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ULTRAVIOLET: Table of Discontents

Still from Maya Deren's Meshes of the Afternoon tinted purple. A cloaked figure stands outside in the street holding a rose. Instead of a face, we see the flat surface of a mirror.

An issue replete with luscious adjectives and flights of form

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Two poems 🍞🥖 by Sennah Yee

Detail of the bread on the table from Vermeer's oil painting, The Milkmaid (1657–1658), tinted purple.

… sunny-side-up quail eggs on tiny slices of rock-hard baguette…

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I’ll Be With You Soon by Jacob Wiebe

Archival black and white photo tinted purple of a forest, post fire, covered in snow.

Words spoken through blood-wetted lips, old words older than old stars rolling cold and heavy across the calloused skein of the sky to ends unknown, to wherever stars go, wherever they end, or so she had been told. 

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The dishes are clean, the sun is set by Fan Wu

Distemper with gold on cloth painting titled Amitabha, the Buddha of the Western Pure Land (Sukhavati), tinted purple. Features Amitayus, the Buddha of Eternal Life, is also known as Amitabha, one of the five Cosmic Buddhas of Esoteric Buddhism. He is shown in his paradise, Sukhavati, the Western Pure Land, enthroned beneath a massive flowering tree festooned with immeasurable riches, jewels and auspicious symbols. To either side the sky is filled with clouds bearing throngs of ecstatic demigods who bear offerings and scatter flowers. Seated below are the eight great bodhisattvas, and between them are two large, low tables covered with offerings. To either side are the vast assembled audiences who receive Amitayus’s teachings. At the bottom, set within a vast panoramic landscape, are courtyards, giant lotus flowers, and pools from which the purified are being reborn.


I am going back to the beginning place before sun and sky and sea, before the slit discloses difference, before the shock of time abides…

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Excerpts from The Torture Garden by Octave Mirbeau & Pornographia by Jean-Baptiste Del Amo

A giant cluster of bougainvillea

… life itself, the perfect composition of flesh elevated into a cathedral of fluids and organs, into a little god of misery.

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Two micros and a translation by Line Stockford

A purple snake coiling in the air against a black background.

Serpent is truth, and so despised. No flattery, no eyelashes, no need, take what you will.

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Two micros by Stevie Aechelimi Spikes

Vintage Shanghia ad tinted purple, an illustration of a smiling woman with coiffed hair in a fluttery floral print dress, seated indoors in front of a bouquet of flowers, holding a cigarette.

biting the inside of my mouth i am more gum than smile, because even on the internet i don’t know how to say no in the breathless space of a text message

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Prism 1 & 2 by Kenneth M Cale

Detail of image in post. Photographic image of a figure clothed in black dress, arms outstretched, lit with purple. Superimposed, the words coy / opaque.

ciphers small
upon a plinth

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Excerpt from The Book of Khalid by Ameen Rihani

Black and white photo tinted purple of the buttons of an antique cash register.

… the Soul of a philosopher, poet and criminal. I am all three, I swear…

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transmogrification by Sara Campos-Silvius

Archival black and white photo of the Spanish battleship España rendered in purple.

I will be something utterly, gloriously new…

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Two photo shoots by Madison Rexx

Photo by Shawn McPherson of Madison Rexx, a young woman regarding the viewer with a challenging gaze. Behind her, a purple backdrop and a plastic yellow moon.

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Excerpt from Christ by Sadakichi Hartmann

A lavender coloured rose

Thought and feeling are forgotten, only the body lives!

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Holy Water (Overflow) by Colin Campbell Robinson and Paul Hawkins

See #5 alt text in post

We slip out into the night-bar, drink beyond satiety; fall in the
street of inequality, the place we live.

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At the Carnival by Anne Spencer

Black and white archival photo of a female diver rendered in purple.

For you—who amid the malodorous
Mechanics of this unlovely thing,
Are darling of spirit and form.

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Crown of Thorns by Alice M.

Bright blackberries edited to enhance their purple hue.

… when she kneeled at the altar, we saw blood fall, not blood I whispered not blood at all, but purple blackberries, bouncing fat on the stone

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Five Illustrations by Jacob Wiebe

Detail from Untitled (2025) by Jacob Wiebe. See post for full alt-text.

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ULTRAVIOLET: Guest Editor’s note

Classic Rorschach inkblot screened in a purple tone.

I’d intended to write a brief introduction to the ULTRAVIOLET themed issue of Burning House Press but will instead juxtapose two seemingly incongruous observations.

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