HOW THE WIND HEELS YOU
Silence is the seed to grow my desire–silence and luck.
A large body of water shares clear clean glaze whispers
hydrogen bonding; its difficulty is holding stillness; that’s not
the fate God gave it. Lake Michigan’s azure nudity faces
forward, echoes difference and distances, says Eden. Continue reading “3 Poems by stephanie roberts”
Wetsuit
this wetsuit
is tight,
too tight
right up to
my neck
i am zipped up
His Body Retold
He abraded marble
Until he reached skin, inner than
Any thigh and equally muscular.
He plucked flowers off vines
And glued them with marrow
To stone slab as it becomes
Altar, ulterior
Motive for fiction and
Its facts: go in too Continue reading “2 Poems by Adam Strauss”
Basement Mother
You married such a sick woman
do you regret it now?
The way I’ve tortured us for years
the way I burned the house down – Continue reading “2 Poems by Elisabeth Horan”
Unless I identify myself, no one’s the wiser. I’m unclassified. What you see is all you never get , or less than you expect. Depending. Mutated, I am two countries with an unmediated border. Continue reading “Are We There Yet? by Joseph Schreiber”
Karissa Lang’s series of manipulated photographs, “I Was Here,” presents snap-shots of hazy memories from her own childhood in which she is the absent protagonist. Lang replaces the index of her physical body with some of the classic obscuring aesthetics of the photographic medium, namely, over-exposure and darkness. The eerie glow emanating from her face represents an inward movement associated with time-travel, as pieces of memories are reconstructed with her true sense of identity missing at the core. In other areas, her body is blacked out into a type of flattened silhouette, another indication of the gap that separates these family records from her physical body and memory.
Cousins Continue reading “Altered Photography by Karissa Lang”
The Lifeguard
And now I have to tell you about a dream. Or rather, several dreams, or rather, one continuous dream over several nights. In the dream a guy I know, who is actually an electrician, was a lifeguard. Continue reading “The Lifeguard by Katie Quinnelly”
(Photographs by Paul Cunningham)
THE WORD IS REFLECTED
there are many storefronts in this mall
and there are many reflections
there is drama there is something reflected
there are mirror columns in this mall
they are for the people they are for the looking
but there are no people in this mall
there is some drama in this mall
there are mirror columns in this mall
but there are no people in this mall
there is a proscenium stage in this mall
a former DEB retail chain store
there is a proscenium stage in this mall
a former DEB retail chain store
there is some drama in this mall
chains and masks and drama in this mall
there is drama there is something reflected
there is something reflected in this mall
but there are no people in this mall
there is something reflected in this mall
chains and masks and drama in this mall
but there are no people in this mall
Xavier had raced across the city in an old car not designed for speed: its gears grinding, brake pads squealing. The car’s suspension was so shot that when he took a corner the undercarriage scraped the road. The car was not to be his only hitch. At the intersection leading down into the Square, a police cordon barred his way. Abandoning the car, Xavier took to the road on foot, pushing through all the protestors, until he found Malka in the middle of the crowd. Continue reading “Inhale to Rise by Victoria Briggs”
WHO’S CHIRPING YER HAND?
(fashion reportage wallpaper theater)
Griselda
wants it
My mother always made her eyebrows on a Maybelline brow pencil
She rarely left the house without mascara Continue reading “Who’s Chirping Yer Hand? by Olivia Cronk”
Theron stands, staring out the window. Through liquid eyes, to another world outside, from another world inside. A hooded figure standing across the street, staring back. Dressed in dark clothes with a cloak, it appears to have come from another time. The shadow man points at him and he feels fear creep in like a cold grip on his heart. Hollow ache in the gut, frozen mind. Theron screams at the shadow man. More of a roar than a scream. When the air runs out of his yell, he takes a deep breath and roars again, over and over. His younger brother comes into the room and puts a hand on his shoulder. Continue reading “Shadow Man by Rob True”
– What is the night?
– Almost at odds with morning, which is which.
I carry the knives
I’m twisted in white sheets
maggot woman
cocooned murder
your bad dreams conceived me
their sticky bodies
sliced the moon
cut her up
and my eyes ignited
We drove toward the beach in your boyfriend’s car.
This was new, you behind the wheel, rather than our bygone late nights in the backseats of cabs and that equal distribution of power. Continue reading “Never Quite As It Seems by Mike Dressel”
Feature image by F.E. Clark, Daily Painting — 14th February, 2018
A girl is standing on the landing. I look up the stairs at her. I can’t see her face, no matter how I peer. The dusty afternoon light scatters in through the street-side window. The girl’s features blur and shift as if a veil’s been drawn over her head—a black veil. It shimmers in the air between us.
Fawn
A nod to nap below a tree — eyelid
an elephant descends, still sees a fawn
so wobbly as she flees. Demon forbids
a chase, indica knees. Tendrils blonde,
he contemplates. Their wave, rebellion,
he close-eyed calculates: Forest frolic
after class, to swath of leaves, vermillion,
bedspread in grass. She’s smoked-out, chronic,
childlike, asleep. His push inside her dreams
so deep. She wakes to nails between her thighs,
a bolt of light in red-rimmed eyes. Her screams,
that seem internalized, deemed dreamed demise.
This game requires patience. The best games do.
The dreams of hunters demons will pursue. Continue reading “2 Poems by Kristin Garth”
Burning House Press are excited to welcome JAMES PATE as our fifth guest editor! James will take over editorship of Burning House Press online for the full month of June – when he will then hand over the reins to our sixth guest editor for the month of July.
Submissions for James are open from today – 1st June and will remain open until 23rd June.
James’ Theme/s for the month are as follows
James has introduced his theme for your guidance:
I’m fascinated by those spaces that are on the threshold between the interior and exterior, the conversational and the unnamable, the recognizable present and the intangible future. Please send work you feel might be too eccentric for other venues—writing with twilight-lit edges, photography that blends the particular with the anonymous, art that is charged with the radically other.
Are there images and phrase that only grow more cryptic the more we think about them? Are there barely audible voices still waiting to be recorded? Alejandra Pizarnik’s poetry, Shirley Jackson’s novels, Sun Ra’s discography, Tarkovsky’s films, Beckett’s plays, Francis Bacon’s humanoid creatures, voices reading the Tarot heard in the static between radio stations, night gardens with metallic-seeming insects…mystic political tracts, literary realism haunted by sci-fi, Gothic verse imagining lunar vistas of paradisiac ruin…Please send work involving liminal spaces that question and invoke.
James Pate is a poet and fiction writer. His books include The Fassbinder Diaries (Civil Coping Mechanisms), Flowers Among the Carrion: Essays on the Gothic in Contemporary Poetry (Action Books Salvo Series), and Speed of Life (Fahrenheit Press). He teaches creative writing at Shepherd University, in Shepherdstown, WV.
* * *
For submissions, James is looking for your poetry, short stories, flash fiction, prose poems, art, collage, painting, photography – as well as non-fiction submissions: essays, reviews, commentary, features, interviews – and all hybrids and cross-forms.
Submission Guidelines
All submissions should be sent as attachments to guesteditorbhp@gmail.com
Please state the theme and form of your submission in the subject of the email. For example: LIMINAL SPACES/POETRY
Poetry and Fiction
For poetry submissions, submit no more than three of your best poems. Short stories should be limited to 1,500 words or (preferably) less. We encourage flash fiction submissions, no more than three at a time. Send these in as a .doc or .docx file, along with a short third-person bio, and (optional) photograph of yourself.
Art
Submit hi-res images of your works (drawings, paintings, illustrations, collages, photography, etc) with descriptions of the work (Title, Year, Medium, etc) in the body of the email. Files should be in .JPEG unless they are GIFs or videos, and should not exceed 2MB in size for each work. File names should correspond with the work titles. Video submissions can be uploaded onto Youtube or Vimeo for feature on our website. Send these submissions along with a short third-person bio, and (optional) photograph of yourself.
Non-fiction
Non-fiction submissions (essays, reviews, commentary, interviews, etc) should be no more than 1, 500 words and sent as a .doc or .docx file along with your third-person bio/and optional photograph.
Submissions are open from 1st June til 23rd June – and will reopen again on 1st July for our sixth guest editor.
BHP online is now in the capable hands of the amazing JAMES PATE – friends, send him your best!
May’s guest editor has chosen and presented her final selections of work responding to her theme/s of
BHP would like to thank Karissa for all her hard work over the past month – for the fantastic work she has chosen, and the impeccable way she has dealt with submissions and submitters. Thank you for everything, Karissa – you have been amazing!!!
Guest Editor: Karissa Lang
May 7
A Ubiquitous Man by Jake Kendall
May 8
My Naming by Eve Black
3 Poems by Paul Brookes
May 9
The One-Eyed Elephant Trainer by Ivy Ngeow
May 10
3 Poems by Shriram Sivaramakrishnan
Genesis of a Writer: A Memoir by Deborah Hansen
Continue reading “Identity: Crisis, Creation, Multiplicity, Singularity”
i was taught to be pink—
the blushing cheek of a virtuous girl,
or the pearl of her unspoiled innocence.
i was taught to be the color of the rose
lovingly selected for the virgin Continue reading “2 Poems by Lisa L. Weber”
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