Graceland, Graceland, I’m going to Graceland. So, this is how it ends? All my life I lived for time and money, tied to the world of things. Ellie said, you have to get a smartphone, grandpa. Too bad, I left my phone at home. Oh, I want to believe we all will be received. At least, I’m not alone.
“Loneliness?” mused the fellow who sat reclined against the wall of Kii-no-kuni-ya holding the letter sent poste restante. “We cannot be.” He listened to his thoughts as they spoke of their voyages and woes, frivolities and schemes. The fellow stood. “Hour’s come.” They went on the road merrily speaking the thoughts they had at the hour the Sun would rise. Continue reading “Graceland by Voima Oy and Sean Fraser”
If I’m being honest, I always wanted to be a writer. The phone sex came second. The modeling came third and the mediumship? Totally unplanned. I run from that, just like my mum some would say along my journey. It’s the the things you run from, you end up needing the most. Continue reading “That Phone Call by Lacie Grayson”
Chants of innocuous dreams. Juxtaposed worlds full of images. Nowhere to store these moments but vestigial ingrown pockets. Resultant miniscule sacs swollen with residual blood. Echoes of a thousand Nippon years rasping in my ears. I awake in Queen Himiko’s tomb. Continue reading “Sapless Fortunes by Dale Brett”
Human as alien as animal as transformative substance. My gills again. My lungs left behind. The anti-intro that discusses mutations and mutations only. New genes discovered in the side streets of North Inglewood. My personal mental fitness … a direct agency to despair. Psychedelic mathematics … the double helix … organisms occur as new species … desirous selection. Cockroach shells beneath my upper lip. A thousand times a day I vomit in the open hallways. No one sees this sign … let alone someone asking my name. I am not human. Live nude guys on Instagram … the micro-evolution of asexuality … the sticky goo of human bones … a total deterioration of feeling. Continue reading “Simpering by Shane Jesse Christmass”
“So you still think you can do it?
So tell me, what did he eat today?
And how much does he weigh?
And how long will he remain a minor?
And you actually believe him?
Stop the talk about his future. We’re talking life or death here. I’ll give you a day to think about it. But that’s it. I can’t give you anymore time than that.
It hardly matters. In New Mexico kids are given most of their rights at fourteen.
Continue reading ““… please let him hate you too … ” by Bobbi Lurie”
“Memories resurfacing” … “coagulating underneath the meniscus” … “slowly lifting over the crest” … “kino eye gazes down upon my apartment” … “witnesses our inadequate sex” … “the timid approach and delicate placement of your hands” … “there is no good fuck” … “the fragments will have to be assembled later” … “Blondboy” … “Deadboy” … “Oldboy” … “Tommyboy” … “another silhouette waiting over the horizon” … “sunset is green or burgundy” … “they’ve stopped firing rockets in the middle of the night” … “I delay my need for glasses” … “the eye doctor tells me that I can only see the past” … “not what is happening in front of me” … “medical time is organized into a linear model” … “it becomes difficult to project myself” … “smut-maker gives his body to people he does not know” … “he collects these encounters” … “builds an altar from cum and diorite” … “attempts to summon a new boy” … “no more boys” … “stone turns luminous and then returns to normal” Continue reading “Post-Erotic Ritual Text by Mike Corrao”
In memory of Sam Shepard (1943-2017)
1. Under a fat summer moon the Lost Cowboy stops his horse. Stares at the scars in his hands looking for a map to guide him home.
2. Home is the place where you always long to be but which you will never find. The Lost Cowboy still hears the words of his father.
3. Come home, oh sweet baby, come home back to me. Startled, the Lost Cowboy struggles to place his mother’s lullaby in his memory. Continue reading “The Lost Cowboy [A story in 24 tweets] by Mauricio Montiel Figueiras”
how did we get here
Content Warning – Childhood Sexual Abuse
Continue reading “how did we get here -A Flash Fiction by Stephanie C. Odili”
From where the birch takes the sun
Peter Maier waits in his back yard. He paces the patchy lawn, from where the birch takes the sun; from where he sits in summer to read. Or in the crook of the linden, further back, behind the vegetables. He follows the brick path, and remembers every time he’s helped his father turn the soil, plant the carrots, the potatoes. Just like this, wandering, unsure where to stand, where to go, what to think about what his mother calls the ending. He can hear the artillery a few kilometres away. They’ve been warned – later today, or tomorrow.
Continue reading “From where the birch takes the sun — A short story by Stephen Orr”
Rare Treats
When my grandfather asked me to buy cigarettes at a local convenience store in front of our house one Saturday afternoon, I remembered what Teacher Gladys taught us in school that week.
She said cigarette smoking is bad – for the health and for the environment. I was eight when I couldn’t weigh which was worse. I didn’t want anything bad happening to my family, most especially to my grandparents.
Continue reading “Rare Treats, a Flash Fiction by Angelo Lorenzo”
Venus:
You are well aware of how to procure an accurate prophecy. You’ve been doing it for years and this year is no different.
You cycle into outer space. It is a warm June night in England and a cold, unnamed never-time everywhere else in the universe. When you find the prophecy, it has been circling a distant sun for a millennia. It looks like gold and feels warm, the temperature of skin. You tuck it under your tongue and it tastes like raw egg yolk.
Continue reading ““Seven Women: Details of a Generational Curse” Fiction by M. R. Massey”
recipe for banishing
for J.M.
if you sense pernicious stirrings in your midst walk backwards until you arrive at a precipice overhanging the ocean jump up three times turning one hundred eighty degrees in the air so your left foot lands in your right foots print and vice versa vice versa vice versa then whisper your name thrice backwards while inhaling
Continue reading “Two Hybrid Poems for Breaking Spells by Rae Diamond”
Maxime Berclaz is a first year candidate for an M.F.A. in Poetry at the University of Notre Dame and an Editorial Intern at Action Books. He has been published in Poems for Freedom, an anthology of poems put together in support of the anarchist bookstore Freedom after its firebombing, has a poem forthcoming in Deluge and has also had reviews in Pank and Tarpaulin Sky. Tweets at https://twitter.com/bava_mario & Action Books
Liza Martino is an opinionated female from Brunswick, Victoria, Australia, working for a financial conglomerate. She has a special relationship with the sun. Queen makes her cry. Twitter: @liza_martino
bibles is the author of ‘Better Face of Facism’ find him @appropouture.
Alexander Kattke is a long time writer and film buff who has been writing for over fifteen years. He has published two works: Witness to a Recurring Galaxy and Musings. He is working on a third. Twitter: https://twitter.com/SongsofMaldoror
BURNING HOUSE PRESS 