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BURNING HOUSE PRESS

Not For Profit/For Prophecy

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from How to Be Still, Heather McShane

“Those who know ghosts tell us that they long to be released from their ghost
            life and led to rest as ancestors. As ancestors, they live forth in the present
            generation, while as ghosts they are compelled to haunt the present generation
            with their shadow life.”[1]

In response to my dreaming that my mother was a ghost, my therapist started talking to me about Sigmund Freud and, by extension, Hans Leowald. My understanding of my therapist’s explanation was that Freud considered parents as other beings, separate from their children, in their children’s minds, until they (their children) begin to take on the ideals of their parents. With the death of the parents, children begin to embody their parents, as if their ghosts are dead.

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Diagram 5, by David Alejandro Hernandez

With fraying certainty did Linda handle the folds of her origami original. Where before had been pristine squares of folding paper there was now a complete failure on the part of paper. The squares had had a gloss and that gloss had met its foil in Linda’s troubled folds. Linda tut-tutted herself and variously rattled at her desk. First, two hands to one of the four legs. Then, two good grips on either edge of the desktop, widthwise. Lastly, a pair of arms under the center drawer, and a kick at the side-cabinet, for good measure. The latest paper square, set squarely on the rubber mat, could hardly be expected to shrug its shoulders. These glossy paper squares battled a good deal of battle. Proper soldiers.

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Studies in the High Domestic // IMAGE // Graham Diptych, by Danielle Salvadori

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Danielle Salvadori is a poet, photographer and video artist based in London. She is studying at the Poetry School, London. // @danisalvadori

The dark should be safe, by Emma Lee

It’s like a tap dripping. None of her taps are guilty, but the sense of unease pools and spills across her floor.

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Mommy, by Nikki Wallschlaeger

        

           For Sage 

Mommy, I need some help. Watch cartoons with me, Mommy. You my mommy. Henry’s a nice pup. I’m hungry, Mommy. I want some pizza. I want some juice. Mommy, I got poop pants. I come outside with you, Mommy. Thanks. Read books with me, Mommy. Snuggle with me. I don’t want to take a nap. Mommy, help, help. You a nice Mommy. When is Daddy coming home. Where is brother. It’s yucky. I don’t like it, I don’t like it, Mommy. Nice dog. Fast race car. My bike, my bike, Mommy. No doggy. Henry’s a nice dog. Give my Mommy a kiss, carry me Mommy. Where is bus. BUS! Find a different one. This. Come on, Mommy. What’s that noise. Go find treasure for you. Mermaids, sharks. Mommy what you doing. Daddy’s at work?  Brother is at school. Take a bath. I want to take a bath, Mommy. Splash Mommy. Boats. Submarine. Mommy, I got owie. Right there. How about some cookies. Fine. You stop it, you do it. I found something, Mommy. Open. Yummy food. I want blue, yellow. I want to help you, Mommy. Mine.

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Nikki Wallschlaeger’s work  has been featured in The Nation, Brick, American Poetry Review, Witness,   Kenyon Review, POETRY, and others. She is the author of the full-length collections Houses (Horseless Press 2015)  and Crawlspace (Bloof 2017) as well as the graphic book I Hate Telling You How I Really Feel (2019) from Bloof Books. She is also the author of an artist book called “Operation USA” through the Baltimore based book arts group Container, a project acquired by Woodland Pattern Book Center in Milwaukee. Her third collection, Waterbaby, is forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press in 2021. // @nikkimwalls

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Banner image by Olivia Cronk

In bed, by Rhian Sasseen

I.

In bed, I am writing this to you in bed. I spend so much time here: eating, sleeping, fucking. Waiting for the day finish. Longing for the night to begin. Wishing that I were someone other than myself, that I was somewhere other than my bed. “I am a completely horizontal author. I can’t think unless I’m lying in bed…” Supine. Sleepless. In bed there is only the passivity of time. The comfort of duty. You’re supposed to lie there, you’re supposed to lie in bed and wait for sleep to come. Dreaming, dreaming is the one thing I don’t do in bed. There are no smells in dreams, no tastes. A horizontal life.

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