the lawn / Is pressed by unseen feet, and ghosts return /
Gently at twilight, gently go at dawn.
—T.S. Eliot, “To Walter de la Mare”
My father died in our living room.
Continue reading “Ghost Feet, Some Booze, and My Living Room: A Sad Party by Dom Fonce”
“More and more I forget what I need, and remember what I’d like to forget. And sometimes I keep talking, keep recalling, as a way of not saying what I feel.”
—Stephen Dunn, “Memory”
My fingers clink like ice as I sit, cliffside, listening to the slow wash of water against rock. Two Canada geese honk a route overhead, and I look out to Victoria, which lies across the narrow stretch of water from San Juan Island. Continue reading “A Necessary Silence by Jenne Knight”
But I was preoccupied with
wonder. A cursory ask: is gay-boy
the same as femme, the same as
gender- queer, the same as sharp, then soft,
then wading destitute through
swamps of molasses? I was so
distracted, drowned in the black rush
of mascara in untouched eyelashes.
I know better than to leave a place
And expect to find it
Exactly where I left it
This time, I return home a foreigner Continue reading “Home by Shannon Donaghy”
A flash of light catches my eye, shimmering like an emerald amid the waves. Foam-tipped saltwater crests fall and rise, the tide tugging against earth below. I step into the shallow water and feel sand tickling between my toes, across the pads of my feet and caressing my heels.
Behind me, farther up the stretch of sunbathed sand, Dominic stretches his caramel skin beneath the rays. No one else on the beach for miles. I touch the bulge of my belly and smile. Continue reading “Seaglass by Tianna Grosch”
“Where you from?”
“Got me. We never stay anywhere long enough to be from there.”
“Must suck. Where you been?”
“First I remember was someplace cold. Then palm trees. We go wherever they send my dad.”
“Got any brothers or sisters?
“One.”
“One what?”
“Of each. On either side. They go, too.”
“Go where?” Continue reading “Genesis of a Writer: A Memoir by Deborah Hansen”
1
a b c d e f g h i think, therefore i am
a shot of Espresso
2
a shot of Espresso has an i
the cup has an i
the coffee powder an i
so has every coffee granule &
the sugar powder & every sugar crystal &
the water & every covalent bond of water
& every H atom
& every O atom
The one-eyed elephant trainer wept. The girl lay motionless, without will or strength. He offered her tear-stained slices of white bread from a plastic bag. They did not only look stale they were furry with mould, especially at the crust. She refused by jerking her head away. He had replaced the good quality clothes she had worn with a cheap nylon T-shirt and a sarong. He said that he bought these clothes for her from the Thieves’ Market in west Jakarta.
He was a monster. He had kidnapped her from the fairground. Monster.
Continue reading “The One-Eyed Elephant Trainer by Ivy Ngeow”
millennia of shame
bound up in my name
Eve
is tongue-tied
God’s sticky sauce on the spare rib
Adam needn’t wank off every night
not now
not now I’m here named maimed incomplete no cock
Continue reading “My Naming by Eve Black”
In one glance you’re a girl clad in silks,
in another a man in a jumper,
turn my back you’re a farmer,
blink and you’re a hunter,
fetch a pint and you’re a fisherman.
I wake up to a shepherd,
come back from a shift to a carjacker.
There’s no warmth in her smile, nothing friendly.
I’ve seen a smile like this before, but not on a human face. It’s the smile Mum’s sadistic bastard cat used to flash at trapped creatures.
‘Maggot,’ she decrees, her wine glass shaking with nervous rage. ‘Snivelling worm. Deluded, self-important asshole.’
BURNING HOUSE PRESS 