For the month of July I had the pleasure to collaborate with Eric Morago, a well known poet in the Southern California writing scene and publisher of Moon Tide Press. I've known and admired Eric's work for quite a while now. I asked him to write a bit about about the theme of the photo shoot we did. You can read one of his poems below.
"I have
spent most of my life with my head down in a comic book—I gravitate to the
heroics and drama of it all. As I have
grown into the poet I am today, I have tried to bring those same elements into
my writing, drawing from pop culture and superheroes the way past generations
of writers would allude to Greek gods and Shakespeare.
What I
have written above, while true, is also just fancy-speak for: I’m a geek. I read comics and science fiction, I play old
school video games, and—the icing on the geek-cake—I write poems, sometimes about
those things.
The idea
behind this shoot was to show me in my natural habitat. A bookstore.
More importantly the comic book section of a bookstore. I love spinner racks. The first place I ever bought a comic book
was in a bookstore with a spinner rack—an old bookstore that smelled of musty
old paper and wood, the way a bookstore should.
If I ever
became a famous celebrity with my own line of fragrance, it would be the scent
of an old bookstore. These photos could
then appear in the ads of magazine pages like GQ, Maxim, and Wizard: The Guide to Comics.
That
probably won’t happen though. I mean, Wizard, has been out of print for over a
decade now. Besides, what could my
fragrance be called—Page Turner?"
Eric
Morago is a Pushcart Prize nominated poet who believes performance carries as
much importance on the page as it does off. He is the author of What We Ache For and Feasting on Sky. Currently Eric hosts a
monthly reading series, teaches writing workshops, and is editor-in-chief and
publisher of Moon Tide Press. He has an MFA in Creative Writing from California
State University, Long Beach, and lives in Los Angeles, CA.
THOR LOSES
HIS HAMMER
by Eric Morago
He
staggers into my home tear-drink,
gold locks
reeking of booze and puke,
snot
dangling from his perfect nose.
I ask, What happened?
It’s gone, he says, I can’t find it.
He sits,
sinks into the cushions,
cries more
than any god should.
Loki? I suggest, quick to help.
First place I tried—beat him to a
pulp
then ransacked the underworld.
Hela told me to check with the
frost giants.
No luck there, either.
As he
speaks he voice shakes
with so
much loss I ache for him—
helplessly,
like having to see a child
break,
bawling over a popped balloon.
I brew us
coffee.
He takes
his mug in his large god hands,
thanks me
and asks what he should do.
Can’t the dwarves just make
another?
He says I
don’t understand.
Tells me
it was a gift from Odin—
the only
hard proof of his father’s love.
But I
do—years before my father left,
he gave me
a watch I’d never wear,
but made
promise to always keep.
Now it
rests in a sleek black box,
tucked
away in my bedside drawer.
Often I
forget it’s there, except
on nights
I can’t sleep when I hear
its faint
ticking, and think to take it
from its
grave, to feel the weight
of my
father’s heart in my palm.
I want to
tell Thor I understand,
but he has
passed out on my couch,
curled
into a muscular ball, snoring—
and I
wonder,
if Thor
cannot find his hammer,
how long
before we feel his loss,
how long
before we miss the thunder
from our
skies.
