two poems and three collages by Blythe Zarozinia Aimson

consequences of masturbating in a haunted house

i: sit alone and naked making dead
eye contact with my reflection in the mirror opposite the bed

as my fingers shake split self there is: a crack a perfect
spiral the whole way round a bell jar on the mantelpiece

there is an [un] welcome visitation but by now
i: am luminous and insatiable

despite the radiator ticking i am cold nippled goose pimpled i am
shell pink and sluice phlegm on a milky and fearless tongue

there are pearls forming at the back of my throat
a bluish contortionist , i no longer know: where my body is

because i osmose spirit no limit to skin
dissipation left: a bad taste hiccups broken glass on sheets

instead of sweat and cunt
everything smells like
dust
Continue reading “two poems and three collages by Blythe Zarozinia Aimson” →

March 26, 2020

Womannotated – The Night A Crow Must Go Away

A sample page from Crow Carriage, an annotated poetic horror novel set in a Victorian English seaside village. This is the format of the Crow Carriage book, a sonnet with an expansive annotation that tells a story in prose below (the same format as my book Flutter available at my website and Twist In Time).

The Night The Crow Must Go Away

You lie beneath a dozen nightmares. Screams

careening down a crow-covered stair wake

you in the last second before the dream.

Continue reading “Womannotated – The Night A Crow Must Go Away” →

March 26, 2020

Repeat Sequence, by Rachael Charlotte

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March 25, 2020

We Are Born Buds / We Die Seed / If There Is an Earth Somewhere, I Will Return to It, by Amy Jannotti

on the mountain, the violets
shriek CLENCH YOUR FIST LIKE LEAF
SWALLOW COPPER FEEL YOUR TENDONS
LOOSEN (/UNSPOOL)

to be flower is to be born wind / grow in glass houses / swallow over & over
the dying of things like a violet, you drink death
through your capillaries it tastes of zinc / tastes of magnesium / lends the soil
to fertility like a violet, you drink leftover metals
(/like leftover metal, you are intensely weathered)

on the mountain, the violets shriek THERE IS NO SNOW ANYMORE
NO SOFT BED FOR YOUR FURLING
pull that thumb from your lips –

the first shape
your hand made
was a fist / let it loosen Continue reading “We Are Born Buds / We Die Seed / If There Is an Earth Somewhere, I Will Return to It, by Amy Jannotti” →

March 25, 2020

two poems by Jason Wright

A Scientist. A Manuscript.

Beautiful reader, take me to bed with you.
While you read this, make my words
Dance on your eyelids.
Make me silent with your death wish.
You already did.
And I escape into your abyss
But you, you keep reading it.
Let me play with the words, like they are
under and in you.
Let me bring my running stanzas
To stop, and start,
Like death, and rebirth
Fuel you and charge you.
Only to disarm you. Continue reading “two poems by Jason Wright” →

March 24, 2020

DESCARTES’ DOG by Louis Armand

L0010245 Photograph: plague mask of oil-cloth with bronze beak Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images images@wellcome.ac.uk http://wellcomeimages.org Plague mask of oil-cloth with bronze beak Photograph 18th century Published: – Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Continue reading “DESCARTES’ DOG by Louis Armand” →

March 23, 2020

A Fairy Tale Covered in Underwater Ashes, by Juliet Cook and j/j hastain

Fish with no eyes
swim toward me anyway
and I swim toward them
the same way.

No point in double standards
or a fishing pole.
These fishnets are making my
brain feel weird
like I’m pole dancing underwater,
can’t see my audience or if
I even have one.
Can I be my own Continue reading “A Fairy Tale Covered in Underwater Ashes, by Juliet Cook and j/j hastain” →

March 22, 2020

Untitled Deer Poem, by Sean Hogan

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March 19, 2020

Enantiomorph, by Germán Sierra

on the wake of my fall into abstraction, a body will be missing—
not its shape but its previously summoned math
the racemic transparency of a mechanical device
forced into the impossible symmetry of a ghost

i only go to bodies i wouldn’t mind to die beside
they’re road ends—
eerie books—
their spinal, hinged, swiveling accessibility to be polynomially open in half

been there for you—deloved—virid—crowfeathered—
dreams bitching up their way to the end of nights

waiting, wondering where in the frozen-by-moonlight, orthogonal, almost evaporated bedroom, the polyhedral spider will embellish her thorax with a starfish’s kimono Continue reading “Enantiomorph, by Germán Sierra” →

March 18, 2020

Can’t Fake a Fake Life, by Kevin Farrell, Jr

I’m completely over it.
Almost.

This ever present guilt,
an effervescent spirit;
it took death to impress.

Ephemeral pleasures,
hold on, it’s already gone.

All clowns cry,
our clocks wink goodnight.

Won’t buy what you’re selling;
rather rob you blind in broad daylight.

The most beautiful thing in the world
is realizing there is no soul that carries on.

Beyond and after
is just here and now,

an angle unseen
from a self-centered mirage.

Continue reading “Can’t Fake a Fake Life, by Kevin Farrell, Jr” →

March 17, 2020

You’re Not There. by Anastasia

I remembered the feel of you, how you felt heavy and slightly sweaty.
I remembered how our eyes met, and our spirits seemed connected.
Now I am weightless. Now I am in the dark.
And you’re not there.
It is a funny thing to have once been so connected to the earth, to be rooted there.
The life left my body, that rooted body, so easily, and so gracefully.
I left you and I floated away.
I should feel something I said to myself. ‘I don’t I answered.
As I rose into the air I could see within the depths of a great forest.
Every action in that forest so precise, so vital.
Sex, life, death, rebirth.
I passed over a city.
Every building was as if the roof was removed.
I could see the lives within, patterns repeating.
Sex, life, death, rebirth.
I am pulled upwards suddenly.
Being as, I supposed, the allotted time to look around was over.
Ahead of me is a great cosmic sea.
That’s a tad cliché isn’t it? Yet, there it is.
Expanding in and out, like it breathes. Breathes life and death.
There are naked iridescent beings in the waves, capering about.
Sometimes joining together, then splitting apart again.
Some disappear, and new ones arrive.
But you’re not there.
It’s time to go now, the goddess is here.

My ancestors are here too.
And there are others. Great winged creatures.
They are taking me somewhere, and I am grateful to go.
But I wonder, will you be there? Continue reading “You’re Not There. by Anastasia” →

March 12, 2020

Black (W)Hole Swallow, by ReVerse Butcher & Kylie Supski

A visual poem: Black (W)Hole Swallow by ReVerse Butcher & Kylie Supski

ReVerse Butcher is a multi-disciplinary artist with focuses in making unique artist’s books, collages, visual art, writing & performance. She will use any medium necessary to engage and subvert reality until it is less dull and oppressive. When she grows up she wants to be a well-read recluse.

Kylie Supski is a Polish-Australian poet, playwright, & spoken word artist. She is greatly concerned with using art as a method of speaking out about social, economic and political inequality. Many of Kylie’s poems discuss her experiences as a transgender woman. In 2016 she was the winner of the Melbourne Spoken Word Prize. Kylie is passionate about personal autonomy and exploring the beauty of being alive.