SAD MAN HAPPY HOUR

SAD MAN HAPPY HOUR is a four-part poetry collection that uses humor, pop culture, and the natural world to examine queer alienation, climate catastrophe, and the destabilizing forces of family and place. Rooted in the Pacific Northwest, the book resists regional mythmaking in favor of lived experience—messy, tender, absurd, and deeply human.

One section of the collection, Consolation Prize (originally published as a chapbook by Scablands Books in 2018), takes its poem titles verbatim from Yakima County Fair themes. Pieces like “Who Let the Hogs Out,” “Celebrate What’s Great!,” and “Lol” lean into the surreal optimism of fairground language to offset the book’s heavier preoccupations. This deliberate absurdity becomes a coping mechanism, creating space for honesty where pain might otherwise overwhelm.

Throughout Sad Man Happy Hour, the poems locate meaning at the intersections of popular culture and natural landscapes, tracing how identity and memory are shaped by region, weather, labor, and inherited silence. The collection situates itself in the tradition of Northwest writers who treat the land not as backdrop, but as an active, shaping force—vast, unforgiving, and deeply intimate. In doing so, it offers a portrait of the Pacific Northwest not as a cliché, but as it is: fractured, funny, endangered, and alive.