Abandoned Tales
Stories by Michael Lee
Illustrations by Cherie Weaver
Tuscaloosa, Alabama: Small Fires Press, 2009. Edition of 65.

5 x 6.5"; 28 pages. Letterpress printed on handmade cotton/flax paper. Images and typefaces (Bernhard Modern and Rosewood) reproduced with photopolymer plates on a Vandercook #4 at the University of Alabama. Pamphlet bound with handmade linen/hemp endsheets and cover wraps of handmade paper from wool, linen, cotton, mule dung, and modal.

Small Fires Press: "A collection of screwy, perverted, beautiful folk tales by Michael Lee.

"Michael Lee's work can be found in Conjunctions and Denver Quarterly. He lives in New Orleans.

"Born in a warren, moved to a burrow, raised in a barn, Cherie Weaver lives in Austin, Texas, where she's found gainful employment as a yeti genealogist & urban wood-sprite."
$45

Live, From The Delay
By Ryan Flaherty
Tuscaloosa, Alabama: Small Fires Press, 2009. Edition of 65.

5.75 x 6.375"; 19 pages. Images and Perpetua typeface reproduced with photopolymer plates on a Vandercook #4 at the University of Alabama. Text letterpress printed on handmade abaca/cotton paper. Bound in handmade paper from Alabama Kozo, abaca, cotton, flax, and linen.

Colophon: "This book's structure and design attempts to recreate the original process that the poem was written in. The book is designed to be read like a standard codex (with fold down accordions) or folded out and read as a wall hanging."

Ryan Flaherty: "Rather than composed, the poem was constructed from several years' worth of notes, which were either written for this poem or were pieces that fell off other poems. Over a month long period, I cobbled these fragments together on 3 X 6 sheets of paper tacked to an unused door propped up in my attic."

Bennie Scarton, Jr, News & Messenger: "Flaherty grew up in Manassas and graduated from Osbourn Park High School in 1992. He braved the snows of New England to earn a B.A. at the University of Massachusetts. Learning to love the cold north, Flaherty moved to Ann Arbor to attend the University of Michigan, where he received an MFA in poetry and won the Hopwood Graduate Poetry Award. Besides poetry, Flaherty has a special skill for chocolate. He and Katie Umans are the chocolatiers behind Two Poet Truffles, being hailed far and wide. Flaherty now lives in Dover, New Hampshire., working toward his MFA in creative non-fiction while teaching at the University of New Hampshire. His poetry has appeared in a range of publications, including Denver Quarterly, Conduit, the New Republic, Crazyhorse, and Columbia."

I had wanted a yellow bird
on a branch in my hand.
What I got was: yellow birding
a hand, the yellow of bird,
a bird yellowing a nest. ...

$50 (SOLD)

some bridges migrate
By Scott Pierce
Tuscaloosa, Alabama: Small Fires Press, 2008. Edition of 100.

5.125 x 8.125"; 12 pages. Designed and letterpress printed on a Vandercook #4. Printing, design, and handmade paper by Friedrich Kerksieck. Bembo type and imagery were reproduced using photopolymer plates on Frankfurt Cream paper and a flax/cotton cover stock handmade in the Lost Arch Paper Mill (at the University of Alabama). Illustration by Cherie Weaver (Austin, Texas).

Small Fires Press: "Scott Pierce is toasted in Austin, Texas, and does labor camp time-release tablet by day, and by night produces the sweet pap of the Effing Press.

"Cherie Weaver is an artist who lives and works in Austin, Texas. She is currently under the spell of a Bill Callahan lyric that urges us all to be 'the fire part of fire' and enjoys any opportunity to talk about herself in the third person."

let the dust cover our eyes behind houses
would the streets entrench in our mud
and be stuck ...

$20

The Wheat Wars
By Erasmus Gold
Tuscaloosa, Alabama: Small Fires Press, 2008. Edition of 55.

4.5 x 5.5"; 16 pages. Images and text reproduced with photopolymer plates on a Vandercook #4 at the University of Alabama. Bell and Baskerville typefaces. Printed on Arches Text Wove, Satin Vellum. Pamphlet stitched. Bound in a handmade cover stock comprised mostly of recycled blue jeans and shirts. illustrated vellum free end pages. Illustration by Cherie Weaver.

Written by Erasmus Gould, municipal spy and national man of mystery, and edited by Alex Chambers. Essay explaining how corn came to dominate wheat in the national mindset.
$15 (SOLD)