This is True Love
Essays and Stories
Keith Banner’s newest collection of stories and essays exposes how desire allows rural boys not to escape or ascend their lives but step beyond the need to buy into the dreams that middle-class America has propagated. These are stories, some based on the realities of the author’s life, some spun fiction, that offer what goes on in the hearts and minds of youths at once trapped by the demands of their Rust Belt neighborhoods and also freed by a welcome sense of being the outsider.
Featuring:
"Mars" from Christopher Street, November 1992
"When We Go Back" from Minnesota Review, Spring 1993, “The Politics of AIDS” issue
"Enoch" from Christopher Street, August 1993
"Goodbye Scott" from Christopher Street, March 1994
"Monkeyboy Flies Through the Night" from Christopher Street, November 1994
"Barry in the Scorched Grass" from The James White Review, Spring 1996
"Lily of the Valley" from The James White Review, Winter 1997
"With Gary on a Wednesday Night in Late August" from The James White Review, Fall 1998
"Feast" from Nerve.com, November 1998
"A Planet Called Eugene" from Obsessed, 1999
"Jamboree" from Nerve.com, June 1999
"Fruitcake's First Official Murder Poem" from Nerve.com, June 2000
"Traveling, Staying Still" from Nerve Magazine, October/November 2000
"Dear Arrid Extra Dry" from Oxford Magazine, 2002
"After School" from Nerve.com, August 2009
"Don't Mind if I Do" original to this volume
"Anyone Can See" original to this volume
Paperback, 228 pages