"It may be profligate, but is it not life?" asks Lord Byron. This is poetry with an edge.

Combining grit and grandeur while mingling religion and sex, science and spirituality, this intense examination of life reveals the author's struggles with the nature of reality and existence, in language both simple and complex, erudite and approachable.

Showing influences of Bukowski, Poe, Cohen, and a tinge of Greek mythology, the author examines wonder, pain, love, and fantasy.

"The Lizard and the Tamarind" is a stirring tribute about the death of a fellow poet. "Explanation of the Universe" does a good job of fulfilling its goal. "Square-Breasted Poem" is a quirky romp through anatomy and modernist painting.

A strong and diverse volume that addresses themes with which we all grapple.

[These poems]are highly personal, experiential. Some of the experience seems to be supremely private. But what struck me most about them was the free association of the images, the kind of free flowing exuberance of the visual. The intensity of feeling is superior.... Their complexity is almost painful.... I was moved, confused, astounded, curious, excited.
-- Ann Beals, University of Central Oklahoma

As you would imagine in a collection called Terra, these poems will take you places. They compel you across varied planes of the mind: love, dreams, wonder, mourning. But how diverse your journey encompassing the night-beat of a flaneur, the death of a light bulb, a bricklayer's manifesto, a film noir dream, the spirals of a lover's earring--and an explanation of the universe. With wry metaphor yet steady vision, Fletcher spotlights the quirks of human longing and the enigmas of memory. Open it anywhere and you will find a memento to take with you. -- Eva Bednar, Humber College, Canada

Explore these samples for a glimpse into Terra.

A TOURIST SEEKS ROME

Above the cobblestones
in a lost park
among the ruined statues
a headless couple lock in eternal embrace

they are without names
their passions carved in rock
their gowns have become leaves and vines
growing, dying, blowing away

the mouths of their souls
seek lost lips of flesh and marble
rivulets of sinter
fill crevices like shadows
leaves blow beneath her thighs
and under his shoulders
their dead bone opens on the stone divan
as I fall between them
our limbs combine

tourists record the details

how we flickered for an instant
like a match in the rain

HALLEY'S COMET

When the moon is red as satin
and larger than the myth of Halley's comet
when silhouettes of elms meld

into the night

at the edge of its circumference
and our earth becomes black
and empties itself into me

I smile in the crimson dark
and search my pocket
for a penny to rub,
a wish
and throw

I AM A BRICKLAYER

My hands are calloused
from the bark
of brick, the furrows of the palm
stained with mortar dye
the powder from every
sack of cement clogs my pores

I crawl behind the wheel
my boots caked with morning mud
and imagine the comfort and quiet of home
the embrace and taste of her flesh
pulse of the shower
the sigh of warm socks on wet toes
and awaken to the distant tinkling
of pans and moist aromas
like the back of a Cairo cafe

No longer am I tied to the day
tomorrow the ache
in my back will have dulled
tonight I do not commit suicide
by hangover, tonight
my mind is free
to glow like the orange halo
of the kiln
where bricks are born
About the Author: James Thomas Fletcher is native to Oklahoma. After a brief stint in college, he left the state to see if the rest of the world existed. Along the way, he picked cotton, made fiberglass and, in hazmat suit, cleaned filters inside a nuclear laundry. He was an M-60 machine gunner in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, company clerk at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, (NATO\SHAPE) Belgium, bartender in South Carolina, bricklayer in Oklahoma, oil field chainhand in Louisiana, roustabout in the Gulf of Mexico, English instructor in North Carolina, and Director of Computer-Aided Instruction at the University of Illinois in Chicago. Academically, he holds Master's of Arts in English degrees in Creative Writing and Composition & Rhetoric, has been honored for outstanding teaching, and presented at national and international conferences on the subject of computer pedagogy. In addition, he has earned Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer and Advanced Certified Novell Administrator computer certifications. Now retired, he lives on the side of a volcano in the Republic of Panamá.