[01/07/27] Hay, David: The Devil Has Texas

House of Vlad Press, paperback

Publication Date: January 7, 2027

Publisher Marketing: 

“The Gravity’s Rainbow of poetry. A cauldron boiling with imagery so rich it’s damn near toxic. I’m a David Hay fan now.”—TEX GRESHAM, author of Violent Candy

“I don’t read poetry much anymore. I used to. I can’t write it either, at least not like this. Most poetry collections feel too careful to me, too aware of themselves. There are poems here that rot beautifully, all of it collapsing, this mysterious, injured music. I don’t really know how to talk about poetry anymore. I only know when something gets into my bloodstream and stays there. This did, does.”—SHANE JESSE CHRISTMASS, author of METH-DTF and The Sex Shops of Sherman Oaks

“[The Devil Has Texas] makes me feel schizophrenic.”—CONOR HULTMAN, author of DOE

“In our age where so many poets see how little they can get away with, Hay’s painstaking verses are so epic they erase our very rationale. Earthy yet urban supernatural spellcasting, like letters from a condemned sanitarium Tom Waits would be afraid to open.”—GABRIEL HART, author of On High at Red Tide

“At first I wasn’t so sure about ol’ David Hay. His stuff seemed a little too grimy and weird, even for House of Vlad standards and practices. But under Hay’s cockney spell, it was like I was on a technicolor nightmare ride full of danger and scrambled intrigue. Deceptively mundane lines became daggers into my brain, slicing it wide open and turning my thoughts into their own weapons. Hay is a magician with a butcher’s temperament, and reading The Devil Has Texas feels as though you’re on DMT while being filmed at Burning Man by Jodorowsky. Nick Cave does the soundtrack.”—BRIAN ALAN ELLIS, author of The Errors Tour