O:JA&L Poetry: All forms & styles
Prose Poetry
John Dorroh
MY HOMETOWN
My hometown clings to Elvis Presley’s lapels. It’s fried catfish, collard greens, fast-food mashed potatoes with thick white gravy, and pulled pork BBQ on every fifth corner. It’s ante-bellum homes and racial friction but not enough to cause a spark. It has a viable breath a few times a year, but someone always snuffs it out. It is Harvey’s casual restaurant and Profitt’s porch on a lake in the woods, surrounded by hummingbird feeders and alligators that sun in a pond behind the main smoke shed. My hometown is a dungeon dominatrix, an old house on 6th Street painted in Mardi Gras colors that caused clamor from the socialites who hire Catholics to go to the liquor store for their medicinal needs. It is old and new, which is always suspect. It is black and white, corn dogs, and two brackish rivers that join in a confluence less than a quarter-mile from the adult bookstore which is hidden by overgrown vines and adorned on its roof by a colossal pink pony that is well-hung like the god who left the city in 1972.
About the writer:
John Dorroh travels as often as possible. He inevitably ends up in other peoples’ kitchens exchanging culinary tidbits and telling tall tales. Once he baked bread with Austrian monks and drank a healthy portion of their beer. Six of his poems were nominated for Best of the Net. Others have appeared in over 100 journals, including Feral, North of Oxford, River Heron, Wisconsin Review, Kissing Dynamite, El Portal, and Loch Raven Review. He makes his home in Southwest Illinois not far from St. Louis. In his next life he would like to be a penguin.
Image: The King (AI-assisted digital image) by O:JA&L staff creative. 2026. Public domain via Midjourney AI.
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The Buttonhook Press Masters Series
The Buttonhook Press Masters Series (from OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters and its Buttonhook Press imprint) gathers acclaimed writers for concise, downloadable chapbooks that pair fresh work with candid reflections on craft. Each installment—often framed by an interview with an associate editor—opens a window onto how masters of poetry, prose poetry, flash fiction, and related hybrid forms build voice, compression, and surprise. Designed as a reader’s invitation and a writer’s toolbox, the series celebrates literary art that moves fast, cuts deep, and lingers long after the last line.
Click on the titles below to explore or download the free PDF chapbooks.
Prose Poetry and Flash Discourse
The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Brian Clements on Prose Poetry
With an Interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Mark Budman on Flash Discourse
With an Interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Ray Gonzalez on Prose Poetry
With an Interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
The Buttonhook Press Master Series: Michael Martone on Flash Fiction
With an Interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
The Buttonhook Press Master Series: Roberta Allen on Flash Fiction
With an Interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
The Buttonhook Press Master Series: Peter Conners on Flash Fiction
With an Interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Maxine Chernoff on Prose Poetry
With an Interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Pedro Ponce on Flash Fiction
With an Interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Kent Dixon on Flash Fiction & Nonfiction
With an interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
MIixed Forms: Haibun, Haiga, & Tanka Prose
The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Roberta Beary on Haibun
With an interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
Experimental Discourse
The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Jim Meirose on Experimental Discourse (XP)
With an interview by Associate Editor Warwick Newnham
Poetry: All forms & styles
The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Poetry from Bruce McRae
With an Interview by Associate Editor Jeff Streeby
The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Poetry from Richard Widerkehr
With an Interview by Associate Editor Jeff Streeby
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