The days before he was always in heels, before he only signed his name with an assortment of lavish, smear-proof lipsticks, when he still wanted sunlight and blue skies in different parenthesis and every prayer was oblique and small and made of lost things

MIKE JAMES makes his home in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. He has published in hundreds of magazines, large and small, and has performed his poetry at universities and other venues throughout the country. His newest collection, Back Alley Saints at the Tiki Bar, was published in April.