Nestucca Spit Press Meditations – A Blog by Matt Love

ocjournal

July 30, 2026

Three Oregon City Poems

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July 29, 2026

Ode to Corduroy

sebastian

July 28, 2026

Cape Sebastian Psychedelia

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July 27, 2026

Charlie Parker at the Gas Station

champagne

July 26, 2026

Philomath Wine

elmerfog1

July 25, 2026

Candidate from the Ocean

grant

July 24, 2026

Advance, Always

juniper

July 23, 2026

Gone for Drool

OIP

July 22, 2026

Faculty Meeting

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July 21, 2026

Strawberry Noses and Apricot Midriffs

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July 20, 2026

Colors

vulture

July 19, 2026

Vultures

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July 18, 2026

The Hummingbird and Lint

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July 17, 2026

For Toots

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July 16, 2026

All in Silhouette

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July 15, 2026

Red Rock Crab

dhalia

July 14, 2026

Construction Materials for a Poem about Dahlias

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July 13, 2026

On Raking Leaves

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July 12, 2026

The Rock Zone

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July 11, 2026

Double Screwdriver Makeout Sunday

parrot

July 10, 2026

Parrot Poker

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July 8, 2026

My Life in Driftwood Forts

July 6, 2026

The Taylor Swift Seminar

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July 1, 2026

A Box of 7-11 Pizza

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June 29, 2026

The Skylight

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June 26, 2026

Fire Pit Meditations

rope

June 25, 2026

My Kingdom for Some Rope!

lovea

June 22, 2026

A Territory Without Maps

bear

June 15, 2026

The Bear Hunter

June 13, 2026

To Report or Not

elmerlighhouse

June 8, 2026

Three Days a Widower

jesus

June 5, 2026

The Profane Pastor

shannonadiar

June 1, 2026

The Green Purse (Part 2)

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May 29, 2026

The Poet

shannonadiar

May 25, 2026

The Green Purse

sixkiller

May 18, 2026

Yard Work

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May 11, 2026

Oregon Tavern Age: Sunday Afternoon

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May 4, 2026

Some Thoughts on My Poems About Homelessness

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May 1, 2026

Juxtaposition of Empires

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April 27, 2026

Dead Jellyfish

NEVER STOP PRE

The Enduring Inspiration of America's Greatest Sports Legend

Buy the Book: Print $21.99 + $5 shipping

"Never stop Pre. When he's no longer relevant in Oregon, Oregon is dead."

On May 31, 1975, Coos Bay, Oregon native Steve Prefontaine died in an automobile accident. At the time of his death, he held 14 American records in distance running.

Pre was 24 years old and already a legend in Oregon and the world of track of field.

Read More - Click here to buy the ePub or Kindle Editions

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The Old Crow

Book Club

In December of 2020, author Matt Love moved to Portland to care for his elderly father.

Returning to the Rose City jolted Love after 23 years residing on the Oregon Coast. In the Sellwood neighborhood where he lived, Love met a homeless man named Mark. They formed a friendship over literature and the unforeseen magical discoveries in street libraries. They created The Old Crow Book Club, and yes, sometimes that involved drinking Old Crow on a sidewalk.

The club also included several other Sellwood homeless men and women cut from John Steinbeck's Cannery Row cloth.

In due course, Love learned the members' stories of homelessness and how they survived. He wondered what happened to his beloved state of Oregon and attempted to help Mark get off the streets only to run up against the seemingly futile policies to address the crisis.

Along the way, he had the best conversations about books in his life and wrote The Old Crow Book Club, where he recounts his interactions with the homeless people in his neighborhood and offers some suggestions how to alleviate what he considers the greatest man-made American humanitarian disaster of his adult life.

The Old Crow Book Club is available for purchase here and select independent bookstores in Oregon.

$15.99 + $4 Shipping

Choice Cuts

of Oregon Fiction

Choice Cuts of Oregon Fiction by Matt Love contains 20 stories, all set in Oregon. The cast of characters includes a depressed Santa Claus, Steve Prefontaine, Jack Ramsay's fast break offense, socialist squirrels, a clearcut, a dead deer, a junior high football team, a high school tennis player, a dissipated teacher, a man who evolves into a beaver, a homeless vet, a jilted preacher, a double date to a prom, rural degenerates, a wily caterer, and much more.

The publication of the collection culminates a quarter century of the author's writing about Oregon and rambling around the state.

Choice Cuts is available for purchase here, through Amazon, or select independent bookstores in Oregon.

$22.99 + $3 Shipping

The Savage

of State Street

Nestucca Spit Press is proud to present The Savage of State Street: The Thieving and Literary Lives of Smoky Epley. He is the greatest unheralded writer in Oregon history and also one of its more mediocre, colorful and persistent thieves.

In 1973, Oregon State University Press published Men in Exile: An Anthology of Creative Writing by Inmates of the Oregon State Penitentiary. Twenty-two of Smoky Epley's pieces appeared in the book.

Smoky spent most of his adult life in state and federal prisons for robbery. In 2008, during one of his brief stints of freedom, Smoky became friends with Matt Love, an Oregon author and publisher. They met after Love discovered Men in Exile and wrote a newspaper column about the landmark book. Smoky read the column and reached out.

He returned to prison in 2009 after forging a check. Upon his release in 2011, Love encouraged Smoky to write a memoir. He completed half of Auto before dying in February of 2013.

$19.99 + $3 Shipping

Sonny the husky discovers a homeless encampment destroying a creek in a Portland city park. She alerts her owner and a park ranger and inspires a community clean-up of the damaged riparian area. Neighborhood citizens and residents of the encampment join Sonny to restore a tiny part of a watershed and later celebrate their collaboration.

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