THIS IS BOOMSLANG

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It was also the label affixed to a widely-ignored poetic form championed by various disenfranchised and largely unpublished writers of the late twentieth century.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.

Since 1979, Detroit-born Joseph Nicks has divided his waking hours more-or-less equally between his "day job" and his nocturnal writing. The diurnal component has varied from manual laborer to water quality lab technician, assistant science advisor to a museum exhibits development team, technical writer, public school biology teacher, and field biologist. He holds a B.S. in terrestrial zoology and two teaching credentials (multiple subject and biological sciences) and currently resides in the rural Mojave Desert. Recent publications include Tales From The Otherground (2014), Songs From The Dirt (2015), and Can't Forget The Motor City... (2018).