Books published by Blue Jay Ink

Boomslang is the name of an arboreal African snake (Dispholidus typus) of the family Colubridae, known for its potent venom and  rear-fanged jaw structure.It was also the label affixed to a widely-ignored poetic form championed by various disenfranchised and largely unpublished writers of the late twentieth century.  The boomslang tongue can be vaguely traced back to its rather obscure roots in mid-1980s Long Beach (California) and even more tentatively to late-1970s Detroit. It was a malleable and difficult-to-define dialect often characterized by contra-diction, half-assonance, lexiflexion, and neologism.  It was decidedly non-prosaic and generally ebbed and flowed in subtle to even elusive rhythms that followed a sort of unsung musicality.  Very few examples have survived - and copies of these titles are now quite difficult to find (see Appendix B).  Most of  the authors have long since died or else descended deep into dementia, leaving Joseph Nicks as one of boomslang''s last remaining practitioners.

Full Moon & Other Minimalist Writings are the second volume of very short stories written with a keen and wry sense of humor and tenderness. This collection encompasses many of life''s familiar moments which are both endearing and poignant. As a young child Armando always had what he needed but nothing more. He felt uncomfortable accumulating things. Smaller was always preferable to bigger and less to more. Illustrated with ink drawings, this collection of minimalist stories chronicles one man''s musings on life.

Verly E. Dolce, American citizen and U.S. Navy veteran of Haitian descent, tells his story of of self-discovery. Growing up in an abusive family and in an economically and politically challenged country, with the help of his maternal grandmother, he persevered many obstacles and changed the course of his life without losing his faith in humanity.

An insightful, laugh-out-loud memoir of a woman who was born to privilege, survived a rape, and overcame an abusive childhood to find self-acceptance and grace. FRONT ROW LADY is a meditation on the meaning of love and family, and a survival guide to living with eyes and heart open.

In three comic novellas, unlikely hero-narrators insist their respective ways into revisionist stories, imagined or real, of rescue, resistance and ironic retribution.