About the life of someone

Who made a career out of

Cherry picking which

Lives are unworthy

His existence was a trite couplet

His demise was an extended metaphor

Worthwhile resolution to a dissertation

On violence, cognitive dissonance,

Restitution of my consistency

I don’t condone murder, don’t wish

For bullets to amputate souls from bodies

And I would not ever summon sorcery

And savagery like a spiritual familiar

But his words were shrapnel

Rusty ball bearings with no

Bearing whatsoever on

Furthering humanity

Wasting more space than

An antique car on concrete blocks

So before you accuse me of

Being heartless, remember that

He advocated for my stoning

And blamed my money for

Dismantling our values

He celebrated the Second Amendment

And the casualties needed to sustain it

I want to plead the Fifth Amendment

But I’m not afraid of self-incrimination

I’m not afraid to speak my mind

Using my own mouth, and not

Letting gunpowder saturate

And inflame my expletives

The worth of his life will not

Be up for debate like my

Rights as a queer, time

And time again, and frankly,

He was as useless as a

AC adapter in an DC outlet

I derive no lust from this

Don’t want negativity

To breed like minks

A gunman stole his life

But he already robbed

People of their dignity

I will not celebrate his death

I will not celebrate his life

My cheeks have never been dryer

My empathy always has its limits

GAS Featured Poet: John Yamrus

 

John Yamrus is widely recognized as master of minimalism and 

the neo-noir in modern poetry. In a career spanning more than 50 

years as a working writer, he has had nearly 4,000 poems published 

in books, magazines and anthologies around the world. His writing is 

often taught in college and university courses. Three of his more than 

40 books have been published in translation.  

Jesus called 

my 

Margie home 

late August of ’87 

and 

i been 

alone ever since, 

but,

that don’t 

mean i been lonely.  

no, sir.  

a 

man 

what has 

half a mind 

got plenty to do.  

besides, 

there’s old Smokey-dog.  

best 

dog i ever had. 

in 

some ways 

he’s even better than Margie,

and 

in some 

ways he’s not.

you can’t

 

stare 

at a painting of 

a naked lady for too long, 

 

without 

people thinking 

you’ve been staring at it 

 

for 

too long.

my friend Bill James played the blues...kinda.

 

mostly,

he drank beer 

and smoked weed, 

 

but,

every 

now and then 

he played the blues. 

 

it 

was the 60s 

and the old blues guys 

were having a revival of sorts,

 

and 

Bill played 

songs by really 

obscure guys like Yank Rachell 

and Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee.

 

when 

i first met Bill 

he was fresh in from New York,

 

where 

he tried to 

make a name 

as a musician, but 

the only thing he ever got 

 

was 

beat up, 

and a real 

love for the blues. 

 

i remember the time 

Bill got drunk, 

 

and passed out in his car. 

 

he 

spilled a 

quart of milk 

on the seat, and 

he slept all day in the sun 

 

and 

the milk 

turned bad 

and stank for a month. 

 

and 

Bill was 

one of those 

guys who came to mind 

when you heard that old song 

 

that 

called someone 

a walking contradiction, 

partly truth and partly fiction...

 

except old Bill 

(who was probably all of 26)

was all fiction, but he was a good guy,

 

right 

up to the end, 

when he locked his car 

and took his guitar out into the park 

 

and 

hung himself 

from a big old tree.

 

i wrote a poem 

about him 

once, 

 

a 

long 

time ago. 

i’m writing 

another for him now.

 

Su Zi's Review of Mrs. Gulliver by Valerie Martin

 

There are those authors with whom one forms a relationship as eager reader.

So it was one summer at the end of the 20^th century, seeking solace in a stroll to the Bywater branch library, there was an astute librarian unafraid of interlibrary loan, and of loading my arms with books from universities across the country. There was also a local bakery. Thus supplied, and thus directed to delicious pleasures of dinosaur cookies and Valerie Martin, the summer was a healing hedonistic haze.  

Seeking solace again this summer, and stumbling through forests of fiction, it seemed fortuitous to remember again this author who then was soul’s necessary medicine. There’s a 2024 release from Doubleday, and a consistent canon that dates back to that sugar cookie summer. This work, Mrs. Gulliver begins with the narration of the title character, and the novel’s arc remains from that point of view, with a sense of being taken from the journal entries of this protagonist; however, it is the narrator who tells the reader of the work’s central character, Carita.

I caught my breath. Her face was beautiful, a creamy complexion with a natural blush, like an English beauty, her nose straight, her lips full and soft, her chin squarish and firm. But it was her eyes that startled me, heavy-lidded and half-closed, with dark lashes, and irises like blue glass, the perfectly translucent blue of a glacier. Beneath the dark bird-wings of her brows, her eyes glittered enchantingly. I studied her. Something was very odd about those eyes [...]

Carita inclined her head toward her sister’s voice, but the eyes didn’t move. "She’s blind from birth” (6-7).

While the characterization is native to romance writing, and literary writers going swimming in both topics and genres is to be expected, disabled characters are still rare enough in their presence to be noteworthy.

Martin challenges notions of disability throughout our intersection with Carita’s 1954 reality:

[...]we had a big breakfast, and then we went to the doctor’s office. [...] the doctor has a soft voice; there was a nurse as well, and she was very kind, helping me undress and put on a robe; and then she showed me how to get up on the table and put my feet in the stirrups [...]

The nurse helped me dress again and led me out to my uncle. [...] When I came in, they fell silent, and I said  "Is somebody going to tell me what this is all about?"

The doctor explained he’d clipped some tube together inside me so that I couldn’t ever get pregnant. Then, we got in the car and went home (48).

    Nonconsensual sterilization is a historical fact in the history of the disability community; that Martin handles this despicable injustice as a conversational topic, “Carita paused and ran a piece of bread across her plate, mopping up bits of egg” (48), is a testament to the overarching elegance of the work.

Disabled characters are often painted as lesser-than just as they are painted within western society, and Martin continually challenges this notion as the character herself is forced to challenge notions about her person. When the character goes shopping and gets “to my surprise, a pair of tortoiseshell sunglasses” (85), a scarf, and a haircut:” It occurred to me that, in fact, she now appeared to be what she genuinely was, an educated woman accustomed to wealth and liberty” (86). The novel’s arc is Carita’s, and when the inevitable lover becomes disabled, there is perhaps a scent of a Jane Eyre allusion. Martin’s assessment of disability becomes the musings of the protagonist:

When Carita appeared in my drawing room, what i saw was that her beauty, her blindness, and her poverty made her an object of desire, and she thereby was destined for destruction by the powers of this world. Without protection, she would be worn down and cast aside. Only money could protect her, and we both knew it (271-272).

    While Valerie Martin’s established sensual style moves this novel through an interesting, invented country, the characters are bedeviled in ways both as ancient as star-crossed lovers, and as modern as the Braile typewriter that is Carita’s midcentury mark of personal achievement.  

In our times now, when books about disability are banned from stores and libraries, when disabled people themselves face many hostile forces, a romance novel about a self-determining blind woman is itself an object of taboo. That such a work exists is, again, deep solace from Valerie Martin’s works.

Su Zi is a writer, poet and essayist who produces a handmade chapbook series called Red Mare. She has been a contributor to GAS from back when it was called Gypsy Art Show, more than a decade ago. Check out her author page on Amazon.