Luftmensch, by Mike Costaney

Poetry, chapbook, 36 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

In Luftmensch, Mike Costaney builds a quiet, offbeat cosmos where the surreal quietly interrupts the everyday, and sincerity shows up dressed like a joke. These poems move like dreams you half-remember: a phone becomes a father, guilt is an orb that outlives you, and heaven has just enough rules to be frustrating. With sharp, strange humor and a deep empathy for the awkwardness of being alive, Costaney’s voice drifts easily between the absurd and the tender—never quite settling, always orbiting something honest.

Luftmensch doesn’t demand understanding— it just wants to sit beside you for a moment, share something weird, and maybe make you laugh in that way where you’re not sure if it’s funny or if it just hit too close. There’s a soft magic in its refusal to explain itself. It trusts you’ll feel it anyway.

Mike Costaney’s art and poetry exist in the space between the everyday and the dreamlike. Raised in Toms River, NJ, he first experimented with surrealist imagery and playful prose, using whatever materials were within reach. His journey from Sharpie-streaked printer paper to poetic form hasn’t dulled his love of the absurd—just refined it (or, depending on who you ask, made it more annoying).