Moth and Ghost at Work by Stephen Rendon is the fourth chapbook in Abode's 2024-2025 lineup and is officially available for pre-order! All orders will be shipped by early November. There are only 100 copies of this chapbook available, so make sure to get your copy while you can!
Book Description: Stephen Rendon's Moth and Ghost at Work is as engaging as it is inventive. Touching on themes of the self, class, Seguin, family, and race, this hybrid chapbook contains the entire human experience. Through Rendon's innovative experimentation, we're given a tender, intimate look at what it means to live and breathe in modern capitalism. By the time you're reading this, the world will look a little different-whether it's for the better or worse, as Rendon poignantly reminds, is up to us.
About the Author: Stephen Rendon is a 28 year old living, working and writing from a small town in Texas. His work has appeared in various collections and magazines.
Praise for Moth and Ghost at Work by Stephen Rendon:
"Stephen Rendon’s Moth and Ghost at Work is an innovative experiment that engages a tactile sense of self, of class, and family. This chapbook offers critiques of labor and land through tender glimpses of Texas and through Rendon’s engaging lines, from lilies to pears to irises to carnations, he reminds us that religion and politics change death. His lean words strike without warning: 'Now we had to use our time explaining that we weren’t special to people who already treated us that way. Explaining that we weren’t more vile or human than anyone else. That you’re meat. And later that night you’ll be eaten.' This collection serves many delicious morsels on the menu and presents us with a world that capitalism has attempted to break, but a cast of characters that refuse that fate."
-- mónica teresa ortiz, author of Book of Provacations (Host Publications 2024)
"Moth and Ghost at Work represents a dynamic praxis between poet and page, personhood and capitalism, and all the intersections of self. As any writer hopes to do, Rendon masterfully clashes, bends, manipulates language to explore indentity. This chapbook isn't afraid to use space to hold truth up like a mirror, and this writer isn't afraid to ask the difficult questions, expecting no answer in return. As readers, we are only asked to observe ourselves and how we fit into this world that Rendon creates. And that world is beautiful and true."
-- Bianca Alyssa Perez, author of Gemini Gospel
"Stephen Rendon’s Moth and Ghost at Work intricately weaves meditation, memory, and diagrams to explore labor as both 'a feature and a bug' for working-class Mexican Americans in Seguin, TX. Rendon’s poetry is testimony and elegy, reminding us of Texas's violent past and the consequences that still haunt us. Moth and Ghost at Work is a must-read collection, an emerging voice that illustrates the Central Texas experience."
-- Cloud Delfina Cardona, author of What Remains
ISBN: 979-8-9900598-3-2
Publication Date: 11/1/2024
Copies will officially be distributed on November 1st.