Brian Fugett: poems

Compiled after Brian Fugett's sudden passing, this collection casts his work in a new light-read as both legacy and insight into his life and perspective. Fugett's poems often spring from everyday observations, revealing the strange, uncomfortable, and darkly humorous sides of human behavior and social interactions. This is evident in pieces like "Saturday Morning Cartoons," "Interviewing Mr. Weck," "At the Nursing Home," and "Rush Hour in Chula Vista," where his sharp eye for peculiar details and unsettling moments shines through.

Many poems explore Fugett's inner world-feelings of isolation, anxiety, confusion, and the search for meaning amid chaos. Themes of self-awareness, the passage of time, and grappling with personal demons recur throughout. Relationships, both fleeting and significant, appear frequently, with poems delving into attraction, awkwardness, desire, and the often-confusing nature of human connection-presented with rawness and blunt honesty.

Fugett's satirical, sometimes scathing commentary targets modern society-consumerism, technology, religion, and social dynamics-through a lens that is both cynical and darkly humorous. At the heart of it all is his unflinching self-portrait: a voice marked by flaws, anxieties, and self-deprecating wit, giving the collection its raw, authentic power.

COVER ART BY ANDREW LANDER. Editors Aleathia Drehmer & Michele McDannold.

"The brilliance of these poems will break your heart, due to a voice silenced too soon. Yet, the humanity breathing off the page will bring a smile to the face of even the most hardened hearts. If this is to be Brian Fugett's swan song, it's a most beautiful melody."-Michael N. Thompson, author of A Murder Of Crows and Verbal Alchemy

"Brian's voice in these poems alternates between hilarity and nihilism. The hilarity is natural and infectious and the nihilism is matter of fact. The tone reminds me of a book I return to again and again whenever I am feeling my most disconnected from and most disenchanted with my fellow humans. Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung by the brilliant Lester Bangs. I only met Brian in person once, at a karaoke bar in Ohio in 2011. But I loved him and I'm grateful that he is still here in these kick life in the balls poems."-Misti Rainwater-Lites, author of Clown Gravy and others