BURNING HOUSE PRESS

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Olympia

Real love. Unsparing introspection

Oh, for heaven’s sake 

fucking ____________________  . 

1. Jennifer
2. You (& Jennifer) 
3. Jack the Modernist
4. Veronica, Ted, Sabalenka, Sailor Socialism
5. the museum goers at The Frick, 

a poem for trapped things, the solar anus

the girl whose lips

are like 

the last helicopter 

out of Saigon

O lose the noise 

you’re going to be all right

go home, spoon the Hitachi     

blackmatter

Berkshire Hathaway

     Dear Cinnette, 

     did you obtain cheap land, seek fortune, 

     join a religious community—

     I’m taking the kitchen sink approach 

            Where do the coordinates lead…

Delia Deetz died. 

The Lily Jean sank off the coast of Gloucester. 

The streets are draped in anti-drone nets. 

Today, when I was looking at the clouds 

I remembered how Leni Riefenstahl attached automatic cameras to balloons. 

     I want to fall in love 

     with a blind flower girl

     who mistakes me 

     for a millionaire. 

---

Even the Automobiles Here Seem to Be Ancient 

Dear Cinnette, I grew tired of the world 

at the Braintree split      

but there’s no shepherdess in sight

the ice floes on the Merrimack look like wounded angels

Dear Cinnette, the sun’s fixed stare expresses something beyond death

I’m letting my beard grow  

Let’s just say 

your period 

is the ultimate form of punctuation

Which one of your phone calls changed my life      fuck

     it

I’m raising a toast to Odin 

and the beauty of Japanese volcanoes

Last I heard you hitched a ride to Salt Lake     

O     Madonna 

        of the Trail— 

                          Dear Cinnette, Infinite Jest turned 30  

Sabalenka was penalized for a midpoint grunt

I saw a woman at Stop & Stop 

buying avocados 

like it’s 2010

I heard Thom bit off a prostitute’s toe in Prague

I’m high on benzos       godspark     

Dear Cinnette          Il faut être absolument modern

Did you know in 1955 

Friehofer’s still used horse drawn carts 

to deliver baked goods in Schenectady— 

Imagine if your whole job was putting cherries on cupcakes

Imagine if our midpoint grunt went on forever. 

---

Dobermann

If you said all I do is write love poems

     I’d say I’m solving the crisis of panty lines 

but that’s just another comedy 

for our conspiracy 

theory   

age

Again the snow is scatterbrained

millions of individual 

amens

and I’m thinking 

about the time 

we had sex at the Tate Modern

If you said it was like a love poem 

featuring Rouveyre’s car and several Soviet bikers

     I’d say 

look at the charm of the industrial streets.  

Fun is a steel bath in Mitteleuropa,  

your tongue like a menacing dobermann. 

---

MALMO

it feels very intimate, very private 

being an author and a character simultaneously

like a crowd of people 

at the beach 

screaming      shark!    Shark!

Quite unlike the Oulipians

who organize their internet novels 

by color

fake barn country 

the IKEA back catalogue. 

      Dear Cinnette, 

I prefer the dark arts 

“So we shall take the train here to MALMO, 

then get into the car 

and drive home to our house, 

and all the way I shall revel in, 

truly revel in”

how we used to smoke 

in bed on Sundays 

and read The Boston Globe, 

Akhmatova, Letters to a Young Poet, 

the cat purring like 

a bloom of chocolate, 

mirrors caressing the room 

and the sense of things 

careening

towards

a head

still a long 

way

     off

like a seizure 

on a boat 

in the middle of the sea

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Damon Hubbs is a poet from New England. His latest collection, Bullet Pudding, is forthcoming from Roadside Press in 2026. Recent publications include Horror Sleaze Trash, Apocalypse Confidential, Be About It Press, Revolution John, The Literary Underground, RESSURECTION magazine, and others. His poems have been nominated for the Pushcart and Best of the Net. He is a poetry editor at Blood+Honey and The Argyle Literary Magazine. bluesky: @hubbsd.bsky.social